Landscape Matters Issue 4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 22
6.
Blot on...
The landscape
Robert Holden
THE MARBLE ARCH mound is an artificial hill built on the
Marble Arch roundabout at the west end of Oxford Street. The
aim was to build a temporary structure to attract visitors to
help the economic recovery of Oxford Street. And it has been
criticised as a disaster, as London’s worst attraction, a ‘pile of
mud’, according to the Washington Post. While Rowan Moore
in The Observer described it as ‘a slippery slope to nowhere’.
Social media compared it to the set of Teletubbies, others to
the blocky landscapes of Super Mario 64.
Curiously its ineptness may help it achieve its purpose. The
Evening Standard reported in late August that the ‘Marble
Arch Mound attracts unexpected tourists curious to see how
bad it is’. It looks clumsy and bald, and certainly is not the richly planted mound in the designer’s digital views. (PLATE 1). Westminster Council’s leader Rachael Robathan said the Mound
is ‘a small part of the Council’s wider £150m investment in the
Oxford Street District designed to reinvigorate the nation’s
high street. … and is part of a wider campaign to bring the buzz
and footfall back to London’.
Why is it such a disaster?
According to the designers, the Dutch firm of MVRDV, the
‘design introduces a park-like landscape of grass and trees,
and ‘lifts’ this recreated corner of Hyde Park to create a spectacular 25-metre-tall viewpoint that gives visitors an overview
of Oxford Street and the park, and a new perspective on Marble Arch itself.’ You can see Marble Arch. But the problem is
the result is not a ‘park like landscape of grass and trees’, and
it does not give an overview of Hyde Park or of Oxford Street.
The project is constructed of scaffolding poles draped in
sedum matting with plane trees in containers. So no grass or
herbaceous layer as viewed in MVRDV’s renderings. You cannot see beyond the trees at the edge of Hyde Park, so no view
