Mark Power's Pavillion at Jubilee Gardens takes shape

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
(Anthony & Cleopatra, Act II scene 3)

Last November I took some pictures of Mark Power Architect's imaginative scheme for Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank. It was exciting to see the building going up on site this week and I will be following it's progress over the next couple of months.

Mark describes his project:

Inspired by its riverine setting, the pavilion takes the form of a vessel temporarily moored in alignment with the historic shoreline of the Thames, before its re-embankment (on Bazelgette’s model) created Queen’s Walk. This promenade is now part of the ‘continuous foyer’ of South Bank’s public realm. Here the movement of thousands of people in both directions parallels the coming-and-going of the river tide. Those in need of relief will pass through the pavilion like river creatures swimming in the space beneath a craft’s hull. For others it will be a backdrop to performances under the trees, or a seat from which to gaze at the Waterloo Sunset.


The pavilion canopy’s dramatic boat-shape, floating darkly on its frozen river of glass mirroring its surroundings, is a synthetic device: it will act as a rainwater harvestingimpluvium for the building’s water-hungry uses (fed too by the Royal Festival hall’s groundwater bore-hole), but also as a shape-shifting visual pun, super-imposing several local associations: Roman galley remains discovered beneath County Hall; 18th C follies, fountains and pleasure gardens; theatre, variety and entertainment; working timber wharves.


South Bank old timer Shakespeare’s vision of Cleopatra in her barge seemed wryly to summarise our own reflections, itself a recollection of his youthful sight of Elizabeth I on the Thames:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
(Anthony & Cleopatra, Act II scene 3)