Virginia Overell

Herring Island has embankments running around its perimeter created by river dredging. These form the internalized condition of the island. Desire lines scaling the embankments drove me to introduce a series of release points across my scheme, enacted through landform manipulation.

The cemetery is a natural burial ground. Long burial patches accommodate multiple burials, encouraging a collective experience across temporalities. The planting grows as the body decays creating an undulating symbiotic cycle.

The hill temple is a series of north aligned linear structures. Their porosity allows the landscape to flow through; framing, obscuring, and revealing views.

Undertaking this project during a global pandemic drove the decision made in the northern tip of the island. For Arundhati Roy COVID-19 has created a rupture. That rupture is analogous to the rupture created in death.

I have cut a 1.5m section from the island, creating an island within the island. It cannot be accessed, but a series of steps and plateaus form a temple space directly confronting the new island’s retaining wall. A recessed area runs parallel to the cut, highlighting the threshold. Here we can occupy the fracture.

Finally, the embankment on the South west is sliced through creating a release that leads down to a boardwalk. The play on containment and release, interior and exterior is continued as you are immersed among the reeds.