Shifting Ground
words by johanna gibbons
Foreword Whether being carried by the tide of events, or whether consciously causing a shift in gear, inevitably the practice has been in a process of change over the last 30 years. Our design unit has not altered in size, but we have instead expanded our horizons, deliberately placed our energies in community related activity in the public realm, sought to collaborate with those with whom we share a desire to understand the interconnected nature of our discipline, and to incrementally extend our field of influence. The studio continues to evolve. The complexities of landscape, its composition, process of evolution, historical perspective and social condition provides the critical underlying narratives from which to begin the design process. We are committed to the environment and inspired by the forces of nature, and the beauty of the planet. Through our profession we seek deliberate action in exploring ways in which diverse shifting communities can coexist as a more balanced part of the ecosystem.
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Shifting Ground
Publishing:
i Drift
Editor:
ii Shift
Design:
iii Process
Printing:
End notes
Paper:
by Johanna Gibbons
J & L Gibbons
page 03
Johanna Gibbons
page 05
Eve Izaak
page 09
Generation Press
Fine Paper References Biographies Contributors
Munken Lynx 120gsm Munken Lynx 150gsm Munken Lynx 240gsm Symbol Freelife Gloss 115gsm
page 013 – 019
Photography: Johanna Gibbons
Images courtesy of Crossrail and rspb: Unloading facility at Wallasea Island, p. 06 Bond Street platform tunnel, p. 07 Crossrail tunnel near Woolwich, p. xii Redshank, p. xii tbm breakthrough, Victoria Dock, p. xii
Studio:
19 Swan Yard, London n1 1sd See contributors on page 40.
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shifting ground
i Drift Middle English (in the sense 'mass of snow, leaves, etc.'): originally from Old Norse drift 'snowdrift, something driven'; in later use from Middle Dutch drift 'course, current'.
wonderful notion of ‘wandering continents’. Similar sediments, fossils, movements and intrusions on either side of the South Atlantic Ocean revealed a kind of physical migration of the earth’s surface of a magnitude hard to imagine(2). Continental drift was a step, albeit crucial, towards the even greater importance of the theory’s further development in the 1960s-1970s; that of ‘plate tectonics’, now accepted as scientific verity, and of considerable economic importance in the search for reserves of minerals, oil and gas. Geology, essentially the ‘open-air science’ of observation, underpins all consideration of the landscape, materials, dispositions, processes and history. Our place on this earth is but a moment in time. The geologist is the translator of critical evidence of the earth’s strata which contains imprints of animal life and vegetation, fossils for interpretation and understanding of our origins, identification of hidden resources and the natural structures below ground.
‘Continental drift’ is one of the most farreaching geological theories of all time. Proposed a century ago by the gastronomist, meteorologist and climatologist, Alfred Wegener, it describes how the pattern of landmass and oceans of the earth came to be; that 300 million years ago one earthly land mass began to drift apart(1). This ground breaking theory of drift, drawn from his pioneering and interdisciplinary approach to evidence gathering, began to explain why fossils of tropical ferns could be found in London and Paris, as well as evidence of glaciers that covered both Brazil and the Congo. It was revolutionary and controversial. Up until then, only the geometrical fit of landmasses, especially of South America and Africa had been recognised. The geological fit and the lateral drift of continents, combined with climate change and near identical sequences of geological history on ocean-separated continents, lead to the 03
Everlasting Pillow Slabs of rock: Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc, France
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poem by steven j. fowler
Everlasting pillow One enormous slab of rock that we might see as meat. Not only because our species likes to eat as a family, and use metaphors that leave behind their original meaning. But also because it’s comforting to imagine we can consume the earth. The rock splits, apes take cover
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Top: Upper Carboniferous, middle: Eocene, bottom: Lower Quarternary
Taken from third edition "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" published in 1922, Alfred Wegener. 04
shifting ground
ii Shift Old English sciftan 'arrange, divide, apportion', of Germanic origin; related to German schichten 'to layer, stratify'.
