One Hundred Year Old Ginkgo, 2023

One Hundred Year Old Ginkgo

Central Saint Martins, MArch Architecture, 2023

Margravine Cemetery is a 16.5 acre public green space in west London which was opened in 1868, and is home to over 300 trees, more than 20 species of birds and much other wildlife. The legal designation of this site as a Nature Conservation area of ‘Borough Importance Grade II’ safeguards this biodiversity from development. The rich habitat provides a feeding ground for a pair of Peregrine Falcons who nest on the roof of the adjacent Charing Cross Hospital, the existing high rise infrastructure of the city becoming a cliff like sanctuary for these unique birds. This special place provided an initial focal point for my thesis project, ‘Lively Legislative Entanglements: Designing for the Circular Economy through Biodiversity’.

I created a series of temporal artefacts for a 100-year-old Ginkgo Biloba tree which stands near the cemetery’s entrance. After roughly estimating its age by measuring its circumference at 1m, I traced its trunk at a scale of 1:1 imagining its one hundred years of growth rings. I made a kind of tree age measuring tape which also became a length of celebratory bunting/local timeline, as well as a metre high walking stick. I was inspired by the bunting-like flags of weather front symbols, and felt this an appropriate visual metaphor given that the multitudinous cords of construction cranes nearby are quite literally pulling strings in the atmosphere. The wobbly walking stick became like a crutch for the ageing ginkgo tree, which then also inspired my series of ‘scrappy stools’.