Grain's Future [Isle of Grain, UK] by Brian

GRAIN’S FUTURE

SUMMER 2014

ISSUE #1

Table of Contents

Introduction

Exploring The Island Of Contrasts

Sustainable Grain?

#Floodplain

The Real Grain Spirit

Social Media Reactions

Airport Proposals

A380 Test Flight

Canterbury School Of Architecture

From The Editors

photo by Joe Best, MArch

Introduction Airports are playing an ever more important role in regional and local development. How can this Island of contrasts maintain its identity?

The Isle of Grain sits on the easternmost point of the Hoo Peninsula and is home to a unique blend of landscape, wildlife, industry and communities. Grain has recently received a lot of media attention due to a number of Estuary Airport proposals, which raise the question of Grainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future. How can this Island of contrasts maintain its identity?

This publication speculates on the future of the Isle of Grain, specifically regarding the current airport proposals and their socio-economic impact. The publication is edited by four Master of Architecture students from Canterbury School of Architecture, UCA and looks to take an objective view with contributions from both for and against campaigners for an Estuary Airport.

Airports are playing an ever more important role in regional and local development. Infrastructure at this vast scale benefits society as a whole, but the environmental effects are a particularly heavy burden on the communities directly involved.

The current publication includes contributions which aim to capture Grainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uniqueness and contrasts, alongside articles from locals and activists as well as featuring the current airport proposals from Foster and Partners and Gensler, an A380 test landing and a number of speculative projects.

Article Contributions

Exploring the Islan

Michael Dale introduces a remote commun

The single road to the Isle of Grain, takes you to the final end of the Hoo Peninsula. Its northern coast borders the River Thames, and its southern coast the Medway. Claimed to be one of the most remote settlements in the southern counties, it divides the two great rivers at their estuary to the North Sea. Grain is an island in effective terms, the last three miles of the Hoo Peninsula crossing saturated wetland marsh which has no other road or footpath connecting to the Peninsula. A place few visitors come to, or even know about. Yet, in contrast to its remoteness, it has two stories to tell.

The industrial heights of Grain The first sight at Grain Bridge that attracts the visitor’s eye is the collection of eight giant quay cranes of Thamesport, a harbour with deep water jetties for some of the giant container ships that travel the world. The road then continues on,

through a spread of shining modern engineering structures, at the importation terminal for liquefied natural gas. The gas is offloaded here, having been shipped in from afar. You will see some of the biggest storage tanks in the world, each large enough to enclose the Royal Albert Hall or St Paul’s Cathedral, and they contain one fifth of the entire country’s gas supply. This industry is accompanied by another importation terminal, for aviation fuels, to be stored in tanks and then pumped, mainly by pipeline, to the major airports in the southern half of the Country. Next is another terminal, for granite, shipped here from Scotland, and where, 20-plus years ago, the concrete segments were cast to assemble the walls of the Channel Tunnel. There are also two sub-sea electricity cables, coming up from under the foreshore, to connect the British network, one with France, and the other with the Netherlands, to an interconnector station which converts the supply current to be suitable for our National Grid. Finally, there are two Power Stations and a peak load generator station. There is no doubt that all of this, within

a two-mile radius, means the island hosts one of the largest and most nationally important combinations of thriving global energy suppliers and international trade in the southern half of the country: a major intersection of gas, electricity, fuel and trading movements for onward dispatch, worldwide and countrywide. It is all here.

The expansive marshes of Grain Be that as it may, a contrasting story starts here. Most people who visit the island will see the industry first, turn away, and go back along the lonely road across the marsh. But we say, “Please drive on. For here, you will see another side, to reveal the true wonders of the Isle of Grain.” Drive through this eerie mix of industries, and out the other side, and the road settles into a quiet avenue, through fields of rapeseed or corn, to the small parish of St James, a little retreat on higher ground. You will have found us; a small