London seems to be the tunnelling capital. Millions of cubic meters of the ground are being shifted; moled out of the substrata of the city and translocated to make new landscape. London’s geology makes this possible, the ‘natural signature’ of the city that gives London its character, that inf luences the hydrology of the Thames Basin and the vegetation that the soils support. The landscape of the city is shifting constantly in a state of modification and like the natural landscape, is in a constant state of deposition or deformation. The quantum of change instigated by mankind continues to accelerate; from localised quarrying and iron ore extraction pockmarking the medieval landscape, to wholesale boring through the underlying strata of the city and with spoil - millions of tonnes of it - fashioning manmade landscapes elsewhere. But where? Where does three and a quarter
million tonnes of excavated soil from beneath London, from beneath its parks, listed buildings, streets, high-rise, and pre-existing below ground infrastructure end up? Crossrail Contract C807(3) sounds pretty innocuous. In fact, it defines the ground shifting and modelling of channels, creeks, lagoons, islands and breaches at Wallasea Island. This is London’s geology translocated, leaving behind eerily cavernous and monumental voids deep beneath the city. A process that has revealed millennia of human existence that few of us get to see. From the ingenious engineering endeavour of drill bits(4) the size of a house grinding through the substrata of the city to precision tolerances between pre-existing below ground infrastructure, monitoring and forensic interpretation of movement and damage assessment of buildings and assets over the alignment (5), to land sculpting, wetland creation, and the re05
Outfall Sewer and ‘solve’ the issues of the combined sewer capacity whereby intense storm events cause outflow and pollution of the Thames, including raw sewage discharge, contravening the European Water Directive(8). The jury’s out on whether tunnelling is the answer, displacing extraordinary volumes of ground, to lay a pipe, which in the not too distant future will inevitably in turn get full. Perhaps this is the opportunity for a sea change in attitude to the ‘natural capital’ of the city, and to mimic more effectively natural processes that are resilient and able to adapt to change. Instead of spending billions shifting ground(9), a catchment based approach to rainwater management is surely where the future lies, enhancing the permeability and absorbency of the city's landscape. Slowing the flow of rainwater runoff by providing greater hydraulic roughness - more trees, long grass, shrubs and reeds - from where it
homing of water voles, the project is vast(6). Any normal contract could not have justified the cost of shifting this quantity of soil by sea, involving ten linked operations of boring, loading, transporting by rail and barge, offloading and spreading to create the largest manmade wading bird reserve in Europe. The breaching works took place on the 11th July 2015 and formed three openings each 100m wide. Within a six-hour window of opportunity on an incoming tide using Dutch floating excavators, 8,500m3 of soil was excavated. Wallasea is an extraordinary idea for enhancing coastal f lood defence combined with habitat creation as part of the Wild Coast Project of Essex. At the same time the Thames Tideway Tunnel(7) project is in the making, which will sink shafts 70m below the Thames and tunnel a super sewer. This will run eastwest to connect with Bazelgette’s Northern 07
Building Damage Assessment Lazarus Dug Invar scale & prisms The Foreshore Thames foreshore finds Crossrail tunnel at Woolwich Earth at Wallasea Island Redshank tbm breakthrough at Victoria Dock
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DEBORAH LAZARUS SENIOR STRUCTURAL ENGINEER - BUILDING DAMAGE ASSESSMENT | C122 BORED TUNNELS 160316 From: Deborah Lazarus Sent: 06 March 2016 17:40 583 _ Shifting Ground _ 160124 For months, spoil from the bored tunnels below Central London could be seen coming off the conveyor belt at Royal Oak. It is an interesting journey – at any time it was possible to walk along a familiar street and see familiar buildings without being aware of the complex operation perhaps twenty-five metres below the pavement. During the tunnel boring operation a machine which might be described as rather closer to a production factory than a ‘simple’ boring machine was cutting its way through the London Clay and the material carved out was being sent back along the tunnel and deposited at the portal. Below much of London the geology is quite consistent and the impact of the tunnelling was limited; certainly at no time was there any physical manifestation of the tunnelling process and associated movements which would be discernible to a passer-by. Even standing at a location known to coincide with the machine’s position underground did not produce any sense of identification. However, movements do occur; while developments in tunnelling have produced reductions in the volume losses at the face of the tunnel, movements at the surface are not eliminated. Movements of the ground occur as the soil settles above the tunnel, and the buildings within the zone of influence of the works will also move to some extent. These can be predicted using accepted methodology and parameters and they can be measured using an array of instrumentation. Along the route of the tunnels
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the keen-eyed have been able to see studs set into the pavement to measure surface settlements, and a variety of instruments on building facades: small prisms, studs at the lower levels and ‘invar scales’ which appear to be short strips with bar codes on them. There have also been automated machines (‘total stations’) set at higher level and moving continuously very slowly to read the prism movements in three-dimensions. Hydraulic levelling cells have been installed in building basements around the station excavations to monitor building distortions to a high degree of accuracy. This has been of particular importance when carrying out compensation grouting as a means of mitigation of ground movements, in order to avoid over-compensating. The impacts of the movements on specific assets can also be predicted. For thousands of buildings, structures and utilities along the route of the tunnels there has been a very extensive exercise undertaken to understand the preconstruction condition, to specify any measures required to mitigate the possible impact of ground movements and to constantly review actual movements and damage. This has taken us from Brunel’s masterpiece at Paddington Station through Mayfair and under Soho Square, below barristers’ chambers in the Georgian buildings of Gray’s Inn and the 20C Barbican Estate and out to East London, including a spectacular new station at Canary Wharf.
