A series of disused railway arches in London have become surprisingly cozy interior spaces with the addition of modular wooden systems that fit together like puzzles. Architecture firm Boano Prišmontas has developed a kit of parts that can be quickly and easily deployed in a variety of similar spaces, working with developers and local governments to make those spaces valuable to the community once more.

“The Arches Project” uses dry-joint techniques to infill abandoned “pocket spaces” around the UK, including undercrofts and multi-story car parks as well as the arches beneath railroad lines. The firm says its value lies in its “nomadic, temporary and sustainable approach.” The company that owns the railroad already rents out these spaces to pop-up shops and other businesses, but provides nothing but some neon lights and corrugated plastic lining, which doesn’t improve the thermal quality of the space, and only allows certified installers to fix the lining onto the listed brick vaults.

“Boano Prišmontas worked around this constraint to design a freestanding self-buildable plug-in space, a room-within-a-room that is built by expanding its shape as much as possible to infill the vault of an arch.

The digitally fabricated structural system is comprised of two elements:

1. The boxes. Modular CNC-cut plywood units that are repeated to infill the space as much as possible and stacked on walls to support the beams as well as the external polycarbonate cladding.

2. The beams. Modular CNC-cut plywood pieces joined together to cover a maximum span of 7.2m. They are the support onto which the insulation sheet is clipped on.

The boxes are sized to host the polycarbonate facade, which allows to fill the internal space with natural light. The polycarbonate panels also spill light on the street showing a glimpse of the activity taking place inside the space.”

Made entirely of certified birch plywood sheets, the puzzle pieces are CNC cut to minimize material wastage and ensure a perfect fit. Every component, including the facade cladding and insulation sheet, is made to be re-deployed when dismantled (a basic tenet of the Designed for Disassembly movement.)

“The railway arches are a unique urban asset as they host all sorts of retail activities and productive spaces such as studios, laboratories, workshops, mechanics, shops, micro breweries, and coworking spaces to name just a few. Railway arches are the backbone of the ‘productive London’. The Arches Project aims to preserve and promote the diversity of uses by quickly creating a spacious, warm and dry space that delivers affordable workspace for local businesses.”

Overall, this is a pretty cool example of making better use of available urban space in a way that produces very little waste. Ideally, there would also be some serious consideration given to how the project impacts its surrounding community, including whether poor and unhoused people are able to take part in it and whether the installations promote gentrification, potentially having a negative future impact on affordability in the area. Projects that don’t consider social impacts simply aren’t sustainable.

Beneath the streets of London, a whole hidden city lies half-forgotten, full of Edwardian-era tunnels and disused railway equipment. A new book called “Hidden London: Discovering the Forgotten Underground” takes us down into the abandoned tributaries of the city’s subterranean transportation network to tell us tales about its past.

Written by a group of directors and collectors at the London Transport Museum, the book features fascinating photographs by Toby Madden and Andy Davies, views most people don’t get to enjoy in person.

“Hidden London is a lavishly illustrated history of disused and repurposed London Underground spaces. It provides the first narrative of a previously secret and barely understood aspect of London’s history. Behind locked doors and lost entrances lies a secret world of abandoned stations, redundant passageways, empty elevator shafts, and cavernous ventilation ducts. The Tube is an ever-expanding network that has left in its wake hidden places and spaces.”

“Hidden London opens up the lost worlds of London’s Underground and offers a fascinating analysis of why Underground spaces—including the deep-level shelter at Clapham South, the closed Aldwych station, the lost tunnels of Euston—have fallen into disuse and how they have been repurposed. With access to previously unseen archives, architectural drawings, and images, the authors create an authoritative account of London’s hidden Underground story. This surprising and at times myth-breaking narrative interweaves spectacular, newly commissioned photography of disused stations and Underground structures today.”

The book made its debut September 10 on Yale University Press, authored by David Bownes, Chris Nix, Siddy Holloway and Sam Mullins. It’s also part of a new “Hidden London” exhibition at the London Transport Museum, which opens October 11 and will feature a large collection of rare archive photos, objects and diagrams from disused stations as well as a recreated abandoned ticket hall and secret life-size underground dining room.

Tea time waits for no one and the former Tea Rooms on London’s Museum Street is no exception, its Art Deco facade gracefully decaying as the years go by.

True Be Leafers

Located at 11 Museum Street in Bloomsbury, central London, the Tea Rooms was a cozy little cafe owned and operated by Eugenio and Rene (“Rina”) Corsini. The couple opened their doors in 1960 and proceeded to serve untold numbers of fresh cuppas over a 44-year span. When her husband passed away in 2000, Rene carried on: she said that catering to her beloved regular customers helped her in her bereavement. By 2004, however, rents in the trendy West End were rising and Rene decided to call it a day. The two photos above, snapped by Flickr member Nicholas Noyes in April of 2003 and January of 2005 respectively, bracket the last days of the Tea Rooms’ cozy, formica-lined existence.

