Futurecity brokered and managed a long-term partnership between design-led developer St James and the Royal College of Art, building on the Albert Embankment Cultural Strategy and wider culture-led placemaking work across the Nine Elms area.
As part of this collaboration, the Multi-Use Public Furniture Competition was launched in 2015 to deliver a permanent, design-led intervention for the new public realm at Albert Embankment. The competition formed part of the RCA’s Live Projects programme, enabling students to work directly with industry partners to design, fabricate and install a realised public space project.
Eight shortlisted proposals were presented to a multidisciplinary jury including representatives from the RCA, St James, Futurecity, Foster + Partners, Townshend Landscape Architecture, Lambeth Council and the Greater London Authority. The winning scheme, Pipe Up, was announced in early 2016.
Designed by a team of nine students from the RCA’s MA Architecture programme, Pipe Up draws on Lambeth’s historic pottery industry and London’s nineteenth-century innovations in sanitation infrastructure. The project takes the form of a fragmented ceramic pipe distributed across the public realm, creating places to sit, read, recline and gather. The judges praised the scheme for its imaginative use of material, strong heritage narrative and clear contribution to everyday public life.
Working in collaboration with specialist manufacturers Darwen Terracotta and Faïence, the students developed a full-scale prototype, translating historic ceramic techniques into a contemporary public realm intervention. Installed opposite Tate Britain, Pipe Up forms part of a wider programme of cultural commissions that extend the South Bank’s creative energy westwards into Nine Elms.
The project demonstrates how academic–industry partnerships can deliver high-quality, permanent public space interventions while supporting emerging designers and embedding cultural value into new development.
The ADS6 students: Aidan Hermans, Amir Afshar, Andres Souto Vilaros, Edward Crooks, Ellie Connolly, Elliot Rogosin, Magdalena Stadler, Niels Werner Hersmann, Sophie Grabiner
Photography by Noah Da Costa & Alex Howat
