The British architect Peter Beard, with his practice Landroom, specialises in built work within sensitive landscape contexts. Since 2003 he has developed and implemented a series of projects around an area called Rainham Marshes on the Thames Estuary just east of London. The wetland site – a former military firing range – is a typical marginal landscape, or terrain vague. Abandoned and isolated, it had developed its own rich ecosystem with a wide variety of flora and fauna. In 2000 Rainham Marshes became a nature reserve and Beard and his team were tasked with introducing public access to the marshland and a new educational field centre there via a series of trails, bridges, pathways and cycle paths.
The job of reconnecting this post-military landscape to the local public transport and road network with minimum impact to the wildlife was a delicate one.
The nature of the terrain lent itself to a number of access routes in the form of raised thoroughfares connecting the village of Rainham to the Thames waterfront and keeping the feet of pedestrians firmly on the beaten path, away from the delicate soggy ground and its wildlife inhabitants. Landroom also developed a signage system, seating and installation elements as well as informal play areas en route.
One of the anomalies of nature reserves, particularly in regions of high population density, is that they often have to double as recreational and educational facilities for the very species they are not reserved for. In other words, the habitats once shared with humans, then ruined by humans, reclaimed by nature, now, in order to survive, need to be shared between nature and humans once again – a kind of rehabilitation through communication on both sides.
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