Through a collaborative design process, We Made That were commissioned to design distinctive entrances for the newly landscaped Greenway linear park in East London. Proposals for the Wick Lane and Canning Road entrances celebrate the history and municipal function of the Greenway as an important sewer route.
Continuing the strong narrative of reclaimed materials used by the Greenway’s landscape architects, the graphic patterns from textured manhole covers were ‘reclaimed’ and this local graphic history used on a series of steel vertical markers at each entrance.
The same reclaimed patterns have also been scaled up and set into the Greenway concrete to create playful and dynamic entrance mats that welcome visitors from the wider city into this secret horizontal landscape. The use of materials (recycled ceramic seeded concrete and cast steel) is appropriate to the history of the site – particularly the ironwork of Balzalgette’s nearby Abbey Mills Pumping Station – but also suitably robust for heavy use of the area during the London 2012 Games and beyond.
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