Steer Davies Gleave wins design competition to develop Bankside Boardwalk in London’s SE1

Steer Davies Gleave’s Design for Movement team are delighted to have been selected by the Better Bankside Business Improvement District as the winners of the Bankside Boardwalk competition, an initiative part funded by Transport for London’s Future Streets Incubator.

Our appointment came as result of an open design competition held in summer 2016 having been selected from 28 organisations submitting ten high quality proposals. A panel made up of key partners Southwark Council and Transport for London were involved in selecting the winning team, with the winning design launched at the 2016 Transforming London Streets Conference.

Initially located on Lavington Street near London’s Tate Modern, the reusable boardwalk will help to test how streets and pavements can be reconfigured to respond to the changing pressures that streets in cities and towns face, including accommodating increases in footfall and the need to navigate safely around building sites, temporary hoardings or road works. 

Our aim for the competition was to create an intriguing and enjoyable urban intervention that transforms Lavington Street, and that is also linked to and attracts people from the wider area. Our proposed solution was inspired by the area and responded to the question “what if any of the artist from the Tate were to undertake this project?” and the briefs requirement to create a cost effective, modular, reusable design solution.  

Building on the work of Paul Klee and the notion of a geometric kit of parts, our proposed design looked at the Tangram, a Chinese dissection puzzle consisting of seven flat shapes, called tans, which are put together to form more complex shapes. These shapes can be found in hidden geometries across Southwark: triangles on Neo Bankside facades, squares in the MRM building and Pure Bankside, and parallelograms in the Tate Modern.

The project will trial a temporary reconfiguration of Lavington Street to a one-way street, and use the freed up road-space to extend the footpath at grade through the design of a new modular structure to help improve the quality of environment of Lavington Street for those on foot. 

Bankside Boardwalk is commissioned as part of Bankside Urban Forest, the long-term strategy to improve the network of streets and spaces in Bankside. Bankside Boardwalk will be installed in early 2017 after engagement with local businesses and residents, and will be on site for a six-month trial.