Abbey Mills Pumping Station, London
Abbey Mills Pumping Station: Pentagram
Year
In fabrication
Client
fereday pollard for Tideway
Artist / designer
Marina Willer, Pentagram
Service
Commission Management
Location
Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Stratford, London, E15 2RW.
A permanent commission Abbey Mills Pumping Station
Marina Willer of design studio Pentagram has been commissioned by Tideway to create a bespoke bronze plaque for Abbey Mills Pumping Station. It forms part of her wider commission for the design of 12 floor-based bronze plaques at sites across the Thames Tideway Tunnel route to celebrate the transformational importance of the tunnel.
The permanent Tideway commissions respond to the site-specific narratives set out in the Tideway Heritage Interpretation Strategy (HIS). The cultural meander for the East section is – ‘The Shipping Parishes: Gateway to the World’. The site-specific narrative for Abbey Mills Pumping Station illustrates the importance of water resources to the wellbeing and sustenance of London’s populations. It also provides an historic perspective on the urban planning challenges required to meet the consequences of large scale environmental and climate change.
In response to the HIS, Marina Willer has developed a plaque for Abbey Mills Pumping Station, inspired by the elaborate Byzantine-style architecture of Joseph Bazalgette’s ‘cathedral of sewage’. Designed as a key element in London’s interceptor drainage system, the Abbey Mills Pumping Station complex was built between 1865 and 1868 to raise the sewage level of the Northern Outfall Sewer and protect London from flooding during storm and tidal surges. Viewed from the Greenway foot and cycle path, it remains a much admired masterpiece of Victorian design and engineering.
“The interruptions across its surface will be emphasised by changes in the levels of bronze relief, and are strongly evocative of the movement of water and the circular form of the tunnel itself.”
Like Willer’s design for the route-wide series of bronze plaques, this plaque features a moiré interference pattern – produced by overlaying similar but slightly offset patterns – that features a central disc as the primary element. Here, the pattern has been abstracted from architectural elements of the pumping station building.
Inscribed along the outer perimeter of the plaques, along with the site name, are the words ‘THAMES TIDEWAY TUNNEL CONSTRUCTED 2016–2024’ to mark the tunnel’s construction period and the triumphant statement ‘A HIDDEN FEAT OF ENGINEERING AND THE WORK OF 20,000’.
The plaque will be cast in bronze and measure 595 x 595 mm. It will be situated on the boundary of the site, at a point along the Greenway and above the Northern Outfall Sewer, where the pumping station is visible.
“Italian Gothic style. Greek Cross plan. Yellow brick with red and blue brick and stone dressings. Slate mansard roof. Round headed windows with polychrome decoration. Larger central window to upper storey divided by elaborate cast ironwork. Elaborate timber door with foliated ironwork. Central octagonal domed lantern with round arched gabled windows to each face, containing case iron tracery. Elaborate wrought iron cresting to dome. Flamboyant interior or enriched cast ironwork. Central octagonal lantern. Elaborate carving of stonework outside and inside.”
Marina Willer is a graphic designer and film-maker with an MA in Graphic Design from the Royal College of Art. Before joining Pentagram as a partner, she was head creative director for Wolff Olins in London. During the course of her career, Willer has led the design of major identities schemes for Amnesty International, Tate, Southbank Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Oxfam, Nesta, Second Home, Sam Labs, and the largest telecoms in Russia (Beeline) and Brazil (Oi), among many others. Willer’s first feature film, Red Trees, premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and was released worldwide by Netflix in 2018. Her films have been shown at Fondation Cartier in Paris, the ICA in London and prestigious film festivals worldwide.
During the course of her career Willer has been the recipient of a variety of industry honours and she is consistently recognised as a leading figure in UK design. Awards include best Brazilian short film at the São Paulo Film Festival, 2004, Best British Promotional Film at Promex 2000, Grand Prix for Oi at the 2002 Design Effectiveness Awards and Gold for Macmillan 2007. Her Serpentine Galleries identity was among the 2014 nominees for the Design Museum’s ‘Beazley Designs of the Year.
For more information see: www.pentagram.com/about/marina-willer
For more information see:
www.tideway.london