This project proposes a small pavilion within St. John's Churchyard in Hackney located at the west gate of the walled garden. The walled garden was contsructed in the 1960s on part of the the cleared graveyard; it has recently been redeveloped and is now predominantly a children's play area. The main entrance is the south gate with the west gate (the site of this project) only occasionally open. The west gate opens onto a passage running north-south and connecting the part of the churchyard around the late C18th church of St John-at-Hackney with that around the site of the now mostly demolished medieval church of St Augustine. This passage is a fairly busy pedestrain thoroughfare for people cutting through the churchyard from Narrow Way towards Lower Clapton Road.
Opposite the west gate the passageway widens out slightly. Facing the gate are an untidy selection of cleared gravestones. Whereas many of these in the churchyard are beautifully set out these give the impression of having been dumped there against the wall in this forgotten corner; several are broken and this comes across as a cemetery for gravestones.
Drawing a section through the west gate reveals a strangely potent relation between the life of the playground and the abandoned gravestones. This is heightened by it being the west gate - at the end of the day's play the sun sets (roughly) over the gate. It is not hard to read (construct) a description of the passing of time and of birth and death into this although as the gate is rarely open this relation is hardly noticeable.
The design proposal is for a pavilion which articulates this relation even when the gate is closed. Using a simple mechanism, 2m high hanging weights move above our head on the east-west axis from the gate to the graves suggesting the relation between the two worlds by the direction of their movement. They collect above the gate within the pavilion and leave, slowly, on the track. The exact movements of the weights are determined by the movement of people on the north-south passageway - a weight moves at roughly a 10th of the speed as a walking person for the duration that person is within the narrowest section of passageway (with the furthest advanced weight moving first, the second only moving when a second person enters and so on). Movement is used to create a spatial analogy between the weight and the passerby who is located by this within the now articulated axis connecting playground to graveyard.
drawings: http://picasaweb.google.com/bensweeting/HackneyChurchyard2010#