Article Contributions

photo by Matthew J. Reynolds, MArch

and of Contrasts

nity at the very edge of the Thames Estuary compact little community, with a church, a pub and several busy little shops, where the journey starts down onto the marsh. When it is high tide, I could take you on a walk on the Isle of Grain, where in twenty minutes you would find yourself in the heart of the marsh, and where you will find a place you could not believe exists. Just 30 miles from the centre of London, watch as the full tide washes in at speed, carving steep banks of white cockleshells at the entrance to the Yantlet channel. It is here, the Island reveals its true self. The village borders Lees Marshes, the North Level (marsh), and where the Yantlet divides the Island from the Peninsula. The mudflats here are a favourite resting place for seals. There is a solitary monument, ‘The London Stone’, at the entrance to the Yantlet. Cast an imaginary line across the Thames, from the London Stone to the Essex beach at Chalkwell, where the ‘Crow tone’ can be found and this line demarks the historic end of the Port of London’s jurisdiction, and with it, the end of the River Thames. When standing on the marsh at Yantlet, you’ll be forgiven for thinking how open and desolate it

appears. But this is where its real and natural beauty is revealed. Now, as you stand removed from the clanging and bustle of the industry in the far distance, you feel an almost shouting silence. A rare but natural silence is only disturbed by the occasional whisper or grunt of a contented cow, or the sudden startling shriek of a wading bird. Out in the Thames, you might hear a passing ship, with the steady thump-thump of its engines, as it makes it way onwards to the Nore Light and to distant shores.

Visitors arrive in Grain Some people have discovered us, and travel miles to spend time here at our new Coastal Park, with its two mile foreshore walk, just past the church. From the shores of the Island, there is a view for miles, out across the Estuary, to the Isle of Sheppey and the town of Sheerness, at the Medway entrance. Look the other way towards the distant town of Southend. The island’s shore is where Turner stood when he sketched the scene of The Fighting Temeraire as

it was towed by paddle tug from Queenborough to Rotherhithe, and its final berth. Watch the ships arrive from deep sea and guess which river they will turn into: the Thames or the Medway? Wander through the woodland paths amongst the ancient remains of old forts and concrete mats for the guns of war. See how they contrast with the clearings of open mown grassland meadows. If the tide is low, explore the shoreline rocks, or search for marsh samphire to cook at home. And if you can, come to Grain in the darkness of New Years Eve. Stand still at our water’s edge, and listen. When Big Ben strikes midnight, you will hear the chorus of horns from the ships at rest on their moorings in the Estuary. Their crews salute each other to celebrate the dawn of the New Year. All of this out of sight at the start of the Thames, the lifeline that leads to London. Written by Michael Dale, Councillor to the Isle of Grain St James Parish Council. Article originally published by Thames Estuary Partnership

Article Contributions

Sustainable grain? Paul Outhwaite, RSPB South East England

photo by Rolf Williams, RSPB

here is something magical about standing, looking out onto a grey, turbulent sea and hearing nothing but the sound of the wind, the water and the birds. It is somehow even more magical when you can experience this in the heart of the Thames Estuary, which has been a main artery for the country’s economy for centuries and is still a major centre for commercial shipping, agriculture, heavy industry and power generation. That almost romantic sense of wilderness, of connection to nature is exactly what you can feel when standing on the eastern end of the Isle of Grain looking down the Estuary – and this is the place that has been identified as a possible location to build the largest airport the country has ever seen. A unique experience would be lost forever. Perhaps worse than that, the construction of an airport on the Isle of Grain would see the UK’s largest ever deliberate destruction of internationally protected wildlife habitat – and despite what advocates of the airport claim, none of them have been able to demonstrate how they would compensate for

such catastrophic losses, which is something that the law protecting the sites requires. That’s not to say the Isle of Grain is a rural idyll. There is industry there already – including one of the most important gas terminals in the UK, and make no mistake this industry would have to go too if the airport were ever built. The Government, not to mention internationally renowned architect Sir Terry Farrell, has recognised that the Thames Estuary is so much more than just an industrial development area. The Government made the estuary one of only twelve Nature Improvement Areas. Sir Terry has long been an advocate of the Parklands concept for the area. Both options make the most of the natural environment and see that integrated into the wider fabric of the estuary. The RSPB too has a landscape scale vision for the estuary – and the Isle of Grain is, if nothing else, geographically right in the middle of that vision. Development, industry and people are integral to that vision. Major plans like the