Steeped In History

After it closed, the Tea Rooms embarked on a surreal sort of afterlife unintentionally documented by an unaffiliated succession of Flickr members month after month, year after year. The surreality comes into play as the former cafe’s facade inexorably evolves – or should we say, “devolves”. Perhaps the most obvious milestone in the shop’s decline occurred later in 2005 when, as shown above in Flickr member Esther Simpson‘s image from October, the three-piece plastic Art Deco-lettered sign either fell down or was manually removed revealing the original hand-painted ghost sign that had been hidden underneath.

In Hot Water

By the time Flickr member T & L snapped the above shot in mid-2008, this section of Museum Street was looking grim indeed… and we’re not only referring to the demonic face an anonymous street artist applied to the Tea Rooms’ front door. Rather, the issue of increasing rents alluded to by Rene Corsini in director Paul Kelly’s 2004 short film would appear to have caused the “Joie” clothing store next-door to close shop as well.

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Tead Off Abandoned Museum Street Tea Rooms

The world’s first 360-degree rooftop infinity pool is set to shimmer atop a 55-story skyscraper in London, featuring transparent acrylic walls on all sides. Since acrylic transmits light at a similar wavelength as water, it will make the water appear crystal clear, so swimmers feel like they’re merging with the sky, high above the city streets. The pool itself is pretty awesome, but its most interesting feature is its unusual means of entering and exiting.

UK-based manufacturer Compass Pools want the pool to appear seamless from every direction, which means the perimeter can’t be interrupted by a staircase. The floor of the pool is also transparent so visitors to the five-star hotel directly below can gaze up at the sky through the water. Their solution? A rotating spiral staircase that comes up through the floor on demand.

“We faced some quite major technical challenges to this building, the biggest one being how to actually get into the pool,” says designer and technical director Alex Kemsley. “Normally a simple ladder would suffice, but we didn’t want stairs on the outside of the building or in the pool as it would spoil the view – and obviously you don’t want 600,000 liters of water draining through the building either. The solution is based on the door of a submarine, coupled with a rotating spiral staircase which rises from the pool floor when someone wants to get in or out – the absolute cutting edge of swimming pool and building design and a little bit James Bond to boot!”

“Architects often come to us to design roof top infinity pools, but rarely do we get a say in the building design because the pool is usually an afterthought. But on this project, we actually started with the pool design and essentially said, ‘how do we put a building underneath this?’ When we designed the pool, we wanted an uninterrupted view, both above and below the water.”

“Swimming in the SkyPool at the Shard, it’s quite a weird feeling to have helicopters flying past at your level, but this pool takes it a step further. Pop your goggles on and with a 360-degree view of London from 220m up, it really will be something else – but it’s definitely not one for the acrophobic!”

The pool will be heated using waste energy from the building’s air conditioning system, and will also feature a computer-controlled building management system to keep track of water levels and temperatures, while a built-in anemometer monitors wind speeds.

The building is called “Infinity London,” and once partners and contractors are confirmed, it’s set to begin construction in 2020.

Construction is currently in progress on a new elevated linear park running along the river Thames. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, “The Tide” offers a multi-level landscape for running, walking, meditation and contemplation of large-scale public art on London’s Greenwich Peninsula. The initial phase of the project, opening in July, will offer the first of 5 kilometers of walkways (about 3 miles total) which rise from the landscape like waves, some standing as high as 30 feet off the ground.

The architects envision The Tide as a network of public spaces and gardens “embedded into the daily rhythms of Greenwich Peninsula,” with programming split across the ground level and the elevated walkways. Sunken gardens, benches, integrated greenery, a long outdoor table and bike paths will be included among the park’s offerings, and Damien Hirst’s sculptures Hydra & Kali and Mermaid will be the first public art to arrive on site. Photographs of the construction process by Luke Hayes give us a peek at how it’s coming along.

“The Tide is conceived of as a series of elevated, landscaped islands where the public is invited to slow down, linger, and overlook the life of the Peninsula. Each island is distinct, defined by unique trees and planting, and by their surrounding views and sounds. These elevated gardens are designed as clusters of structural supports that create elevated planter beds, containing soil and channelling both gravity loads and water down to the ground. The sculptural structure supporting The Tide gardens above also frames and shelters the path below, creating arched pavilions that mark thresholds and passages at the ground level public realm.”

Greenwich Peninsula is a hotbed of redevelopment at the moment, with entire neighborhoods and new landmarks on the way, including a 79-foot-high glass arcade by Santiago Calatrava that will represent the Spanish architect’s first major project in the UK. The new park will sit at the intersection of these emerging neighborhoods, “diverse ecosystems and distinct cultural institutions, connecting north to south, east to west, center to periphery, and city to river,” say the architects.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the same firm responsible for designing New York City’s High Line, as well as the controversial new “Shed” structure in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards.