Pup Architects collaborated as creative lead within a team led by CZWG to put forward a proposal for the Camden Highline. The brief was to turn an unused stretch of elevated railway track into a linear park, with consideration to “humans and nature: the creative tensions that exist between an urban environment and the natural world.”
From this starting point our proposal radically reimagined our place in the world and our view of development. By refuting cities as distinct from nature, but rather a part of it, we can imagine that cities are grand redistributions of materials and resources, like a garden, perennial & never finished, both organic and man-made and in flux.
Working with Rotor, the building reclamation specialists, we proposed to use a material palette of reused building materials and components to be sourced from within the borough. By redistributing and relayering them with natural planting and the existing fabric, we create a new aesthetic amalgamation of past and future, temporary and permanent, natural and man-made.
Client
Date
2020
Location
Camden, London
Camden Highline
DEFRA reports that in 2014 the UK generated 202.8 million tonnes of waste. Construction, demolition and excavation (CDE) was responsible for 59% of that number. Although much of this material is recovered, the vast majority is down-cycled rather than reused.
What if surplus and waste materials could be creatively deployed to build beautiful and inclusive new public spaces?
Could it also offer designers materials that would otherwise not be available?
Can reuse create continuity and meaning between existing neighbourhoods and new development?
Can reuse bring surprise and delight into our urban spaces?
Can reuse engage people in constructing the city?
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