Thursday 18 March 2010

Positive 9: Hackney to Greenwich



 
Bethnal Green Gasometers. London. March. 10.


It is time for us to strike out for the territory, and chart lines across the capital in a manner that might live up to the title of this blog. The first real Urban Adventure takes the form of a walk from Kingsland Road, Hackney, to Greenwich.

We chose this route for its scenery - the route we take uses both Regent's Canal (or partly doesn't as we shall see), and the Thames Path. It forges a pictaresque route through some of the most diverse (socialogically/geographically/architecturally) parts of London.



Regents Canal, near Victoria Park. London. March. 10.


Quickly, after mounting the canal just before it is crossed by the shining new Overground line, the route had to be rethought. Regent's Canal affords (at least in some parts, currently, although as the Islington to New North Road stretch testifies, it is quickly being capatilised upon) some of the most revealing backyard glimpses of both lives and neighbourhoods. It cuts through the terraces and light industry, allowing them to spill inward toward the canal: to embrace its open-ness. The stretch of the canal alongside Victoria Park is currently undergoing major work and this allows us to catch a glimpse of its reality, the shuttered concrete walls, sluggish silty bottom, and floating traffic cones that lie beneath the normally attractive surface.

This gruesome striptease is a wonderful spectacle, and one that has revealed further appreciation in us toward the canal.


Regents Canal, near Mile End park. London. March. 10.

The slopes falling toward the canal around Mile End Park are the results of some very obvious and intentiona regenereation. Although quite who for is unknown, perhaps the sectre of the Olympic Delivery authority looms low over this stretch and this could account for such "Dutch" spectacles as the above bridge.

Graduate Centre, by Surface Architects. London. March. 10.

This Surface designed building for Queen Mary's University has an interesting and complex formal relationship to the canal, and this goes some way to explaining its somewhat scale-less form. The most exciting part of its design is the opening next to the building, it opens the space  beyond to the canal, and the canal becomes less cut-like, less linear. This is the sort of urban move that could invigorate and invite the canal into the city.





Roundabout Sculpture, Canary Wharf. London. March. 10.

The canal leads into the Limehouse Basin, where we have to break from it, and attempt to join the Thames Path, which leads us across the Isle of Dogs. A highly disparate pedestrian experience, one that takes us from corporate urbanism to empty 90s residential blocks. The route breaks from the vast expanses of the Thames-side walk, to the tight and place-less spaces further into the interior of the Isle.

Millwall to Canary Wharf. London. March. 10.

The above photograph expresses to us the discontinuity of the Isle of Dogs, and its disparity between the semi-detached suburbs of Millwall to the high-rise of Canary Wharf. Whether or not this stretches to a more troubled London relationship with towers or not, or if it is a ore local situation is hard to say.

Greenwich Tunnel, looking South. London. March. 10.

The suburbs of Millwall give way to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, which on the weekend that the Thames Tunnel was open before it became a branch of the Overground, was an enticing prospect. The archaic lift, with its genial supervisor, leads you to this eery and antiquarian stretch of Victoriana. This bizarre place leads us up into the heartland of tourist Greenwich, an incongrous transition, but one soon left behind, striking out to the South and East.

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