ANTEPAVILION 3

The Antepavilion 3 competition  is an annual competition to design and build an experimental structure for an evolving series of installations on public display at  Columbia and Brunswick Wharf on the Regent’s canal at Haggerston. This years brief was to design a new structure to act as a beacon of the wharf complex and its alternative educational and experimental ethos.

Our submission for the Antepavilion 2019 was to draw attention to plastic pollution. The Antepavilion was to be a beacon which will stand out against the eclectic and discordant character of the adjacent rooftops, transmitting both message and warning. A structure was to be composed of entirely recycled materials against a waterside backdrop, the beacon would then send out an immediate visual invitation for those around it to open up discourse surrounding our relationship with single-use plastic and its damaging effects on our oceans and wildlife. Inspired by the Eddystone Lighthouse, an ever-adapting structure which has had a phoenix-like tendency to be re-built and improved upon, the Wharf Beacon, standing on a rock base of recycled plastic bags, balances strong rigidity with a sinuous feminine curvature, conjuring a slightly unsettling resemblance to sea creatures of days-gone-by.