Last year’s RIBA Gold Medallist, Yasmeen Lari, collaborated with 20 local young people to create a thatched pavilion that is inspired both by a 1953 flood in Barking and flood shelter work in Pakistan
Those passing by the distinctive concrete form of The House for Artists, the Apparata-designed development in Barking, may be curious to see it is now hosting a rather appealing thatched shelter in its courtyard. Made using reed and willow of the sort found locally at Barking Riverside, this incongruous structure makes a pleasingly tactile contrast with the hard, grey concrete of the housing.
So what’s it all about? The modest installation was made with 20 young local people for Create London’s Rising from the Water: Designing in a Climate Emergency project, an ambitious project led by design and research practice Material Cultures and RIBA Gold Medallist 2023 Yasmeen Lari. The project takes as its springboard the impact of the Great Flood of 1953 on the Barking community of Creekmouth in east London. It also looks to the flood shelter work of Lari in Pakistan for possible learnings on living with the risk of flood.
‘We’re trying to have a dialogue across two continents, and for Western perspectives to be challenged by an Eastern view,’ says Marie Bak Mortensen, director of Create London, referencing the concrete, modernist form of the nearby Barking Creek Barrier as a ‘very Western way’ of preventing flooding.
Create London brought together young people aged between 16 and 26 to take part in workshops with Material Cultures with Lari joining via video link. Material Cultures had the idea of working with natural materials such as reed and willow, and participants worked with basket weaver Mollie McMillen and master thatcher Mark Harrington to understand how to turn these into building components. In this way, participants learned new skills, an empowering approach that is a central part of the philosophy of Lari’s humanitarian projects along with the use of local materials.
In the second, seven-day workshop, the youngsters used these skills to build a gathering place clad in panels of bundled reeds. The timber structure is 12-sided, with one side left open as the entrance and two window-shaped holes cut through the bundles. A low plinth offers seating, supplemented with a higher bench seat. Mindful of the responsibilities of designing in a climate crisis, all components of the temporary structure are envisaged as reusable.
Bak Mortensen hopes the project will start the conversation towards ‘a way of thinking differently’, not only about materials but also about navigating alternative ways forward to living with flood risk.
‘Maybe we need to listen to different methods and technologies,’ she says.
The installation is part of the London Festival of Architecture. Protagonists in the project will take part in a celebration event on 22 June between 10.30am and 12.30pm.
After the success of its House for Artists, which won the RIBA’s Neave Brown Award for Housing 2023, Create London is now planning its next capital project, a circular economy retrofit of a Victorian industrial building in Newham, to create artists’ studios.