Tower Hamlets remains one of the most densely populated and deprived boroughs in London, where private outdoor spaces are rare.
Approximately 80% of households live in flats, and many experience high levels of air pollution.
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"The whole thing really has been about how can we reimagine our local food system so it really does genuinely benefit local communities," says McAll.
A short distance away at the Limborough estate, another Wen-supported site allows local residents like Toyoba Chowdhuri to cultivate produce on micro-allotments.
Chowdhuri grows unique vegetables including snake gourds and malabar spinach on her plot.
"I'm living in Commercial Road. I haven't got any [outside space] there," says Chowdhuri.
The Limborough hub also operates a weekly food market that provides discounted organic produce, serving as an essential gathering space centered around food security and community engagement.
"Food is something that everybody needs but also has deep emotional connection to memories," says McAll. "It represents so much.
It's such a simple, unifying thing that can be a starting point for a lot of conversations."
Financial sustainability remains key to maintaining these community labs.
Designers hope that ticket sales from the new sauna will generate stable revenue to help fund the broader agricultural projects on site.
"What we can see from the modelling is that for food growing you have to do it at a certain scale to make it really economical," says Rokiah Yaman of Mad Leap, who is masterminding the site's anaerobic digester.
"But actually something like the community sauna is a brilliant way of really making the most value out of what we're doing.
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If you heat a sauna and then you charge for those sauna spaces and you have multiple sessions a day with 10 people in the session, that makes a big difference."
