It is at the threshold between above and below ground infrastructure that exceptional design is achieved.
Clare Donnelly is director at Fereday Pollard Architects
Taking advantage of these to combine architectural design and civil engineering processes enables sites to go beyond functionality and make a significant contribution. Balancing and managing the intersection between both is a challenge and opportunity.
Good infrastructure design finds ways to go beyond a project’s core purpose to integrate it within its surroundings and society. Even the most inhospitable places can present design opportunities that meet engineering requirements while simultaneously enhancing the human experience and the natural environment. Experience has taught me that it takes a combination of architectural thinking (in its broadest sense for both landscape and buildings) and civil engineering to find the sweet spot that unlocks opportunities for better design and innovation.
The best of both
Together with engineering teams, decisions made on large-scale infrastructure projects must keep pushing for better outcomes in terms of durability, functionality and aesthetics. For underground tunnelling infrastructure, this is key, as the result of decisions made early in a design process will undeniably influence the lives of people on the surface for a century, at least.
Engagement in a multi-disciplinary team focused on defining principles and objectives also adds value – ensuring that future changes are minimal, leaving a tangible legacy.
An example is London’s recently completed ‘Super Sewer’, the Tideway Tunnel, where Fereday Pollard acted as lead architect driving the overall vision and design principles. Here, the interplay between architecture and engineering needed to be very intricately connected to achieve a functional asset capable of cleaning London’s river and providing high-quality public realm in some of the most prominent urban sites in the City.
Everything, from how safe and convenient it needed to be to access the below-ground infrastructure for maintenance, to ensuring the right materials were robust enough to look good after decades of use while providing an appealing public realm – was a multi-disciplinary decision.
Solutions for all
Finding solutions and unlocking opportunity is at the heart of both design disciplines – and is at its most powerful when working together. Understanding the end user and keeping them in mind during the design process is extremely important.
For the Tideway Tunnel, through engaging with and observing Londoners it was clear that people wanted more physical access to the river. However, the Thames is a busy navigation route and an aggressive environment with strong currents and a large tidal range, so how to provide this safely? A combined team of civil engineers, contractors and consultants has made this idea possible. Engineers were instrumental in undertaking modelling research regarding wave volumes, to define what would be considered safe.
The result of this work is that these public spaces are now ‘floodable’ at high tides, in a controlled way that gives people a chance to paddle in the water.
It’s about trying to find solutions that meet both practical engineering requirements and having a curiosity and an understanding to make exciting things work, rather than designing out ideas that at first glance could seem impossible.
Tideway Blackfriars Bridge Foreshore public realm construction, January 2024
Design guardianship
Architects must ask probing questions to avoid losing the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution all while taking on a convening role in projects – bringing together disparate disciplines, regardless of scale.
On Tideway, this involved bringing engineering together with the world of art. With most of the feat of tunnelling hidden from the world, it was important for the public realm to express the history and importance of the engineering below while also being relevant to the local area they sit.
As architects, it’s about being a constant advocate for the end user, nature and the communities impacted, while also managing the complexity of these projects. This is where a good foundation of design principles that underpin entire infrastructure projects is key, providing clear and upfront guidelines.
While not pre-determined solutions, they set out in a clear and unified way what it is that needs to be achieved, empowering the engineers and designers through the process to be able to deliver against them. Fereday Pollard has done this on three major programmes by working collaboratively with the civil engineering teams on; Silvertown Tunnel, Thames Tideway Tunnel and Lower Thames Crossing.
Negotiation and trust
Working collaboratively is an art of negotiation and trust. One change can have a completely unforeseen impact on different aspects of the design and the functionality of a project. In addition to this, meeting the needs of statutory consents, the environment and project budgets, as well as communities and stakeholders is all part of an already complex job. It is through early collaboration in the process done well, that good, if not outstanding, infrastructure is made.
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