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poem by steven j. fowler
Lazarus Dug To be even in standing at a location known to coincide does not produce any sense of identification. Spoil of the bored tunnel can be seen as royal oak. Daytrips outside of the city can be achieved at speed. Movements do occur, reductions in the volume, losses in the face of a tunnel. Biological and mock material. Food that wasn’t food one hundred years ago. Movements at the surface level maintain. Small prisms, studs at the lower level, balanced on invar scales. Levering cells used to supplement genetic code, to rebuild animals that have died. Building distortions that are rightly hidden. A city inverts as though an antique camera. Buildings grow down, tunnels are dug above. There’s less space, and more care. Less people and more earth.
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Left: Invar scale, right: Prisms
Instruments to measure movements of the ground above the tunnel. IX
words by neil davidson
The Foreshore Every day, twice a day, the River Thames has ebbed and flowed between the high and the low tidal marks. Where the Thames meets the city of London the dynamic relationship between shore and city has evolved symbiotically. As London grew, the physical extents of the shoreline expanded and contracted, at first with soft edges and then with monolithic constructions typified by Bazalgette’s Thames embankments; which reclaimed marshy land for the city and held back the river. This shifting city edge has led to a rich layering of the artefacts and of memories of a lost London preserved in the Thames mud. The anaerobic mud protects and holds the fragments of London life within the foreshore across a timeline that includes Roman, Tudor, Georgian, Elizabethan and the present day. The consolidation of these artefacts, was such, that during the 18th and 19th centuries it was possible eke out a meager living from the mud, as a Mudlark. Discoveries in the mud often tell a story of adjacent city land uses; clusters of metal files, nails and bolts on the beaches of Rotherhithe are a clue to the former shipbreaking works; or large buttons found on the shore in Limehouse are from a time when the fashionable young Dandies would frequent this part of London for the local hostelries or other venues of ill repute. For those who frequent the Thames foreshore today, a healthy respect for the power of the river remains the primary preoccupation. The flow of the river progressively scours the foreshore revealing the shifting ground twice daily. The tidal range can be upwards of seven metres at London Bridge and only at the lowest tides are areas of seldom accessible foreshore exposed for exploration. On these occasions a detailed understanding seasonal weather and the influences of the lunar calendar also become part of the mudlarking process. The mudlarks of today are required to observe a strict set of rules and restrictions set out by the Port of London Authority. Most of the foreshore, with some notable exceptions, can be examined using the ‘eyes only’ technique which requires a systematic visual review of the top layer of mud. Digging, scrapping and metal detecting all require permits and a proven record of submitting finds to the Museum of London Archaeological Liaison for cataloguing. Parts of the foreshore are offered greater protection where the rarity and potential value of the finds requires greater regulation. It is at two of these protected locations; the foreshore at the Tower of London and Greenwich Palace, that the biggest risk to the Thames foreshore is visibly apparent. Impacted layers of the river bed are being exposed faster than ever with newly exposed timber and masonry structures appearing, rotting or being undermined before they can be examined. This accelerated process of erosion has been observed since the 1990s rapidly exposing retrogressive layers of foreshore like the rings of growth on a tree. The shifting impact of erosion and the dynamic tidal regime on the foreshore requires ongoing monitoring and proactive responses to ensure this fragile archaeological resource is not washed away with the tide. X
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endeavour. From an understanding of the complexities of climate, geology, community, natural scene, landscape engineering, process and long-term design intent linked to land management and forestry practice, hs2 has the potential to encapsulate the interconnected nature and importance of time and territory (13). Nan Fairbrother’s seminal book ‘The Nature of Landscape Design’categorises landscape type: natural habitat in its pure form; landscape altered by man for his own use such as farmland; and landscape deliberately designed. Fairbrother writes: ‘Most areas in fact are a combination of all three types (of landscape) interacting to produce landscapes for the benefit of the human beings who live in them. In the past the third category - the consciously designed - has been unimportant in the general scene, and also of minor extent; but increasingly now this conscious concern is spreading to landscape in general, and it is our only hope for the future, that we should realise what we are doing to the whole of our surroundings and take deliberate action to make them pleasant to live in’ (14). hs2 is the largest infrastructure project ever delivered in Britain. The responsibility of imagining the future, balancing the inevitable transformation of economic geography with the nature of the landscape transformation, lies heavily on the shoulders of those appointed to provide ‘fresh thinking’ beyond output based, performance led procurement. A wholesale shift in mind-set could elevate the work from civil engineering to poetic scenography of unprecedented dimension and ecological potential. Not a paper abstraction, but a description of a visual landscape and ever changing ecological system for the long-term, within which a railway line is held.
