Originally published on metropolismag.com
The Waterloo City Farm, also home to the firm’s studio, delivers good design—and vegetables and barnyard critters—to communities in need.
From metalworks and nightclubs in archways, to skateparks and cinemas beneath highways, the cracks and gaps in London’s urban fabric often provide unexpected spaces for creative use beyond the boundaries of regular city blocks. The area south of Waterloo train station – a major junction connecting to the southwest of the U.K. – is rife with such spaces where the train lines snake through the borough of Lambeth creating cavernous tunnels and cut-off roads.
It’s here, between the railway and the Thames, where one can find one of the area’s most surprising spaces, the Waterloo City Farm. Amid its urban environs, it’s the last place one might expect to find sheep, pigs, and a barn. “It’s unbelievably central…just half a mile from Parliament and within earshot of Big Ben,” explains Fergus Feilden who, with Edmund Fowles, founded Feilden Fowles architects in 2009.
Originally published on metropolismag.com