Ella Johnson

About

Ella is an architectural designer based in London. After graduating from Newcastle University in 2021 her practice at RCA has been focused on embodied experiences of materiality, examining the politicisation of urban development in London and the effects this has on both urban and rural landscapes within wider environmental concerns. Her final project, ‘Unstable Ground’ works towards repairing the disassociation of material, human and place through developing locally adaptive methodologies for material displacement.

Unstable Ground: The Landscaping of Superficial Deposits at Goshems Farm

Essex has become a sacrificial zone of London. A dumping ground for the city. Essex’s interconnected relationship with London has been shaped by years of geographical proximity and economic interdependence that has created a symbiotic urbanism, but one that is dictated by London. There is a constant surplus of material as a result of human inhabitation of the earth and an anthropocentric insatiable desire for growth. In London, this material is pushed to the edge of the city and what is discarded is displaced to Essex. Through designing a methodology for material treatment, using compression as a design tool, this project looks to highlight the phenomenon of material displacement by re-engaging with earth displaced from London to Goshems Farm.

Goshems Farm, in Tilbury, Essex, has become a receptacle site for London’s subterranean material as a result of Crossrail tunnelling. The site was historically a landfill for inert waste coming out of London and as a result of coastal erosion this landfill is now leaking into the Thames Estuary and the Essex shoreline is suffering from London’s waste disposal experiment. Unstable Ground reengages with the material displaced to Goshems Farm to create an experiential, temporal landscape that will prevent further landfill leaking into the estuary.

Unstable Ground is a landscape in flux, constantly shifting with added, compacted and eroded material. Using locally adaptive methodologies, allowing for a design that is highly specific to place, the project creates an alternative narrative to the imposed industrialisation of the site. The project is realised in the nuanced negotiation between material deposit and ecological development that will develop over the site’s 30-year lifecycle. By looking closely at the palette of material available and conditioning the site with a set of rules that speak to both the mechanical and the natural, it is possible to find value in what is deemed undesirable as the project works to repair the disassociation of materiality, human and place; ultimately challenging what it means to be local.