Wedged between 3 railway lines that serve London’s King’s Cross Station is a triangular piece of land which volunteers are transforming into an educational ecology garden using natural and reclaimed materials. The Triangle Site will be environmental charity Global Generation’s new forever home in Central London. For twenty years, the charity had moved from one temporary site in King’s Cross to the next, until the landowner was finally able to offer a 999 year lease on the Triangle Site.
There are three small buildings on the site, a teaching kitchen, a classroom building and a small office. The buildings are surrounded by a biodiverse garden and in turn embrace a triangular square where all activity converges.
When we chose construction methods for each building, we considered what materials and built processes would be accessible to community builders and how these methods could contribute to skills development. The kitchen building is clad with sweet chestnut shakes which volunteers have been hand-cutting during the past 2 years. The classroom building has a thick cobbauge wall made by volunteers. Cobbauge is a vernacular construction technique originally used in northern France and South England. It combines a dense structural layer of earth with a lightweight, fibrous layer to improve thermal resistance. The office is clad with a screen made from handmade bricks. Volunteers were encouraged to creatively customise the face of each brick they made with patterns remaining as insignia in the final façade. Natural materials are supplemented by reclaimed windows and surplus floor finishes.
The design of the garden itself creates seven distinct habitat zones to provide food and hiding spaces for wildlife and linking into the linear ecosystem along the railway embankments.
The garden and its buildings showcase an alternative approach to construction, raising the bar on the use of natural materials such as earth and untreated wood in urban settings. The natural building traineeship aimed at communities under-represented in the built environment has provided paid learning opportunities for young people. And the volunteer building program has to date involved well over 1000 people in the construction effort, building community and providing meaningful experiences that build advocacy for a socially and environmentally sustainable construction practice.
