London Design Festival 2013

Inter Urban Studios organised a think tank for the local community in order to re-imagine Mare Street Triangle for the Pavilion East at the London Design Festival 2013. ‘The Moveable Feast’ Our own take on these three concepts is a portable pavilion made from stainless steel tubes. The concept is to create a structure that accommodates the full cycle of food production: rainwater collection, growth, harvest, digestion, and compost. This undulating structure is built off-site, can be transported by lorry to any location, and is completely self-sufficient. This ‘Moveable Feast’ will contain planted walls and roof, an area for sales of the harvest, an internal rainwater collection system, and a composting public toilet, thus completing the cycle and ensuring self-sufficiency. Each programmatic element of the pavilion is inventively created from the use of one building material, the stainless steel tube. The tube can be formed to accommodate planters, seating, and when welded together, form voids for rainwater collection, market stalls, and the composting WC. Perhaps most interestingly, as a portable food production centre it can be ‘deployed’ to an infinite number of locations providing numerous education and training facilities for local residents. We developed three concepts, the ‘String of Pearls’, Pop-Up Spaces, and ‘Serpentine East’, which were presented on the day of the exhibition. The various blog contributions were added and they were presented as alternative perspectives. On the day of the festival, the pavilion was transformed in to a Think Tank for the Mare St Triangle. The space invited people, either local or not, to get to know the idea so far, and add their comments, thoughts and alternatives. A consultation process took place for two hours, and the community had the chance to inform our idea with their experience of the space that is part of their everyday lives. They worked as urban designers and architects in this open call for ideas, where they would have the chance to sketch or design their own concepts, or comment on the existing ones. This is an open call for ideas and comments on how market stalls, pop-up spaces or Pavilions can create a vital public space. Blogposts or face to face comments are welcome in order to enhance the concept and seek council approval and funding.