If big corporate office buildings intimidate you, but you still can’t resist a walk by the Thames on a sunny day, then head for shelter in one of the two new pavilions by DSDHA in Potters Field Park, near City Hall. The two pavilions, appointed to the practice of More London and designed with the help of structural engineers Jane Wernick Associates, are placed on the two sides of the park, one just by Foster’s City Hall, and the other adjacent to Tower Bridge.
Click here to see more of the pavilions.
The pavilions are not only comfortably-sized in a friendly human scale and ideal for a coffee break, but one of them – the darker - is the first charred timber-clad structure in the UK, created in a technique similar to the Japanese Yakisugi. ‘It almost resembles a grotto’, says DSDHA’s Deborah Saunt.
The other one is made of whitened calcified timber, features a green roof, and offers some of the best ground-level London views in town. Even though they seem small and are undoubtedly warm and welcoming, the pavilions are in fact larger than they look, one of the two ‘hiding’ two underground vent shafts and the parking space for a window-cleaning crane.
Similar, but at the same time designed to have an individual identity, the pavilions offset the surrounding iconic buildings with their distinctive shape, while the profits of the Tower Bridge one, the Blossom Square Pavilion, go directly towards maintaining the park owned by Southwark and designed by Gross Max.
