CAFx - Wilderness St, Ilford by Mary Konstantopoulou

Wilderness St, Ilford

Mary Konstantopoulou

United Kingdom

Ilford is a diverse and growing neighbourhood of London. Access to green and public spaces in the heart of Ilford however, is greatly compromised. According to the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation, it features amongst the 10% most deprived areas for access to high quality local living environment. Wilderness Street is a temporary living urban landscape which was installed in Oakfield Road in Ilford in 2022, launching the town centre as a cultural destination at London's north-eastern fringe. Before large-scale urbanisation started from the C19, the Ilford, Barkingside and Hainault area was characterised by forests, fields and meadows. Our design strategy seeks to temporarily revive these lost landscapes. We have selected Uphall Camp Beacon, the former Royal Forest of Hainault and the Essex Grazing Marshes as blueprints for plant species and landscape character to be replicated by our proposal for Oakfield Road. The project advocates for the preservation of ancient natural landscapes and their role in maintaining biodiversity and supporting well-being. The legacy strategy will see all planting including trees and shrubs given away to community organisations and Ilford residents at the end of the project. Enticing local people to adopt the plants will see elements of the ancient Essex landscape re-instated in public places in Ilford, in peoples gardens, front gardens, planters and allotments.

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This short documentary follows a day in the life of Vic/Nike and Brynn - two non-binary, queer, trans folk who live near the town of Springfield, in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. In 2021, they bought twelve acres of field and forest to build a farm and collective housing for members of the community historically excluded from rural spaces, including but not limited to BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ and disabled folks. They imagine it to become a physical manifestation of the concept of commoning, where they wish “to see the redistribution of wealth and resources into the collective stewardship of community”. The film is a glimpse into the making of the first collective house, assisted by community members, as well as a tour of the forested land that they plan to build on and share in the future.

On the shore of the Caspian Sea

Baku is an industrial oil city and the country's primary export - oil and gas is sucked off from the Caspian Sea which has a significant contribution to the city's identity, infrastructure, design, and culture as well as its economy. The oil industry has been expanding and shaping the destiny of Baku for almost more than 5 decades now and without it, neither the city could be the way it is now, nor the country. The industry brings major challenges to the city during resource-demanding oil production by emitting alarming levels of greenhouse gases, polluting air and water bodies, degrading land, and mismanaging toxic oil waste. As a result of it, the Caspian Sea is highly polluted, and most coastal areas of the sea even have a hazardous level of toxicity for swimming. On top of everything, most citizens are very irresponsible with their trash around the coast and it adds up to the catastrophic pollution of the Caspian. The city’s major identity comes from the Caspian Sea, however, it is heartbreaking to see the trash and oil leakage pounding the shores of the 16 KM long Baku Boulevard when you walk along it. Due to the mismanagement of waste and lack of public awareness the shores are getting dirtier every other day and it is becoming impossible to find a clean spot to swim in the summer to survive the heat waves. Also, the privatization of the beaches is another challenge, and access to clean shores is becoming more and more commercialized and expensive to enter. Thus, access to swimming is becoming very exclusive for the working class and many had to bear the smell, inconvenience, and ugliness of public beaches.

In Search of Accidental Ecosystem

I walked along the road around the apartment, reflecting on the process of asking again how the city would have become our haven. In an apartment complex built in the 1970s, trees placed between unintended apartment street intervals create a middle park. The video shows people and animals resting together in the scene where trees placed in the path, not in a public park, create a park landscape. The tree had a buffering effect that absorbed the concept of an artificial building called an apartment as if rubbing it into nature.