Pages Walk Cobbles
LOCATION: Bermondsey, London, UK
YEAR: 2024
STATUS: Competition
Pages Walk Cobbles draws inspiration from the neolithic long barrows, where the collective burial was a link between the community and the land the ancestral dead occupied. The proposal envisions a sunken gathering space that connects neighbours and visitors with the unexploited plot and offers them opportunity to meet and discover the geology and archeology of the site.
Long barrows consist of an entrance corridor and burial chambers on both sides, with a mound covering the tomb, revealing only the entrance. Here this basic layout principle is implemented on the archeological evaluation trench by introducing two chambers, one for the entrance stair, and a pinched one made up by symmetrically curved wall. The landscape on the four quadrants outside the cutout is lifted on four points, framing the space and creating a gentle undulation above the ground.
The soil is held by stepping retaining walls made up by reclaimed cobbles. Split stone cobbles can be used for dry stone walls. Grit stone or sand stone cobbles of varied colours are organised in layers that form flowing bands, offering an abstraction of the site’s soil strata. On the ground, different colour gravels fill the bottom of the evaluation trench, tracing its outline together with the timber plank and the brick culvert.
Pages Walk Cobbles
LOCATION: Bermondsey, London, UK
YEAR: 2024
STATUS: Competition
Pages Walk Cobbles draws inspiration from the neolithic long barrows, where the collective burial was a link between the community and the land the ancestral dead occupied. The proposal envisions a sunken gathering space that connects neighbours and visitors with the unexploited plot and offers them opportunity to meet and discover the geology and archeology of the site.
Long barrows consist of an entrance corridor and burial chambers on both sides, with a mound covering the tomb, revealing only the entrance. Here this basic layout principle is implemented on the archeological evaluation trench by introducing two chambers, one for the entrance stair, and a pinched one made up by symmetrically curved wall. The landscape on the four quadrants outside the cutout is lifted on four points, framing the space and creating a gentle undulation above the ground.
The soil is held by stepping retaining walls made up by reclaimed cobbles. Split stone cobbles can be used for dry stone walls. Grit stone or sand stone cobbles of varied colours are organised in layers that form flowing bands, offering an abstraction of the site’s soil strata. On the ground, different colour gravels fill the bottom of the evaluation trench, tracing its outline together with the timber plank and the brick culvert.