SHOP

In a year of otherwise cancelled design events, London Design Festival went ahead across various venues in the UK’s capital in mid-September. Every year as part of the Landmark Projects, which began in 2007, one leading artist or designer creates a major installation in a prominent public space in London. In the past the Landmarks have materialised at the Southbank Centre, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tate Modern, Trafalgar Square and the V&A.

For 2020, a greenhouse filled with tropical plants was installed at International Quarter London (IQL). Designed by award-winning architecture practice Studio Weave, the doming structure intended to draw attention to the rising temperatures that London is experiencing as a result of climate change. It appears like a giant terrarium in the relatively new Stratford-based district. The lush plants held within the transparent walls could be able to survive in the UK’s landscape within 30 years or so, if predictions about the way that weather patterns and temperature changes are correct.

Named the Hothouse, Studio Weave’s pavilion has a futurist look. Standing at 7-metres tall, galvanised steel arches hold the transparent plastic panels, which have bubble-like bend and iridescent shimmer. The Hothouse is lit up at night to allow the plants to remain visible to passers-by. The pavilion and its living contents are as on view as possible from the outside as the new restrictions in place because of the pandemic prevent many people from entering the Hothouse, but this does not detract from its curious allure.

The LDF programme moved more than ever this year into a digital space. The pavilions that remained present in physical spaces therefore had a particular potency. The Landmarks Projects have always drawn attention to public spaces in London, which – until now – were often the sites of heavy foot traffic. Many of the Landmarks’ previous locations had months this year where the humans left them empty, patrolled only by the city’s pigeons.

What will become of art installations in public spaces? No one can say. London’s design week was the first to take place outside of screens since the pandemic began, and many of the remaining festivals this year will only be held in the virtual world. What will the relationship between the human and the natural world look like in 2050, the year the architects propose these plants might line the streets of London?

While the Hothouse draws attention to the alarming speed of climate change, it also celebrates the ingenuity of the human race to find ways to create environments in which food can be grown.

The Hothouse will remain in Stratford for the next year, so that visitors can watch as all the plants go through the seasons, until it is dismantled and moved to another location in London.