Inhabiting Wetness

Joanna Lake, Diploma I, Royal College of Art, 2023

Tutors: Matthew Blunderfield & Andrea Zanderigo

Based on the site of the New Spitalfields Market, the proposal involves excavating the artificially-raised ground to reinstate this landscape as a floodplain of the River Lea. The existing market hall canopy is retained as a covered public landscape surrounding three storm water detention basins; a contained fragment of a much wider terrain which captures the shifting boundary between the city and the river. The project explores how pre-existing materials on the site can be cut, kept, or re-assembled to build comfortable spaces for affordable studios and public events around the perimeter of the hall; harvested reed from the reinstated wetland is woven as insulating walls suspended from the steel truss roof, while removed concrete slabs are placed within the excavated basins as platforms for human activity.