London Gateway port and the proposed garden city at Ebbsfleet fit into that vision along with our nature reserves and the huge areas of protected habitat and the hundreds of thousands of birds that make the Thames Estuary so special. As the largest green space manager in the area, the RSPB believes it has an important role to play in delivering that vision but we cannot, and would not want to play that role in isolation. The RSPB will be looking to work actively in partnership with local communities, businesses, land managers and decision makers to deliver innovative projects which support and secure nature as an essential component of the wider landscape. The Isle of Grain is, in a sense, the estuary in microcosm. There is amazing wildlife; there is important industry; there are unique communities. All of these elements are crucial to the successful delivery of a sustainable vision for the Thames Estuary – and the Isle of Grain – and unless we find a way to deliver them all, we will all be the poorer.

Article Contributions

#floodplain Catherine du Toit for #floodplain

he scale of the Isle of Grain Hub, compared to Manhattan or Hong Kong Airport brings to mind George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, set as it is in Airforce One, formerly known as Great Britain . . . If the scale is hard to comprehend, and some recent studies suggest that the real growth is in short haul, the Chinese whispers are that the impressive infrastructure that the Isle of Grain Hub promises, which include energy generation and flood defences, can’t be funded by the taxpayer. The Thames Estuary and Marshes are a Special Protection Area (Birds Directive) and the 5th most populous waterbird site in the UK.

More than 170,000 birds migrate, overwinter and breed here. Civil Aviation Authority guidelines on Large Flocking Birds involve measures to actively “reduce bird populations in the vicinity of airports.” The prime objective is to “maintain a bird free airfield”. The 13km diameter bird exclusion zone the Hub would demand is roughly the size of the area inside London’s North and South circular motorways.

It is chilling to imagine exactly how this exclusion zone might be enforced. The CAA continue: “Habitat management is necessary to provide an airfield environment that discourages all birds. One aspect involves netting ponds and lakes”. Harder to do that in the tidal Thames’ floodplain but does the brave new vision for Grain and the prosperity it promises to bring outweigh these concerns? Vote now on #floodplain ! www.floodplainlondon.org

Article Contributions

The real Grain Spirit Clive Lawrence, journalist and DRINK member says

Of course, Death and Taxes aren’t the only universal certainties; ‘Everything Changes’ is another. The trick is to make sure, as far as we can, that we manage things to get the maximum benefit for us and the things we cherish. So it is with north Kent which has been described as the ‘Garden of England’s compost heap.’ Unkind, but they had a point. It needs a lot of TLC as the area has the worst primary schools in the whole country, more high street loan shops than anywhere else for its size, a hospital authority in the bottom 10 of the nation and pockets of severe poverty. Cash, lots of cash will be needed to start to put things right. Sadly, there’s none around, so we need a decent sized and appropriate infrastructure project to generate taxes and jobs for local people. Like a hub airport. But wait. We also need to ask: what would be the cost to local people in terms of a poor environment, overcrowding, high prices and so

on, not forgetting wildlife? Naturally, we always must weigh up the positives and negatives but we do this while realising that there is a solution to every problem.

central London and on a par with Helsinki and Stockholm.

Every single time.

Well, look back at every single infrastructure project there’s ever been. Anywhere. The opposition is always the same: “It’s too expensive, we don’t need it, it’ll damage the environment.” Then, once things are up and running, what happens to those voices? They’re silent.

We Brits are good at that even if we’re less good at making up our minds quickly. In the case of Grain, we see that there’s space for a properly designed airport to operate 24/7 over many decades with plenty of spare capacity, that there are relatively few people to be handsomely compensated, minimal wildlife affected and great prospects for jobs and loads of cash to invest in better public services. One expert says this area could have the highest standard of living in the country outside

Wow! Er … so where’s the problem?

