The Cleaning Shed

Around the 1860s the Longhedge train manufacture established in this area of south London. To meet the company’s needs, a series of long parallel sheds were built between 1880 and 1900. These bricked sheds comprised a vast indoor space for the manufacture of trains until the dissolution of the Longhedge works in the 1930s to then become the Stewart’s Lane train depot. After several additions, the Stewart’s Lane cleaning shed is now a massive 18600m2 building complex, which is still in operation for the cleaning and maintenance of Govia Thameslink trains.
To better understand the issues the cleaning shed may face in the ‘long now’ we looked into the future trend predictions to create an image of what the future may look like and speculated how this might affect the buildings occupancy levels. However, given the vast array of ways in which the cleaning shed could evolve over time we felt it was pointless to try and predict the outcome through our design. Instead, we decided to follow a single scenario through a fictional lens which demonstrates how a design manifesto that celebrates accumulation over time and the appropriation of remains from the past evolves through the years.
This project provides an alternative to the redevelopment approach taken in Nine Elms, exploring how taking responsibility for a longer now can inform design decisions. The speculative design proposal illustrates a way in which our theoretical approach and manifesto would play out through time.