This work stages a dialogue between the wild growth patterns of nature and the building blocks of a rational culture. Half of the research has been guided by the deep time-scales of London’s 8.4 million trees, and the river flows and tributaries that animate its life underground. The other half draws from the paradigm-shifting lineage of architecture and the vessel form, innovations that forever changed how life would be housed, understood, and made ritual.

Xylem Drift consists of four parts, each an impression of burr wood’s effervescent, spiky, and almost alien choreography as it is carved and built into scenes progressively honing in on Triton Square’s coordinates. The series traces patterns of growth and formal innovation through time, from the branching fractals of pre-settlement wilderness to the standardized stacks of our built environment.

Part 1: Like sacred masks, these five forms evoke the silhouettes and spirit of a forgotten forest. Their gnarly ethereal surface, suggesting living skin and veins, reminds us of the rooted fungal networks below and the fractal branching above.

Part 2: As Neolithic communities began to settle the London area around 5,000 years ago, they cut down sections of woodland amidst the valleys and river-corridors carved into the landscape by glacial melt-water. The resulting network of tributaries, flowing in and out of the Thames, would eventually be built over and come to be known as the Lost Rivers. The Tyburn and the Fleet flank what we now know as the Knowledge Quarter.

Part 3: Here a formal study of vessels (ancient and newly invented) bears witness to the scientific revolution. This chorus of 16th century beakers, bottles, and goblets sound a hymn to the study of life happening in the Knowledge Quarter today, and the social gatherings that took place at the nearby Tottenhall Manor from around 1540.

Part 4: The final piece speaks to the standardization of modern life, communication, and understanding through science. It embodies an institutional architecture––its mass and heft articulating the accumulated weight of knowledge, and the unshakeable role networks like the Knowledge Quarter play today. The outer walls contain but cannot suppress the dynamism within.

Commissioned by 1 Triton Square by British Land and Royal London Asset Management. Curated by New Public in partnership with Cockpit Studios