3.012 Process

Stockpile Garden

Soil is the living basis for life on Earth. What if we treated it with care?

Stockpile Garden is a whole new breed of garden. A landscape laboratory located on one of the biggest construction sites in Europe. Combining emerging technologies in ecosystem recovery, landscape construction and environmental robotics to explore what our future cities could look like if construction turned to embrace ecology.

In summer 2023, Periscope, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture and the Department of Bio-Chemical Engineering are transforming a working construction site on the Thames Estuary:

Designed responsively to on-site processes and constructed from brownfield soil, Stockpile Garden explores local-sourced, low-cost, and low-maintenance ecological restoration.

As a living laboratory, the garden will test bioremediation techniques and monitor biodiversity improvements over the next five years, helping to fill current knowledge gaps in the ecological functioning of brownfield sites.

Ecology walks, dinners, clay reclamation, and robotic construction workshops invite the public, local communities, researchers, and construction professionals behind the hoarding to get up close and dirty with soil.

Once the site is due for development, the garden will continue its work elsewhere, and replenished soil will nourish future life.

Saturday 16 September : Emerge East Festival

3.011 Process
Fire and Earth

3.010 Process
Migrating Matter

3.009 Process
Form on form on form

3.008 Process
Imperial Measurements

3.007 Process
Mycelia Inter Alia

3.006 Process
Walls that let the wind blow through

3.005 Process
Sticks and Stones

3.001 Process
Concrete Aggregates

3.005 Process
Kinetic Sand

3.003 Process
Moving Rivers

3.002 Process
Jesmonite Casting