lands to where it is collected or recycled, by planting woodland, de-compacting soils and disconnecting downpipes. Water quality and quality of life are intrinsically linked. The foreshore is evidence of effective integrated River Basin Management Planning – or not. The foreshore is in effect the outfall of all upstream policy. This dynamic tidal environment of ever shifting material through the heart of the capital not only reflects ‘each epoch of its existence’(10) but also its ecological health, as indicated by fish fry migration. If the dace(11) are evident, who knows, we may see sunbathers, not just mud larkers(12), back on what were known as the ‘Thames Bathing Beaches’ of the 1940s. High Speed 2 (hs2) will shift 128 million tonnes of ground with the potential for a spoil management strategy to alter, restore and transform a landscape. It could be procured as a new landscape where the process of construction is curated, choreographing ephemeral topographies as interim earthworks that create woodland habitat installations and educational labs for community benefit and training in soils, forestry and woodland management. Meanwhile landscapes should be worthwhile, in the sense that they create wider opportunity for land skills training hubs as much as engineering apprenticeships. Groundwork civil engineering cut and fill exercise can be just that, or elevated to an art. These are landscapes however ‘temporary’ that will be evident for years in the life of a child. The communities affected can envisage only the losses – the irreplaceable ancient woodland – rather than the gains. Innovative process and landscape management on an unprecedented scale could in fact shape the project. In short, a landscape vision that puts aside the timid and apologetic vocabulary of Environmental Statements, vetoes the terms ‘mitigation’ and ‘zone of influence’, and instead instigates a process of creative 08
shifting ground
iii Process Middle English: from Old French process, from Latin processes ‘progression, course’, from the verb procedere (see proceed). Current senses of the verb date from the late 19th century.
to withstand the London environment, durability created from the accumulation and transformation of shell banks, the remains of sea creatures of shallow seas. He notes that ‘life as a builder of organic sediments is a geological agent of first importance’. The landscape is a process where solids flow and the unit of time is counted in millions of years. The continual process of denudation and deposition is inevitable: ‘Throughout the ages the face of the earth has been changing its expression. At times its features have been flat and monotonous. At others, as today, they have been bold and vigorous. But what appears to be the continual conflict between the sun-bourn forces of the land destruction and the earth-bourn forces of land renewal neither has yet permanently gained master. In reality many of the processes are intimately geared together’(17).
‘End Matter’ is the narrative work of artist Katerina Palmer, set in the context of Portland Bill, Dorset, concerned with the displacement of stone and the nature of quarrying where ‘the past becomes the present, dislocated’ (15). The work articulates the coexistence of time (geological, historical and present day) and resonates with the community’s sense of destabilisation and loss, the ground literally being taken from beneath their feet. The opening illustration in ‘History of Architecture’ (16) is the east elevation of St Paul’s Cathedral built of stone drawn out of the ground at Portland Bill, transported by sea to London, to make monumental architecture we continue to appreciate 250 years on. Geologist Arthur Holmes also references St Paul’s in his discussion of understanding the importance of time. He notes that Wren was rightly confident in the limestone’s suitability 09
Geologist, Patrick Parker, with Finn Thomson, student sculptor at the rca, joined me in the Renaissance Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum one lunch in July to decipher the remarkable columns that make the architecture (18). The Brescia marble selected by architect Aston Webb (19) no doubt was intended to evoke a cultural connection with the Renaissance era through sourcing as the Italian craftsmen of the period. The ample supply of fine stone in Italy and the vari-coloured marbles of the Liguria and Piedmont regions are particularly striking, evocative inf luences (both geographically and geologically) that in the museum context would have been important to illustrate. Looking closely at the columns reveals evidence of metamorphism, in the geological sense of mineralogical changes caused by extreme heat and pressure and, after cooling, in repeated episodes of shattering of the metamorphosed limestone by renewed faulting and fracturing followed by re-cementation. The columns record a continuum of geological events, comprising repeated episodes of constructive changes from the limestone to a marble breccia; the transformation from the dull to the crystalline, patterned with dynamic events written into the columns, frozen moments in time, an abstract representation of energy engaged with form. The geological inf luence of the city is borne in its bricks and mortar as well as in its topography and hydrology. These metamorphosed formations of constructive transformation offer many analogies, not least the notion ‘revivification through the influx of new ideas’ (20). Iain Stewart notes that mankind’s anthropogenic influence on the earth is now so profound that we are now in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocenet (21). An era where geologist meets social scientist and the geosciences are not a side line but mainstream in defining sustainable