DRINK says: Look hard for the best solutions, put them in practice and make sure that the plans are refined to suit local people first - after all, they’re the ones who will have to life with the project. But in the end,

Build it. Soon. Clive Lawrence, Demand Regeneration In North Kent (DRINK) estuaryairport@gmail.com

Social Media Reactions

Artwork submitted to the Thames Estuary group as reactions against an estuary airport. More artwork can be found at twitter.com/EstuaryAirport

Airport Proposals

London Britannia airport by Gensler & Testrad

ondon Britannia Airport is a proposed new world hub airport situated in the Thames Estuary; the proposal is the result of the research carried out by the TESTRAD consortium and its partners. Positioned in the Thames Estuary itself, the scheme avoids all the problems of the other land based schemes. For instance the demolition of houses, the removal of green field sites, the avoidance of bird strikes, the acquisition of private land, the demolition of strategic industrial infrastructure to name but a few. Most importantly it avoids flying over densely populated areas of London and the South East, removing completely the noise contours and impact which currently affect millions of people throughout and around London.

This scheme enables London to provide the most efficient and environmentally beneficial airport in the world and will safeguard the UK’s position as a global destination for business, commerce and tourism. The proposals directly address long term planning issues of London, including the provision of the key surface access links.

London Britannia Airport Precis:

The plans would mean the closure of Heathrow, but this would present numerous opportunities for providing vital new housing, employment and economic regeneration.

•

• • • •

•

Unencumbered “blue-greenfield” site Deliver in the shortest period of time at £47bn cost: no land assembly & planning delay The seed for significant consequent development of the Thames Gateway Area:Direct and indirect new employment, service and engineering industry spin-offs Consolidation and revitalisation of historic Thames Gateway communities Developed connective public transportation networks, homes, schools, university & technical colleges, R+D centres, hospitals, cultural facilities and parks Exemplar world hub airport; operationally uniquely efficient, streamlined experience

Airport Proposals

Thames hub proposal by Foster & Partners

he Thames Hub vision is a bold new approach to future infrastructure development in Britain. It brings together rail, freight logistics, aviation, energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development. It is unique for its scale and strategic cross-sector thinking. Recognising the synergies between these different strands, it reaps the benefits of their integration. It is an opportunity to reassert Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role as an international gateway for people, freight and communications.

and put Britain at the centre of manufacturing distribution, as well as releasing pressure from roads and commuter services.

The vision includes a new orbital rail link around London, which would connect with a future high-speed rail line from London to the cities of the Midlands and the North, opening up a direct connection to continental Europe. This would create an unrivalled freight distribution network

Major new distribution networks for power, utilities and data are needed across the UK, without adding visual clutter to the rural landscape. This is where integration delivers environmental as well as economic benefits. The Spine offers a pioneering new solution, drawing

A new international airport located in the Thames Estuary on the Isle of Grain would benefit from these new linkages. Establishing the proposed aviation hub in the South East would satisfy the capacity needed today and allow for future expansion, while reducing the environmental and security problems of aircraft over-flying London.

on landscape traditions. It will incorporate data cabling, water and energy distribution routes, integrated with the rail and road network in conduits in the ground, invisible in the landscape, simple to maintain and easy to secure. A new flood barrier in the Thames Estuary is also a necessity, but has the potential to deliver other comprehensive improvements, while securing Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future flood protection: it can alleviate housing shortages by creating new flood protected land for residential development; it can provide a platform for an integrated rail and road crossing to open up new trade routes between the UK and Europe; it can generate renewable energy from tidal flows; and it can bridge the Estuary to create a vital new corridor for utilities, communications and data.

A380 Test Flight

The first A380 lands on the Isle of Grain The plans for the world’s largest airport on the Isle of Grain have made much of the strategic advantages of the location. We wondered what we could do to get a sense of the embodied presence of such overwhelming infrastructure in a way which was more immediate than the sanitized CGI pictures we see in the media. So we decided to make an Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane currently in use. This aircraft and others of similar size will be the major users of the airport, should it be approved.

