A13 Artscape

Trio Towers

The whole A13 Artscape scheme was to be held together by the installation of 3 towers, positioned equally across the borough.

The towers would pay homage to Brancussi's endless column and provide a vertical feature, complementing the horizontal nature of the scheme and highlighting the fall and rise of the road, bends and straights, through their linearity.

Unfortunately, due to a review of the capital programme, Arts Council of England was concerned that the budget for the towers was inadequate and did not approve their construction.

Trio concept|

A projected 5km long lay line is laid across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, to link these historic villages by their monuments-Barking Abbey and Fords Motor Works.

At arithmetically progressive interval a tower is sited, 30 metres above sea level at Barking Abbey Green, Y Joules (the historic junction of these town lands) and the Ford Motor Works.

Each tower is related in form as a hardwood timber and light cribbage construction -a 3m equilateral triangle in plan adjusted locally to the each site particularity-condition, function and history.

They operate as a troika of orientation points for both the pedestrian in the borough and the London commuter, their vertical alignments as counterpoint to the serpentine path of the A13 as it navigates the original edge of the Thames northern floodplain.

Towers drawing