development. In effect the city is a landscape, of managed, dynamic formations more or less artificial, recycled, repurposed. Humans are becoming a recognisable geological force on the planet. ‘Material efficiency’ as a climate mitigation strategy is the focus of research of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This includes ‘whole systems’ thinking of energy, material and natural resource systems and the interactions between the energy, land, water, bulk and critical material systems, at different geographical scales. Traditional values are blurred and ambiguous, and in this zone innovation lies. Materials demand reduction and new ways of processing, using less or recycling ‘waste’ means an intriguing inversion of common perception is emerging (22). In terms of city landscape this means that the somewhat ragged pockets of ruderal vegetation, fragmented habitats, ‘brownfield’ substrates, and wild places of the city, can often present a richer and more diverse ecological interest than a rural landscape. Both brown and greenfield sites are increasingly subject to human activity that compounds soil compaction and fast flowing drainage. In fact, there are few truly natural landscapes entirely unmodified by man. As we seek to modify our habitat for beauty, meaning or purpose (or more likely a mix of all) it is the nature of inevitable intensification that must be better balanced with natural processes and cycles. Thus the landscape may not be what it seems. This year marks the 300th anniversary of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, father of the British landscape profession. Brown was renowned for his ‘progressive remodelling’ of estate landscapes imitating the forms of nature. He instructed and managed architecture, earth moving and hydraulic engineering on a radical scale all over the country, to realise his vision of arcadia that today most would take to be the natural form of the landscape.
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Dialogue Column Brecciation, Victoria & Albert Museum Articulating Movement The Alpine Orogeny Renaissance Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum
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w o r d s by pat r i c k pa r k e r
Dialogue Column A geological description
‘Brecciation’ is the geological process whereby an existing whole rock is crushed and fragmented to a varying degree by faulting and fracturing, followed by its restoration into a solid rock through natural cementation by mineralised, penetrating fluids. ‘Metamorphism’ is the geological process whereby any rock, whether sedimentary, igneous or pre-existing metamorphic, is altered by heat, pressure, or a combination of both, into a new rock comprising predominantly metamorphic minerals. This story is about the unexpectedly dynamic life-cycle of a column of rock that was once beset by extremes of heat and both vertical and horizontal extreme pressures, leading to metamorphism and successive brecciations, that has transformed what might otherwise have remained an unremarkable limestone into a spectacular, high contrast, world-class marble, probably originating from the Brescia region of Italy. The scene of the drama for this writer and geologist is a vertical column of marble, one of many in the Renaissance Gallery of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in London [see photos]. The rock-type is termed a Marble Breccia, of which this is a notable and worthy example that encompasses evidence of Nature’s absolute extremes of heat, pressure and time. This close-up look at the central portion of one column reveals the entire geological history of this rock, from its peaceful beginning on an ocean floor as a steady rain of microscopic particles of almost white calcium carbonate coming out of solution, interspersed from time to time with some dark coloured fine silt or mud, that became buried to kilometres deep over several millions of years. With this passage of the vastness of geological time and ever deepening burial in the Earth’s crust our once untroubled, accumulated rain of lime became compressed into solid rock, a bedded limestone. The inexorable process of change continued however, as it then entered an environment of unimaginable pressure and heat, that further converted, recrystallized - a geological process known as metamorphism - the limestone into marble. Later, after cooling, the by now brittle marble was subjected to pulses of extreme lateral force which repeatedly shattered the rock, giving rise to successive episodes of brecciation, recementation and thus reconstitution into solid rock. XIV
All the while that this limestone, now becoming a marble, was descending ever deeper into the depths of the Earth’s crust, the continent of Africa, or to be precise the tectonic plate(s) on which it rests, had been ever so slowly turning clockwise so as to exert inconceivable force upon what is now Western Europe. This produced the Alpine orogeny, the geological event that threw upwards the Alps as the crust of the Earth buckled. Lateral forces of compression folded and contorted the original bedded limestone, now metamorphosed into a marble. Evidence of this has been preserved in our column, to be described later. As the buckled crust rebounded isostatically from its enforced depth, the marble cooled and became brittle. The new lateral forces, which seem to have come in pulses, created widespread faulting and fracturing which broke up and shattered our marble into angular blocks and fragments ranging from around 40cm to less than fingernail dimensions. Channel ways