In order to construct the plane in the short time we had available, we decided to eliminate anything tricky or expensive... which left us with the navigation lights. The use of lights in a marshland location connects the piece to the will-o’-the-wisp or ignis fatuus ‘foolish fire’: atmospheric ghost lights seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. The phenomena resemble flickering lamps and are said to recede if approached, drawing travellers away from safe paths... John Bell, Course Leader MArch CSA

Air_Scape Ecologies By their nature, use, form and size, airports are often considered as spaces extraneous to the landscape and difficult to integrate into the local context. They have a strong impact on the local area, modifying not just its morphology, but also its social structure, economy and environmental quality. Air_Scape Ecologies speculates over the next 15-20 years on how the Thames Hub airport proposal if adopted could bleed and merge with its context on the Isle of Grain. This is achieved through the creation of a phased 9km2 deindustrialized landscape south of the proposed airport site for the realignment of wetlands, habitat creation and recreation use. With an adaptive rebirth of the gas storage tanks into a cultural hub and the grain power chimney into an observation tower, traces of the sites industrial past remain as way finding points within the landscape. Brian Owens-Murphy, MArch

Dynamic Landscape â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;discard the notion of vertical enclosure, whose walls are made inaccessible by gravity, and to define habitable space by means of wholly accessible inclined planes, thereby increasing the usable surface areas. This was, in essence, the principle of HABITABLE CIRCULATIONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Paul Virilio, The function of the oblique. Discarding the airport construction principle of a large shed, an outer shell filled with a number of items and replacing it with that of habitable circulation creates a Dynamic Landscape. No longer is there a separation between the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the roof but a continuation and accessibility between them all. With a demographic and programmatic base line allows for passengers to do more than flock to the waiting gates but associate their holiday time with the airport rather than it starting once your exiting the plane. Joe Best, MArch

Canterbury School of Architecture

Distributed terminal The modern airport is a shed. Everything one needs in order to fly is under one, big, and sometimes beautiful, roof. What started out as a convenient way to fly is now a convoluted & slow process, akin to a maze. What if the airport and its infrastructure were dis-assembled and then scattered along a robust transportation framework? Such an airport would re-focus on minimising passenger travel time and maximising efficiency at every stage of the journey. This paradigm shift makes it possible for the entire system to adopt a justin-time strategy, where passenger movements and operations are coordinated and choreographed. The distributed terminal is more akin to a factory assembly line, with the passengers at the heart of it all. Imagine dropping off your luggage at Waterloo, going through security whilst on the train and boarding the plane the minute you arrive at the gate : no dwell time in-between and no queues.

Home

Check-in + baggage drop

Rail

Security check

Rail

Immigration control

Underground transfer

Departure gates

Departure lounge

Distributed The terminal building

Radu Gidei, MArch

Masques The airport embodies the ultimate non-place of supermodernity; it is a place to be passed through, measured in units of time and without a real identity. The Masques stand as a critique of the airport. They are a series of allegorical objects which identify and amplify the quintessential human moments in the indefinite space of the airport. The 3 Masques dissect the following moments: goodbye, waiting and hello. ‘Goodbye’ is a gradual separation, thus developing this Masque into a roller coaster navigated by an elevator to steer the users through the emotional journey of goodbye. The ‘waiting’ Masque scrutinises the actual activity of waiting and has developed into a trance-inducing chamber. ‘Hello’ is an anticipated encounter associated with delight and surprise, therefore the masque emphasises the banal by offering the passenger a flamboyant entrance through an unscripted labyrinth of organ pipes. Anamaria Voda, MArch

Goodbye

Waiting

Hello

Editorial team Joe Best Radu Gidei Brian Owens-Murphy Anamaria Voda

grainsfuture.tumblr.com grainsfuture@gmail.com @Grains_Future

Contributors Michael Dale Councillor to the Isle of Grain St James Parish Council Paul Outhwaite RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) Clive Lawrence DRINK (Demand Regeneration In North Kent) Catherine du Toit #Floodplain Foster & Partners Gensler & Testrad Thames Estuary Joe Best Radu Gidei Brian Owens-Murphy Anamaria Voda

Printer Newspaper Club (London)

Paper : 52gsm

No part of the publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in whole or part without written permission fron the Grains Future team. All artwork courtesy of the artists.