Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Tideway, London

Abbey Mills Pumping Station: Pentagram

Abbey Mills Pumping Station, the 'Cathedral of Sewage'

Designed by engineer Joseph Bazalgette, Edmund Cooper, and architect Charles Driver. It was built between 1865 and 1868, housing eight beam engines by Rothwell & Co. of Bolton

Plaque design, courtesy of the designer

Year
Awaiting installation

Client
fereday pollard for Tideway

Artist / designer
Marina Willer, Pentagram

Service
Commission Management

Location
Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Stratford, London, E15 2RW.

A permanent commission Abbey Mills Pumping Station

Designer Marina Willer of Pentagram was commissioned by Tideway to create a unifying visual identity for a series of bronze plaques installed at 12 locations across London. Marina was invited to pitch for this project as recognition of her long time passion for street covers and following the success of her project Overlooked. Now part of the V&A permanent collection, overlooked is a series of prints made of rubbings of street covers across London.

The permanent Tideway commissions respond to the site-specific narratives set out in the Tideway Heritage Interpretation Strategy (HIS). The cultural meander for the East section is – ‘The Shipping Parishes: Gateway to the World’. The site-specific narrative for Abbey Mills Pumping Station illustrates the importance of water resources to the wellbeing  and sustenance of London’s populations. It also provides an historic perspective on the urban planning challenges required to meet the consequences of large scale environmental and climate change.

Willer’s design for the Abbey Mills plaque draws inspiration from the site’s Byzantine-style architecture, famously described as Joseph Bazalgette’s ‘cathedral of sewage’. Built between 1865 and 1868 as a vital part of London’s interceptor drainage system, Abbey Mills Pumping Station was designed to raise the level of the Northern Outfall Sewer and safeguard the city against flooding during storms and tidal surges. Today, it remains a much-admired icon of Victorian engineering, visible from the Greenway foot and cycle path.

“The interruptions across its surface will be emphasised by changes in the levels of bronze relief, and are strongly evocative of the movement of water and the circular form of the tunnel itself.”

— Pentagram

As with the broader series, the Abbey Mills plaque features a moiré interference pattern – formed by layering similar but slightly offset motifs – with a central disc as its defining element. For this site, the abstracted pattern was directly informed by architectural details from the pumping station itself. The surface texture, articulated in varying levels of bronze relief, evokes both the movement of water and the circular geometry of the Tideway Tunnel.

Inscribed along the outer edge of each plaque are the words:

‘THAMES TIDEWAY TUNNEL  CONSTRUCTED 2016–2024’

‘A HIDDEN FEAT OF ENGINEERING AND THE WORK OF 20,000’.

Cast in bronze and measuring 600 x 600 mm. It will be situated on the boundary of the site, at a point along the Greenway above the Northern Outfall Sewer, where the pumping station is visible, offering a public marker of both infrastructure and imagination. 

“Italian Gothic style. Greek Cross plan. Yellow brick with red and blue brick and stone dressings. Slate mansard roof. Round headed windows with polychrome decoration. Larger central window to upper storey divided by elaborate cast ironwork. Central octagonal domed lantern with round arched gabled windows to each face, containing case iron tracery. Elaborate wrought iron cresting to dome. Flamboyant interior or enriched cast ironwork. Elaborate carving of stonework outside and inside.”

— Grade II* Listing description

Marina Willer is a graphic designer and filmmaker with an MA in Graphic Design from the Royal College of Art. Before joining Pentagram as a partner, she was head creative director for Wolff Olins in London. During the course of her career, Willer has led the design of major identity schemes for Amnesty International, Tate, Southbank Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Oxfam, Nesta, Second Home, Sam Labs, and the largest telecoms in Russia (Beeline) and Brazil (Oi), among many others.

Willer’s first feature film, Red Trees, premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and was released worldwide by Netflix in 2018. Her films have been shown at Fondation Cartier in Paris, the ICA in London and prestigious film festivals worldwide. During the course of her career, Willer has been the recipient of a variety of industry honours, and she is consistently recognised as a leading figure in UK design.

For more information see: www.pentagram.com/about/marina-willer

For more information see:
www.tideway.london