opened up along the fractures, transporting cementing fluids which eventually re-solidified the whole, producing a solid rock once more, known as a breccia. Such a brecciation episode happened at least thrice. Within our marble column is a bluish-grey, angular leg-of-lamb shaped block. This particular block of marble has preserved its earlier geological history from a time before any brecciation had occurred: the syn-metamorphic, ptygmatic (plastic) folding of the original, pre-metamorphism limestone’s sedimentary layering or bedding, caught in time as it were at the end of the process of metamorphic conversion under extreme heat and pressure to become a once plastic, then folded, banded marble. The pattern of folding within this block resembles Sherlock Holmes’ oft-depicted pipe! This is a perfect example of residual premetamorphism “ghost” sedimentary bedding, or stratigraphy, of the original limestone, subjected to synmetamorphic, ptygmatic (plastic) folding during metamorphism. The conclusion of our rock’s history was its interaction with quarry men a mere century or so ago in an Italian marble quarry, where a portion of it became one of a series of sawn flattopped and bottomed, equally sized, perfectly circular, circumference-polished blocks to be transported to London and, preserving the same order of blocks as they were extracted, built up into one of several similar marble columns. Two colours of pre-brecciation marble coexist within the resultant breccia, a mid to dark bluish-grey and an orange-brown tinged white and pale grey. These two marbles were probably once different sedimentary horizons within the same original sequence of limestone beds, interspersed with an occasional much thinner, millimetric silty or muddy horizon, that were collectively metamorphosed during the Alpine orogeny. Each surviving large unfragmented piece of orange-brown tinged marble within the resultant overall marble breccia is itself an earlier breccia. However the cementation veining of this o-b-tinged brecciated marble’s second brecciation phase can be seen to cut across the large, leg-of-lamb-shaped block of blue-grey marble, which does not within itself feature an earlier brecciation phase. The third and last phase of brecciation shows 30-40cm broken, angular blocks to less than fingernail-sized fragments of both its marble components, each with differing colours and brecciation histories, the whole mixture re-cemented by a startlingly black, highly contrasting, natural cement, and becoming ultimately the solid rock that was quarried and worked by masons to produce the component blocks of this illustrious column of marble breccia, which has captured and vividly portrays a portion of Earth’s dynamic geological history. XV
Dialogue column: This close-up look at the central portion of one column reveals the entire geological history of this rock.
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FINN THOMSON ARTIST | ARTICULATING MOVEMENT From: Finn Thomson Sent: 28 June 2016 08:37 583 _ Articulating _ Movement.docx Natural systems are independent of any human involvement. However we do affect them. Drift, transport, shift, displace, dislocate, are words that articulate movement. The significance of articulating movement, the act of naming, is already a consequence of positioning ourselves in domination of these systems (or else they just are) – which means, we no longer see ourselves as natural, living in parallel to systems we aim to dictate. Material has no hierarchy – sediment is not frustrated it’s at the bottom. So what is the importance of discussing systems that do depend on us? Is everything in reference to human involvement? By mastering, can we make ourselves uninvolved again? From a progressive view of globalisation and shared values there has been an ideological shift back to a nationalist view - with people claiming ownership over land. Perhaps an understanding of ‘shifting ground’ will soften strong views of land as something you can possess. As John Donne says ‘No man is an island’.
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poem by steven j. fowler
The Alpine Orogeny Material has no hierarchy – sediment is not frustrated it’s at the bottom — Finn
Thomson
A mountain building event with a limited habitat cements intense genetic vegetation. The imprint of animal life and flora is fossils in print, and its consequence is the responsibility of imagining the future. This is the best one can hope for. Ringing alps with tape as though they were city squares. The hearts of geologists as purple lumps, but at least pumping, something arises to the surface. Rock, like folk, better to be seen and thought anatomical, than be absence, of material, rather than information. Madness without insomnia, thin without hunger. It’s all about knowing we will not become the bottom layer unless we’re careful, having long been evaporated before that day.
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Renaissance Gallery: Samson Slaying a Philistine by Giovanni Bologna
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poem by steven j. fowler
A poem in tribute to thirty years practise A daily theme to begin, to see and hear. To instruct through quiet engineering a similar space, a different sphere. Thirty years are conceded. The office as a bridge into deep intervals, wandering continents. The scene as translation of critical evidence, the landscape as a recovery site, the insurance against human wreckage. Thirty years of listening to the black box and rebuilding. The landed consciousness as an example that supports itself with recourse to teamwork and family that has been impending in our time, besides ourselves.
