The island: salvaging a landscape of ruin

Shreya Kochatta (Year: 4)

Living on the other side of the road, the Island is a patch of woodscape owned by the Architectural Association as a part of their Hooke Park estate. Abandoned for the past 50 years, The Island today is seen as a ruined woodland. However, the Island is much more than ruin or ever a woodland. It is part of a new version of natural environments labeled by Gilles Clement as a third landscape. These are marginal spaces controlled and domesticated intensively for long and then forfeited, only to allow for ecology to take over. The island is an unexpected and unintended biological reserve. The project is an attempt to realize the potential of the Island. It argues that instead of concentrating on its economic inefficiency, we could in-fact harness its pedagogical value. Inviting the little children from Wrens nursery in Hooke village to the island and using a path intervention, it tries to salvage the lost identity of the space along with arguing for a deeper understanding of the new nature that the Island provides.