Georgia Green

The building functions as a Waste-to-Energy, & Combined Heat and Power Plant; a typology of waste management that contemporaneous governments seek to roll out, in place of landfills, as more evidence accumulates to indicate just how long poisonous chemicals remain in the soil and leachate (liquid formed within a landfill site).

Beddington, in South London has been of interest to me due to the close proximity of innovative architectural and infrastructural interventions to helping mediate the degradation of the environment.

Novel eco housing neighbourhood Bed-Zed, built in 2002, is neighbour to the rejuvenated landfill and EfW (Energy from Waste) plant. It would cancel out the health benefits of a carbon neutral development if noxious gases were released by “sustainable” technology, next to a very sustainable community.

BRIEF

The client and governing body, the Design and Industries Association, was a think tank of designers and industrialists that was founded in 1920 as a response to the German Werkbund exhibition. Inspired by the work of this organisation I envisage working in collaboration with Save our Southbank, and Coin Street Community who own the surrounding properties. The building will function by collecting their waste and providing these bodies with cheap energy. The building will be financed and maintained in a similar way to the Tate Gallery, which is a public institution, with its main sponsor as the Department for Digital Media Culture and Sport.

I propose an anaerobic digestion and combined heat and power plant, civic centre and artist residency complex to channel the movement of people through the public areas of the building and, at the same time, aim to allow the movement of waste through the building, where both their passages are articulated. This is reminiscent of the South Bank promenade, where people meander along the riverbank. Moreover, the Thames was London’s main sewer in the 1800s, and then the main industrial artery, and warehouses, factories and power stations took up prime riverside spots to benefit from the river. 

The architectural design aims to mediate a complex series of programmes. It looks to understand the formal language of a factory, and to ask whether, like a cultural factory, it can aim to invite and welcome, but also integrate moments of reflection, contemplation and gathering in order to give gravitas to the experience of witnessing ‘the exhibition’ of the anaerobic digester. 

Similar to the language of new Waste-to Energy facilities that occupy rejuvenated landfill terrain, the design is anonymous and tranquil, but with a consideration of the environmental comfort of the viewers. This includes designing for natural ventilation, and the retention of heat.

The architectural proposal in this project will be another riverside destination, and complete the run of Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and National Theatre which bring a wealth of vivacity to the riverfront. These are cultural destinations where the experience is intended to be a spectacle; interesting and pleasurable.

The immediate site and building are complex. The building, designed in the 1970s, was fortress-like; there were metal railings in front of the façade, and even the building was below the promenade ground plane as if behind a moat. 

CONCEPTUAL UNDERPINNINGS

I am inspired by the building's former use and infrastructure to ‘broadcast’ a message of environmental protection to the capital, through the ‘soft power’ of architectural experience. The intentions were to express the dramatically varied scales of the existing building’s organisation; small changing rooms, to gallery control rooms, to the expanse of the soundstages. 

The Embankment was built on a former marshland that over time has become built up and covered by concrete. This creates a harsh separation between the river, which has always inspired artists and musicians, and I believe it should remain primarily a public space, not a private opportunity.

POLITICAL UNDERPINNINGS

It was the 1951 Festival of Britain which brough publicly funded culture to the banks of the Thames, with new promenades and walkways. My project seeks to contradict the new development that will replace the ITV building designed by Make for Mitsubishi, which compliments  other recent developments such as Battersea Power Station, and Vauxhall apartments, which are a distillation of commercial and political attitudes that have added a dramatic increase in height and value in the profile of the Thames riverbank. 

Instead, the project builds upon the line of cultural hotbeds such as the Tate Modern, the Shakespeare’s Globe, London Eye, Coin Street community which were engendered by the Thames Advisory Group in the 1990s. 

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

I am taking the infrastructure of ‘waste’; society’s waste’, and bringing it directly into the public consciousness. How can a designer use an existing building’s framework to accommodate a process that is dirty and wants to remain hidden, but exploit architectural design to expose this process?

I am interested in harnessing the design language of the western bathroom, to express inherently human notions about privacy, cleaning rituals and qualities of purification.

To interrogate this conundrum, my design project is situated in a key cultural destination, in Central London, and the new adaptive reuse design is intended to be engaged with physically – in person – to re-awaken a consciousness about sustainability in those seeking pleasure and entertainment, alongside nature; the dynamic Thames river.

Therefore, my design includes a civic education hub, and sculpture garden using Coin Street Community’s ‘Riverside Grass’, and the concrete terraces at the front of the building.

In the centre, there is the “AD+CHP”, as I intend to ‘open up’ the black box of the soundstage, to have a porous space, using glass as cladding, joining with careful detailing, to the existing brick infill walls and concrete and steel frame. A sustainable urban drainage system runs in the basement to mediate urban surface runoff, and also to irrigate the “growing hubs” on the east and west flanks of the building, that are around the ‘power plant’. The interior of the power plant is sensitively designed, to mimic the calming and clean language of the porcelain furniture in a toilet or bathroom – a place of privacy and cleansing, intentionally, for women.

Lastly, the back-of-house also draws from outer London warehouses and is designed similar to the IKEA storage bays. Trucks will offload waste, occupying the majority of the former Scene Dock area, yet citizens, tourists, and those on ‘3rd’ dates, will be able to watch in the sealed (or tempered, through filters, grills, grates, windows and screens). This programme draws on the existing use, and overall function of the television studio, producing images to spark public imagination. Lastly, in the left over space, in the tower, half will be artists' residency with facilities for small studio cells on the mezzanine level of the loading bay area, and a flexible 2nd floor for exhibiting work. The other half of the tower contains a chimney flue and a winter garden, benefiting from MVHR technology, (a heat exchanger); consequently, using clean team to heat the room to accelerate plant growth.

The architectural proposal in this project will be another riverside destination, and complete the run of Royal Festival Hall, Hayward Gallery and National Theatre which bring a wealth of vivacity to the riverfront. These are cultural destinations where the experience is intended to be a spectacle; interesting and pleasurable.

The immediate site and building are complex. The building, designed in the 1970s, was fortress-like; there were metal railings in front of the façade, and even the building was below the promenade ground plane as if behind a moat. 

I am inspired by its former use and infrastructure to ‘broadcast’ a message of environmental protection to the capital, through the ‘soft power’ of architectural experience. The intentions were to express the dramatically varied scales of the existing building’s organisation; small changing rooms, to gallery control rooms, to the expanse of the soundstages. 

Furthermore, the multi-sensory experience is achieved through expressing the rich materiality of the existing building. The structural frame of the main studio block or plinth is in three parts. There is the riverside terrace, where the frame is made of Rolled Steel Joist beams and in situ cast concrete floors. The soundstage is a mixture of concrete and steel beams. Lastly, the backstage area of the building is a concrete frame, and wall partitions are timber stud walls. The tower, called Kent House, has a concrete core, and a structural frame in the facade.