Tower Bridge Park -The Calm Amidst the Activity

The short and brief of it...

The site is located between Tower Bridge Road and Potters Fields; after years of indecisive plans the derelict land is soon to have a number of buildings erected on it overlooking the River Thames and the surrounding area.


The objective is to accommodate these buildings and to design a landscape that will ground and soften the new buildings into the surrounding park and civic setting.


The site will become a place for both the public and local residents to come and break away from their daily lives and to see the world from a slower pace. The site will have different linking pockets that offer choice depending on the mood of the user. There will be spaces for people to sit and contemplate, look over the cityscape as well as social pockets for people to interact with each other and their surroundings.


There will be a central area that brings the busy and exciting atmosphere of London into the site. This space will include permanent market 'stalls' that offer high quality and locally produced food for people in the area. This will entice people into the site and create a pleasant atmosphere; from here people can chose where they want to go to eat. The market area also works as a link through the site and into the surrounding areas whilst also providing healthy food and creating pecuniary benefits for both the vendors and the park.

Rotterdam - Arterial project

Different uses for the site, increased and improved transition points linking up the site with the context

The site has very linear routes and both the cycle and pedestrian routes are disjointed. They need pulling together to improve the access and feel and flow of the site

Reference back to Rotterdam's ports and their cargo

The evolution of Rotterdam's history and cargo industry, Two shipping containers one with statues of people surrounding the top edges, and one with one person on the top, inline with the Euromast, almost as though it is the crane operating tower. This represents how Rotterdam's ports went from supporting many people with jobs and how now only a few  are needed to rune the automated ports and cranes.

Reference to the new way of automated cargo. It stretches from the waterside across to the maastunnel with a container suspended above the road. This encourages people to look across the road and into the wider context

Looking into the history of Rotterdam in order to create a sclupture that tells a story about the place.
I'll be looking at both Claes Oldenburg and Antony Gormley sculptures for inspiration.

Gormley feels that the sculptures should be "an attempt to materialise the place" and "activate the skyline in order to encourage people to look around. In this process of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, one perhaps re-assess one's own position in the world and becomes aware of one's status of embedment".

Sculpture by Antony Gormley

I think that the sculpture should tell a subtle story of the past and be "a trace of a real event of a real body in time". The sculpture should grab peoples attention; make them look into and think about the wider context whilst still being something of a playfull nature - being at a large scale and brightly coloured, giving an almost fun and animated perspective on life similar to the feeling you get from looking at sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen.



Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen

Sketch model working out the relationship between the site and the context

Composition of containers with eachother... (if only they were full of jaffa cakes)

Views throughout the propsed site design