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End notes
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words by eve izaak
Fine Paper A description of our selected stock
Paper is an extraordinarily broad concept. The variations are limitless. All are unique and possess different properties that determine the final result of a piece of printed material, how it is perceived and the feeling it conveys. 110 kilometres north of Gothenburg on the front side of Sweden, lies Munkedals. An unassuming municipality that sits on the banks of the freshwater Örekil river and salty shores of Gullmarn fjord. The air is captivating and sharp, where land beyond the settlement consists of pine forests and scattered lakes, where herds of elk graze on lichen and birds of prey glide silently in flight. The site dates back to the thirteenth century where monks once fished for salmon and established timber mills. The enterprise today known as Arctic Paper Munkedals, was founded in 1871. The mill itself is composed as a conglomerate. Quaint Falßn red outhouses are over shadowed by facades of linear steel structures, pallid clouds of steam, and low hums of the 24-hour operating machinery that travel through the valley. Arctic Paper are proud leaders of Forest Stewardship Council (fsc tm) and Promoting Sustainable Forest Management (pefc) certified high-grade uncoated fine papers. The commitment to ensuring they retain the least possible impact on the environment is second to none. Water use is consciously monitored. Fresh water consumption goes back into the atmosphere as steam and any wastage is naturally filtered through a river of bio-organisms that feed on the cellulose fibres, before returning to the fjord. The 200-year-old 13,000 hectares of pine and birch trees that surround the mill are cultivated by themselves and carefully forested, to minimise nutrition leakage for the woodland wildlife. Shifting Ground is printed on a selection of three weights of Munken, with added tip-ins of Fedrigoni's Freelife Symbol Gloss – an environmentally-friendly and premium double-sided gloss stock, that is Elemental Chlorine Free (efc) and fsc certified. The bulk of the stock has a high content of selected recycled material. All elements of this publication are completely biodegradable and can be recycled.
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biographies
johanna gibbons fli is a Landscape Architect and founding member of J & L Gibbons established in 1986. Jo studied at Edinburgh College of Art. She is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute and serves on several advisory panels including Historic England, The Forestry Commission and hs2. Jo’s expertise concerns heritage, green infrastructure and urban regeneration and she leads on collaborative cross-disciplinary practice at a strategic and local level. She is particularly interested in the below ground, urban forestry and rainwater. Her award winning practice was a finalist in the prestigious Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize 2014 for co-authoring Making Space in Dalston. She is part of the winning team for the Museum of London, and is currently part of a collaborative pilot research project exploring urban environments and mental wellbeing. Jo recently exhibited as part of the ‘Urbanistas’ exhibition, celebrating innovative women in design. patrick parker – Manchester-born in 1942, but raised in or near Edinburgh from 1946 to 1966, when emigrated to Canada after graduation from Edinburgh University. Initially an ‘operating geologist’ in a base metals mine on the Quebec/Ontario border; in 1967 moved to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, for four years as a minerals exploration geologist and project manager throughout the western nwt. In 1974, after three years based in Toronto, joined Halliburton’s imco Services’ drilling muds division headquartered in Houston, Texas, exploring specifically for barite [aka barytes], a mineral vital in oil and gas exploration to avoid overpressure blow-outs. Lived in ne Brazil for two years developing small, high-grade barite deposits and assessing others throughout much of South America, also in Iran, Thailand, Kenya, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, and Greenland. My employment with imco Services concluded in a barite mine near Sligo, Irish Republic, after their principal competitor took them over circa 1982. Following six months in Costa Rica mapping a former gold mine, from 1984, by now an Edinburgh-based consultant, assignments included evaluating barite mines in Morocco and Kazakhstan and grade-testing ground barite shipments in Morocco and Norway. Concurrently an association began, 32 years to date, with uk-company ced Ltd, specializing in supplying natural stone for hard landscaping throughout the uk and Ireland. deborah lazarus is a structural engineer specialising in all aspects of existing structures. Her fields of interest and expertise include the maintenance and re-use of historic buildings and she has spoken at national and international conferences and had a number of papers published on this subject. She now works as a consultant at Arup having recently retired. Since 2009 Deborah has been involved in Crossrail, leading the building assessment team on the Central Bored Tunnels design contract, undertaking condition surveys, damage assessments and mitigation design arising from ground movements due to the tunnelling works. The assets include several hundred listed buildings along the alignment. Previously, on High Speed 1, Deborah provided technical advice on the relocation of a number of listed buildings, including a 16th-century part timber-framed house moved intact and a mid-15th-century four-bay Wealden hall house which was dismantled and re-erected. 0 15
biographies
