Client: The Southbank Centre
Site: London, UK (2013)
Designer: Wayward
Consultants and Partners: Civic Engineers, Trees for Cities
The Queen’s Walk Windows Gardens were a micro-city of large-scale allotments created from reclaimed windows, spanning one of the busiest and most activated public spaces in the world. Visited by an estimated 8 million people, the design addressed the challenges of urban growing in highly-populated areas.
Large architectural structures, erected along 80m of the Thames riverfront, functioned as an engaging public landscape of open allotments during the day, transforming into illuminated sheds at night. The structures demonstrated urban growing at multiple scales – from the hundreds of window boxes, built and planted by local schools, to large-scale urban agricultural plots.
The allotments were watered using an innovative, sustainable treadle pump system, enabling volunteers to pump and filter water from the Thames at high-tide. As a legacy to the project, the allotments of the Queen’s Walk Window Gardens were dismantled and re-installed in local schools throughout London as part of a collaboration with Trees for Cities.