Urban grit: a design for the Greenwich Gateway Pavilions
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Version 0 of 1. Alys Fowler and I trained together at Kew: Alys was the youngest student and I was one of the oldest. She was carefree and adventurous; I had a mortgage and two young children. Alys had just returned from a tour of duty in the community gardens of Lower East Side, NY and I was moving up from rural Devon having been a head gardener. Presenting a mood board for a fictitious Thames project formed part of our year two design coursework, the tutors being: Brita von Schoenaich and Christopher Bradley-Hole. I dutifully glued swatches, materials, textures and patterns to A3 boards and presented them to stifled yawns of indifference. Whereas Alys marked the event by launching a thousand origami boats bearing messages of her design intentions to Greater London and had made a film for the tutors. Of course she had. Though poles apart, we became very good friends and often partnered for collaborative assignments throughout our three glorious Kew years. We took on the task of mapping indigenous Antirrhinum charidemi in the Capo de Gata national park, Spain and we agreed to survey the Duke’s Garden at Kew using a surveyor’s chain instead of modern methods. Since graduation Alys and I have worked together on a number of creative projects where opposite poles were needed. Despite our different outlooks, we work very well together, exploring routes that neither would travel solo. But what would happen if a third creative joined the party? The Gateway Pavilions is part of the evolution of the Greenwich Peninsula – designed by visionary architects Marks Barfield, with interiors by Tom Dixon. For the last year we have been working on this, our first foray into the world of commercial landscape architecture. Tom Dixon was asked to creatively direct a solution for the landscape and asked Alys to help; originally to provide edible urban garden expertise for a proposed restaurant as part of a larger project. The brief was then expanded to the whole three acre site and I was drafted in for support. We were into new territory as part of a three-way collaboration. This worried me, as I knew Tom’s work to be very different to the kind of thing we normally produce. As we walked through his design research studios for our first meeting, I could see all sorts of fascinating objects and materials being worked on. Tom explained his vision of wanting to acknowledge the history of the peninsula; its previous guises as a market garden and industrial site. As we talked, I relaxed. This was exactly how we’d been thinking. Without formal announcement, we each fell into roles: Alys worked on all things edible and urban, I focussed on the landscape design and Tom designed the landscape embellishments. Through Tom, we were introduced to a world of unexplored materials such as Shou Sugi Ban wood, hexagonal black concrete and beaten metals. His interpretation of the peninsula’s past was exciting; the historical production of coal tar inspired blackened wood, the nearby gasworks led to the use of industrial, yet beautiful ironwork. Alys and I ran with this: exploring the mudflats of the downstream Thames, tracking down plants that have colonised post-industrial areas of London and working out what fruit may have grown on the peninsula when it was once an orchard. With the common vision remaining fixed among all parties, it became a game of three-way landscaping ping pong. We leapt sideways into new territories that we wouldn’t previously have known or considered. There were moments of shared experience punctuated by flashes of left-fieldiness. With creative collaboration the hot new topic, it was interesting to find how it works in practice. Does creative alchemy risk slipping into creative compromise? Will three individuals’ views make for no one’s vision? In our case, the answer seemed to be no. Just keep the higher purpose in mind and demarcate your roles. Oh, and pray for a good client like ours. • Tom Hoblyn is a landscape and garden designer. This is the latest in a series of posts on the ups and downs of a life spent creating beautiful gardens. |