Silvertown:
Shifting Grounds and Constructed Landscapes
If we fly over England at night, where is the edge of the city? The nocturnal view reveals an almost even distribution of light which is unique, and in stark contrast to the new world landscapes or even much of Europe, where vast distances exist between identifiable centres. This observation is at odds with the preconception of the distinct definitions of city, suburb and countryside.
As a location for research, the Royal Victoria Docks at Silvertown provides the challenge of a landscape on a scale to rival the gardens of Versailles. Punctuated only by the iconic silhouettes of the Tate + Lyle Sugar Refinery, Thames Barrier, City Airport and the Millennium Mills, it is circumscribed by the sweeping movements of rail, road, river and air. Necessarily, the site is read on the scale of the surrounding suburban drifts and industrial tracts to counter the immensity of the residual bodies of water in the Docks. This scale and the proximity with(in) the city reveal its importance, and also hold its contradictions and dualities.
Diploma 3 has engaged in negotiating these observations to seek a common ground which can accommodate the conflicting tensions and desires revealed in everyday life, alongside the realities of redevelopment and urban transformation. In addressing the ‘brownfield’ sites in which the Government’s Urban Task Force seeks investment to rescue the city, can the residual be accommodated alongside the dynamic? What is the new landscape which can reach for an urbanity capable of spanning between the shopping mall and the baroque garden to accommodate the stretched city, a landscape that folds the ideal with the intimate?
From this position, we have questioned the appropriateness of the masterplan as a tool. In opposition to the subdivision of land aimed at single zoned uses within a carpetted whole, a ground is promoted which can be infiltrated by both new and existing actions. This shared territory blurs boundaries to encourage interaction between individual and institutional occupations.
Landscape and intimacy become integral components of an urbanism which does not simply label space as ‘public’, but genuinely seeks its occupations. Individual proposals have evolved and been overlaid and reworked to corrupt the completion of the ground plane into eight individual plates or drifts. These plates overlap so that as a group action a fractured whole is presented by the unit. Through its incompletion, each plate is adapted as a ground for building generated to introduce crossed programmes which become catalysts for the intensification of the site. This informality encourages both temporary and unlegitimised uses as the setting evolves and is reinvented over time.
Individual students' names link to descriptions of their projects
