Barking Abbey Green Masterplan
In November 2009 we won an open international design competition to masterplan Abbey Green in Barking that would determine the scale of developments around the Grade 1 Listed Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The competition was run by a committee that consisted of members of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Design for London, English Heritage, the local community and The Architect’s Journal. Our proposal considered the whole of Abbey Green including the Abbey ruins and the park, offering interpretative structures and enhanced play spaces.
Abbey Green gains new playgrounds and the historic ruins will be preserved becoming an ‘outside museum’. A playground and garden has been built and the masterplan has been adopted by the council.
The creation of a pavilion for sports use will also provide much needed public conveniences for visitors to the famous Abbey Ruins. Our project is a mixture of the utterly mundane and also quite surreal - a response to the quite unusual situation of a Scheduled National Monument sat on what is actually a very large roundabout at the edge of the town.
