London’s Natural History

London’s Natural History
22–28 October 2017

Rowley Way, Neave Brown, 1972-78

London has never accepted master planning and does not accept concepts of any kind. It is disordered, mercantile, opportunistic, at times vulgar but always with an eye for a refined detail. Whether in architecture or in fashion or even in landscapes, unruliness is the natural setting for supremely elegant sequences grafted into the clumsy and the unkempt so easily that a natural order must be hiding in plain sight. London’s tolerance and accommodating character, just like its citizens, is bound together by a perpetual natural history; parks, gardens and river that weave throughout London’s natural history joining humans and architecture to trees, grasses, flowers, birds, insects, clay and gravel, the past to the present, growth to decay, the visible to the unseen.

Walking from the inland west to the maritime east, we shall go in search of London, which despite its best efforts to avoid the singular in favour of the plural, has one body and one heart that can be found in every brick and every blade of grass however carefully or careless arranged.

London, 22–28 October 2017
max. 750CHF min. 12; max 21 students

A fragment embedded in Alexander Pope’s Grotto, Twickenham, 1720-44
Crossing the Thames on the Twickenham Ferry
The Thames landscape seen from Richmond Hill
Visiting the Lisson Gallery, Lisson Grove. Tony Fretton, 1986–92
Juergen Teller’s studio, 6a architects
Fragment of a previous building in a courtyard garden at Juergen Teller’s studio
The earth-filled timber framework of a roof-top yurt at Peter Salter’s Walmer Yard
Visiting The Economist Building, St James’. Alison and Peter Smithson, 1962–4
The tower of Bankside, and the view to the City from the extension to Tate Modern, Herzog & de Meuron, 2016
Mudlarking on the north bank of the Thames
Spoils of mudlarking
Walkway of the Southmere Estate, Thamesmead, by the team of the Greater London Council (GLC) led by division architect Robert Rigg
Ruins of Lesnes Abbey, Abbey Wood, with the Southmere Estate beyond
Downriver Thames, the view towards the Barking Creek Barrier
Entrance to the Red House, Chelsea. Tony Fretton, 2001