British studio Hugh Broughton Architects has completed a timber enclosure made of interlocking larch slats to screen off a pump house for west London’s Kew Gardens.
Named Kew Pumping Station, the oval-shaped structure sits above an underground tank storing 280,000 litres of water, built as part of a new irrigation strategy at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Richmond.
The pump house will ensure the irrigation network has a constant reliable “heartbeat” to keep gardens thriving at the world-famous horticultural institution, which is home to over 40,000 living plants.
With the pump house visible from both a public footpath and architect Marks Barfield’s elevated tree-top walkway, an attraction that opened in 2008, the enclosure is designed by Hugh Broughton Architects to conceal its machinery and add visual interest to the site.
“The design had to be functionally efficient, economically designed and, as a piece of small architecture, had to achieve a level of sensitivity and design quality worthy of its famously beautiful surroundings,” project architect Steve McCloy told Dezeen.
The studio’s solution was to wrap the pump box in a filigree timber screen, tilted to soften its mass in the gardens and reflect the sunlight. The timber will gradually age to a silver colour over time.
Kew Pumping Station’s shape started with the idea of a fallen leaf before evolving to take different botanical forms.
“The side elevation of the enclosure, which is made up of an array of interlocking self-similar timber modules, recalls the palm fronds that are gloriously displayed in Kew’s most iconic glasshouse,” added McCloy.
Hugh Broughton Architects designed the steel and larch enclosure as a “kit-of-parts” fabricated off-site by manufacturer City Axis and timber specialists Xylotek, allowing it to be installed quickly by hand in just a few short weeks last summer.
The gardens were previously reliant on mains water, prompting the need for a new irrigation strategy, developed by the design team in collaboration with horticultural and capital projects teams at Kew Gardens.
As part of this new strategy, Kew Pumping Station was moved from its previous location in a back-of-house yard area a short distance from the tank, after repeated problems and breakdowns with the machinery. It is now positioned directly above the water tank.
Completing the project, botanical horticulturists at Kew Gardens have created a wildflower meadow to surround the structure. This is hoped to add colour to the site and, in turn, boost biodiversity.
The horticultural team is also developing ways to maintain plants in the gardens in the face of climate change. According to the director of gardens Richard Barley, the new pump house marks a “significant step forward” in its irrigation infrastructure development.
“Having a reliable and efficient pumping system to distribute the water stored in our underground tank is an essential element for our landscape resilience,” he said.
Alongside Kew Pumping Station, other recent projects at Kew Gardens include the Queer Nature exhibition, which it held in its Victorian glasshouse.
Elsewhere, Temperaturas Extremas recently completed a tree-like water tower that provides shelter for nesting birds in Luxembourg and CF Møller created a flood-defence system that doubles as a nature park in Denmark.
The photography is by Dirk Lindner.
