A short film our team made about initial responses to Falcon Road Underpass and residents' hopes for its future...
In Autumn 2024, we teamed up with Flanagan and Lawrence, Light Follows Behaviour, Arup, Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Expedition Engineering, and three local residents and creatives Morgan Almeida, Mark and Theo Chaudoir— to propose an engagement and design strategy for the Falcon Road Underpass competition. The competition was part of the LFA’s Walworth London Borough of Culture 2025 and we made it all the way to the end – being shortlisted as one of the final three teams… Unfortunately, we didn’t win, but we are very proud of the process we put forwards and what our ambitions for the underpass were...
The competition challenged us to reimagine what is currently a rather uninviting underpass connecting Battersea to Clapham, adjacent to the bustling Clapham Junction station.
Photos of the existing underpass
Our design re-imagined the railway tunnel as a “River of Words,” transforming the space into a vibrant passage where the diverse voices of local residents flow as a brook of stories. More than aesthetic renewal, it was a community-led proposal which focused on tangible and immaterial connections while being a design resilient to the forces of decay.
Images of our proposal for 'A River of Words'
The Falcon Road Underpass has long symbolised both connection and division: a link between two vibrant multicultural neighbourhoods but with marked differences, and on the historical site of a forgotten and buried river, the Falcon Brook. We saw this duality as an opportunity for harmony.
Our proposal, is a “river of words”: a typographic installation, inspired by the Falcon Brook that once flowed here, celebrating local heritage and featuring the stories, oral histories, memories, and hopes derived through the community engagement we started and planned on continuing throughout the process.
Our concept, was led by the idea of how the local community - seen not as a homogenous group but rather a rich, complex, multiplicty of people could be authors of the work. Our idea was for the underpass to collate residents’ words, ideas, stories and inspirations for all to see; and that this would be done through an engagement process centred around recording oral histories and collaboratively distilling and artworking them.
We imagined our engagement to be three-pronged:
Surveying the general public
Gathering oral histories through intimate and open, structured and unstructured sessions
A paid learning and working experience for young creatives
As part of the competition process we lightly – taking into account the ethical challenges of doing engagement before bid allocation– started to shape what our engagement process could be: through our engagement with nearly 450 survey participants, conversations with residents and business owners, and a workshop with local children, a shared vision emerged: a space that embodies love, welcome, and diversity. A bright, maintainable, and dry passageway that reflects the many voices of Wandsworth.
Findings about the underpass/ surrounding area from our preliminary engagement with local residents
A particular moment for us in defining our approach came from a workshop we ran with children, where one ten-year-old’s vision imagined the bridge with the words ‘say no to racism, say no to doubt’, with braille along the wall to allow for those visually impaired to read their message… (see below)
Images of some of the children's collages and the workshop
Our proposal was guided by:
Embedding the community: The River of Words was derived by our engagement which included large-scale surveying to in-depth oral histories and a paid work placement for 10-15 young people in the borough with an interest in the arts / the built environment to be part of the design team. Our approach, which goes from breadth to depth of engagement, sought to capture a range of experiences; to shift engagement from informing to partnerships; and to create meaningful opportunities for young people.
Responding to technical concerns: Our proposal responded to community concerns shared through our initial engagement: that the tunnel is overwhelming, dirty, wet and drippy and feels unsafe; that the communities on both sides of the underpass appear divided; that there are maintenance concerns for the underpass; and that there is a desire for residents’ stories to be told by the residents themselves.
Celebrating unique and shared histories: By unifying and celebrating diverse stories where the various borough’s communities are represented on their own terms, the design aspired to foster curiosity and understanding, to create a space where all voices are embraced and feelings of belonging can emerge: an opportunity to learn about each other’s backgrounds and deepen a sense of community.
Creating a bright and artistic space: As commuters move through the tunnel, they would encounter waves of phrases, words, and stories that flow in the direction of the historic brook and mirror the motion of water—letters expanding and contracting in waves, phrases rippling across the wall, and words appearing and fading. Each section of the tunnel will be dedicated to themes that resonate with, and are informed by, residents of the Borough.
Our ‘River of Words’ sought to transform this once-divisive tunnel into a meaningful passage, shedding its past as a “Bridge of Sighs” to become a symbol of shared purpose, pride, and community voices.