Project: AJ/RPSA research project mentored by Design for London and sponsored by Architects Journal, for a site in Walthamstow Marshes, East London.
Value: Undisclosed
Client: Urban Design Scholarship
Status: Research Project

What is the traditional image of England's countryside, where is it found, and what stereotypes persist in our understanding of its role in our culture and industry? The image conjured, has a soft golden glow, of hazy days, windswept flies and woodland glades reminiscent of John Constable's infamous ‘The Haywain'.

This painting, completed in 1821, depicts the English Countryside, more specifically a stretch of the River Stour, bordered by Suffolk in the foreground and Essex in the distance of Constable's frame. At first glance, this painting, which shot to fame in 1824 at the Paris Salon exhibition, fits perfectly with the oft held stereo type described above, with rolling fields, meandering rivers, and oak trees standing proud below the soft billowy clouds made famous by Wordsworth.

But look again, and this image reflects a closer reality of what the contemporary countryside is actually about - namely a man made territory of crop rotation, hedgerows and agriculture amid industrial progress represented by the Mill and the idiosyncratic worker cottage with pitched roof and chimney stacks.

Switch now to Walthamstow Marshes in the Upper Lea Valley, and the view is remarkably reminiscent of Constable's back catalogue with all the constituent parts present; fields, rivers, mills, horses and lakes. However, what is evidently different between ‘The Haywain' and a view of the marshes present (apart from the obvious) is how the contemporary working landscape no longer offers distant unbroken views of the horizon. Instead, there is an omnipresence of utilities and infrastructure which stitch the corners of this country together. Over time an amazing yet peculiar range of juxtapositions have emerged; warehouse on canal on nature reserve, or school on culvert on refinery. In many ways, the geographic opportunities and obstacles along the edge of Walthamstow Marshes have created a space which is wondrous and expansive, yet concealed and inaccessible.

Once you pass from the city into the marsh, you are immediately struck by the network of transport infrastructure (including embankments, rail arches and bridges) which divides the park into pockets of land, with some areas remaining inaccessible and wild where elevated train routes collude with canals and rivers to hold the park in check. 

In that respect, we could see these pockets of the marsh as rock pools, each pool unique and supporting a range of individual activity from sports, farming and agriculture, leisure, walking and nature conservation. And extending the rock pool analogy further, the relationship of pool to pool is a finely balanced condition, the links and connections enabling movement between them, but never allowing a single pool across the site to form, preventing a singular quality.

The scholarship, thus, has been an investigation and reading of these qualities which make the marshes so special, a tuning of the senses, a ‘turning up of the volume'. This reading is manifest in a number of drawings and illustrations which seek to imbue a personal take on hidden opportunities, including a lido in the refinery on Coppermill Lane, a ride in a Gondola on a chocolate river, and the subtle simplicity of a weed breaking through a crack in the pavement.