Recently we took a family holiday to London with our three children and had the chance to fuel up on lots of culture. We visited lots of parks, exhibitions, galleries. There were some clear design highlights that we felt were just too good not to share here ...
The first of these was the "Urban Nature Project" at The Natural History Museum...
The Natural History Museum is a beloved institution. The building is a cabinet of curiosities, packed with plant and animal specimens. This is a museum where we have happily spent many afternoons together in London—gazing at the giant whale in the atrium, rummaging through the collection of precious stones, and marvelling at the beauty of the building itself.
And yet, underlying this, we have always had a slightly uncomfortable feeling. The museum's collection was born of an era of colonialism, conquest, and the desire to dominate both people and land. The Victorian building collects and categorises nature, bestowing a sense of splendour and man-made order—a place for everything and everything in its place.
While in reality, everything in our natural world is not alright. As a society, we need to face up to the damage we are causing to the planet. Around us, we are witnessing the collapse of biodiversity and the impacts of the climate emergency.
We urgently need to collectively shift our relationship with nature and reorient our priorities. In Ireland, for example, we are moving towards holding a referendum to recognise the rights of nature in our constitution. Institutions like The Natural History Museum play an important role when they acknowledge their origins as part of their work to find new ways to educate visitors about the climate emergency, biodiversity loss, and the need to shift our relationship with nature. However, the grand, Grade I listed building, with its great hall and Victorian sense of order and stability, struggles to communicate these messages.
And this brings us to the recently opened “Urban Nature Project” (designed by landscape architects J&L Gibbons and architects Fielden Fowles) at the Natural History Museum. Taking over the 5 acres of gardens at the museum, the project transforms how you approach the Victorian building and adds new gardens that act as a living laboratory for expert research, making scientific theory tangible and visible.
Upon arrival, we navigate a newly landscaped, ramped, wheelchair-friendly access to the building, which also serves as a “three-dimensional timeline.” After exploring the main exhibitions with our children (they particularly loved "The River" and the geology room), we wandered back outside to the new “Nature Discovery Garden.” Here, there are areas of woodland, grassland, hedgerow, and wetlands. We feel an immediate sense of relief to be back amongst living nature. This is a place where plants and animals are recognised as interdependent with their “habitats” rather than embalmed, segregated, and categorised. We are immersed in nature's ecosystems. We take shelter and eat our picnic in the generous overhang of the beautiful new education building.
Out in the garden, several knowledgeable museum staff members are on hand, teaching urban nature identification workshops and field survey skills. The museum is also piloting technologies for monitoring change in urban environments, including acoustic monitoring, where recorders listen to the gardens, ponds, soil, and even inside the trees.
While our children take part in a workshop next to the pond with museum staff, we sit close by on the low wall that edges the pond. Looking across the surface of the pond water, we spot dragonflies, caddisflies, damselflies, and pondskaters alongside lilies, reeds, rushes, and sedges. We talk of the many public buildings we know with their pristine lawns, weed killer, and teams of leaf blowers—prioritising an image of “order” and “neatness” over biodiversity.
We look up and notice how this new “wild pond” contrasts against the edifice of the old Victorian building. There is so much power in this new image.
Next up we visited the Enzo Mari Exhibition at the The Design Museum, London...
Enzo Mari is described as “one of the greatest Italian designers of the 20th century, whose designs have inspired generations of creatives around the world.” This exhibition, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Francesca Giacomelli, was originally produced for the Triennale Milano in 2020 and opened at a time when there was a ban on international travel. Very sadly, Mari died from complications related to COVID-19 two days after the Milan exhibition opened. Enzo Mari is one of our studio heroes, so to finally get to visit this exhibition in London felt like a pilgrimage for us.
“Craftsmanship is based on the ability to make… to invent… the tools and techniques right for the state of the art… What can one say of those who think that the skill of the craftsman should be limited to the obsessive reproduction of shapes and times past, linked to dead techniques and rituals?”
Enzo Mari
Mari’s work cannot be defined by a single design discipline—he designed furniture, children’s books and games, products, graphic design, exhibitions, and installations. It is such a privilege to see the sketches, prototypes, and notes that accompany each project in the exhibition. Through this material, you get a sense of the unifying ethos of Mari’s life’s work. Again and again, you see Mari’s drive to simplify and find the essence of each design and project. His playfulness and humanity create a sense of poetry that pervades the exhibition and sets him apart from his more austere minimalist contemporaries. There is also his recurring interest in democratising design, reducing waste, counteracting consumerism, and his work to grant greater worker autonomy in factories—all of which make his work as relevant as when it was first produced.
There is also a fun scavenger hunt for children, with apple and pear badges as rewards for completion.
Walking the Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames
The redesign of the Young V+A Bethnal Green (formerly The Museum of Childhood)
The award winning Lighting design on The Elizabeth Line
London Parks and Lidos including The Queen’s Orchard at Greenwich Park , Brockwell Park and Lido, Kensington Park and Holland Park
Hackney City Farm
“The Tanks” at Tate Modern
Entry to the Natural History Museum and the Urban Nature Project is free but ticketed. Book tickets in advance to avoid queues.