LANDSCAPE PERFORMANCE LONDON
On the south bank of the Thames in central London, Nine Elms has a long history as a working class neighbourhood, with its river frontage dominated by industrial and commercial uses. With the introduction of three (or more) new embassies into the area, foreign investors are jumping at the opportunity to invest in the redevelopment of the riverfront as an exclusive and expensive enclave. My design team struggled with this dichotomy between past and future, and our design attempts to ground and connect the proposals for the new Nine Elms within the existing community fabric in a way that offers amenity value, access, ecological, and economic opportunity to long-time residents.
While the re-developers have allocated a 1.6 kilometer-long linear swath of land as "park," its planning is disjointed due to a large number of landowners, and a lack of clarity about maintenance and master planning responsibilities, The diagrams below re-imagine the park as a matrix of performative landscapes.