Deborah is joint author of Retention of Masonry Facades: Best Practice Guidance which followed a research project carried out for ciria, and Maintaining Value, a further research project for Maintain our Heritage on systematic maintenance for historic buildings. She was also joint author of ‘St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London – a future for the past.’ finn thomson (1991) is a London based artist who studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2016). He wrote ‘is this the pace to be’ (2015) which focuses on place as the critical element of a practice, artwork seen almost as a by-product. Thomson's work looks at sculpture itself as documentation of an action. He works with specific contexts, histories and theories, as well as affecting social encounters. His curatorial projects include Floating Platform www.floatingplatform.com and the Gramounce supper club www.thegramounce.com. Thomson was awarded the Harlow Arts Trust Sculpture Town Award (2016-2017). www.finn-thomson.com steven j. fowler is a poet and artist. He has published multiple collections of poetry and been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, The British Council, Tate Britain and Wellcome Collection. He has been translated into 19 languages and performed at venues across the world, from Mexico City to Erbil, Beijing to Tbilisi. He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, Lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project. Since June 2014 he has been poet in residence at J & L Gibbons. www.stevenjfowler.com eve izaak is a London based visual communication designer. She studied at University of The Arts London - London College of Comminication (2013), and now works as a freelance and inhouse designer. She takes paticular interest in publiction design, typography and print. Clients include: Google, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Rapha Racing and Huck Magazine. www.eveizaak.com scrub hewitt is the fourth generation Managing Director of Generation Press who are one of only a few producing their print to the rigorous requirements and standards of the EcoManagement and Audit Scheme (emas). As such they are one of the leading environmental printers in Europe, based on the edge of the South Downs in the middle of a working farm. neil davidson ma (Hons) is a landscape architect and partner of J & L Gibbons. He trained at Edinburgh College of Art / University of Edinburgh. Neil draws inspiration from site specific conditions, historic associations and landscape processes to create innovative and contemporary designs solutions. His portfolio of projects include sub-regional strategic plans, public realm frameworks, Heritage Lottery Funded public park restorations and mixed use urban plans. Neil taught at the Architectural Association and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge, uel and Edinburgh College of Art. Neil is a Built Environment Expert for Design Council/cabe and member of the Lewisham Design Review Panel. 0 16
references
Alfred Wegener, The Origins of Continents and Oceans (3rd Edition, 1922) Alexander L. Du Toit, Our Wandering Continents; a Hypothesis of Continental Drifiting (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1937) (3) Crossrail Contract C807: C807 Marine Transportation: Joint Venture comprising bam Nuttall Ltd/Vam Oord Ltd (4) TBMs: Tunnel Boring Machines, first developed by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (5) Deborah Lazarus’ email (6) Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project: The rspb’s conservation project for Wallasea Island, now renamed Jubilee Marsh (7) Thames Tideway Tunnel, London: Scheduled for completion 2023 (8) European Parliament and Council, Water Framework Directive (Directive 2000/60/ec of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a Framework for the Community action in the field of water policy) (Official Journal, 327, December 2000) pp.1-73 (9) Thames Tideway, History (updated: 22.09.15) www.tideway.london/the-project/history (10) Mark Dion, Tate Thames Dig (1999) (11) Dace: A small freshwater fish related to the carp, typically living in running water (12) Neil Davidson’s mud larking essay (13) J & L Gibbons, Time and Territory, (J & L Gibbons archive, 2007) (14) Nan Fairbrother, The Nature of Landscape Design (London: Architectural Press, 1974) (15) Miranda Sawyer, Katrina Palmer: the artist who has mined a rich seam of nothingness (London: The Guardian, 26th April 2016) (16) Sir Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture (London: University of London Athlone Press, 18th Edition, 1975) (17) Arthur Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 18th Edition, 1975) (18) Patrick Parker, ‘Re: The Geological Dynamics of the Victoria & Albert Renaissance Gallery’ (email to Johanna Gibbons) (21.05.15, J & L Gibbons Archive, London) (19) John Physick, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The History of its Building (London and New York City: Phaidon Press, 1982) (20) David Wade, Li: Dynamic Form in Nature (Wales: Wooden Books, 2003) (21) Iain Stewart, Sustainable Earth Institute, Plymouth University: Letter: Natural Geoscience, (Volume 9, April 2016) (22) Professor Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment: www.uselessgroup.org (1)
(2)
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written by
Johanna Gibbons Landscape architect
with contributions from
Neil Davidson Landscape architect
Steven J. Fowler Poet
Eve Izaak Designer
Deborah Lazarus Structural engineer
Patrick Parker Geologist
Finn Thomson Artist
isbn: 978-0-9957808-0-4
We would like to thank Eve Izaak with whom the design of this publication has taken shape; our contributors Steven J. Fowler, Deborah Lazarus, Patrick Parker and Finn Thomson for their interest and enthusiasm; muf architecture/art for inviting us to collaborate at the v&a Museum; Camilla Beresford for v&a Museum research; ced Ltd, Arup, rspb and Crossrail for facilitating site visits. 0 19