London’s new super sewer under the River Thames not only improves water quality and London’s resilience to population growth and flood risk, it also creates three acres of new parks along its route, increasing neighbourhood connectivity and access to the river.

We’ve designed all eight of the shaft and pumping station sites above the central section of the tunnel, offering people a whole new experience of the water’s edge, and entirely new views to and from the foreshore.

Each space is unique, reflecting the character and identity of the London village in which it sits, and includes specially commissioned artworks by Nathan Coley, Florian Roithmayr, Richard Wentworth and Lucy Skaer. Only the twisted bronze ventilation shafts are common to all pocket parks, inscribed with site-specific poetry by Dorothea Smartt and written in the Doves Press typeface, which was rescued from the Thames and reconstructed a few years ago.

Bazalgette Embankment is the largest of the new public spaces, with Nathan Coley’s five Stages sculptures integrated into the landscape and, in places, forming part of the river’s flood defences. The sculptures create playful interactions and different ways of experiencing and viewing the place – whether standing on the foreshore, on Blackfriars Bridge or Blackfriars Station platform, or looking across from the South Bank.

The soft landscaping of the green terraced area is inspired by the ecology of the lost Fleet River, which originates on Hampstead Heath and flows through the city and into the Thames at Blackfriars.

Tyburn Quay at Victoria Embankment is symbolised by the rhythm of London plane trees, Sturgeon lamp standards and sphinx benches. A series of new kiosks and canopies respond to this existing character, framing the entrance onto new terraces that rise to a viewing platform, before stepping down towards the lapping waves of the river. Bazalgette’s pioneering designs for the tunnels are embedded in the landscape and structures throughout. A pile of cast bronze sandbags by artist Richard Wentworth ‘left’ on the stone steps alludes to previous makeshift flood defences.

Chelsea Quay responds to the restorative character of the local area, home to the Royal Hospital Chelsea and the Physic Garden, and one of the greenest areas of the city. The organic design uses clay bricks (referencing Bazalgette’s original tunnels), interspersed with colourful stripes of glazed bricks by artist Florian Roithmayr.  A lower walkway and intertidal planting bring the public to the water’s edge for a more intimate experience of the river.

The design for Albert Embankment foreshore enhances the sensitive riverside setting to create two new public spaces in front of the emblematic MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross. The northern space extends the riverside path and takes inspiration from the urban beach setting, while a circular platform – the Isle of Effra – is framed by terraces of intertidal planting, providing a further spectacular viewing point out in the river. Artist Richard Wentworth has created bronze benches in the shape of conjoined toilets—a nod to the Vauxhall origins of sanitary ware manufacturer Royal Doulton.