Landscape Matters Issue 4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 23
to the Serpentine because 25m is not high enough. Originally
MVDRV wanted the structure to cover the Marble Arch and so
be higher, but Historic England objected. You never could see
down Oxford Street, given it is not on the centre line of this
straight Roman road. But it is the execution of the concept
which is so at fault. (PLATE 2)
1 MVRDV’s digital proposals from their
Design and Access Statement for a lushly planted mound, view from the south
2 The mound as built August 2021, is
bald by comparison, view from the east.
(photo.:Tom Turner)
So what went wrong?
MVRDV are landscape architects and architects. The principal in charge, Winy Maas, studied landscape architecture at
Boskoop, so it should not have been beyond them to achieve
their ambition. For sure they have made similar scaffolding
structures in the past: the 29m high Stairs to Kriterion in Rotterdam in 2016 had views over the city. And many of their buildings are festooned with vegetation.
The design fee was £10,000 according to Westminster’s response to a Freedom of Information request. So MVRDV did
not do the detailed design. The Design and Build Contractor
was F.W.Conway, who are Westminster’s framework contractor
for highways. As built, the mound is significantly different from
the sketchy planning application drawings which show ‘a scaffold structure as its base, which supports plywood and soil layers for the grass upper layer to grow’ with plant containers for
the trees. Curiously there are no details of how soil slippage
on a 45°slope can be dealt with. The solution has been sedum
matting over the plywood with plane trees in plant containers
and no green lushness like the MVRDV proposals.
There was no competitive tender and the budgeted price of
£3.3 million in May 2021 has risen to £6 million. These values
appear way above Public Contracts Regulation thresholds
requiring tendering. And the rise from £3.3 million to £6 million
appears to be a system out of control. No wonder the deputy
leader of Westminster Council, Melvyn Caplan, resigned.
So the project went wrong in its detailed design, procurement
and execution. £10,000 is about 0.3% of the budgeted £3.3 million. And why did MVRDV agree to do just an outline design
for peanuts? Indeed why was design of a landscape and engineering project handed over to a highways contractor?
The mound closes on 9 January 2022.
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