The Greenwich foot tunnel is one of London's great social engineering projects, and yet since the tube line extension created a direct link to the centre of Greenwich, it has in recent years become less used. Tourists occasionally wander through it to see the view that Canaletto made famous from Island Gardens and there has been renovation of the lifts, but this cannot sweep away the feeling that the structure could close to public use at any time.
This structure was one of the great engineering feats of it's time. There had been tunnels through rock, but this was a tunnel through wet mud, with dangerous methane pockets (they tunneled by candle light), under London’s great water way. The Council surveyor for the tunnel informed me that the tunnel moves with the tide, “achieving a banana like shape when the tide is fully out”.
The attached sketches/watercolors/part hand measured drawings were done as part of a historic study to describe the building in a style similar to the way it would have been presented when first created.
Alex King is an architect and his design 'Santiago Townhouse' won the British Homes Awards in 2011 - Alex King Design / Designalexable, examples of his latest work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yGQhlRz8mc
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