City and South London Railway

The City and South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first successful deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction. The railway was originally intended for cable-hauled trains, but owing to the bankruptcy of the cable contractor during construction, a system of electric traction using electric locomotives—an experimental technology at the time—was chosen instead. When opened in 1890, the line had six stations and ran for in a pair of tunnels between the City of London and Stockwell, passing under the River Thames. The diameter of the tunnels restricted the size of the trains, and the small carriages with their high-backed seating were nicknamed padded cells. The railway was extended several times north and south, eventually serving 22 stations over a distance of from Camden Town in north London to Morden in south London. Although the C&SLR was well used, low ticket prices and the construction cost of the extensions placed a strain on the company's finances. In 1913, the C&SLR became part of the Underground Group of railways and, in the 1920s, it underwent major reconstruction works before its merger with another of the Group's railways, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, forming a single London Underground line called the Morden-Edgware line. In 1933, the C&SLR and the rest of the Underground Group was taken into public ownership. Today, its tunnels and stations form the Bank Branch of the Northern line from Camden Town to Kennington and the southern leg of the line from Kennington to Morden. In November 1883, notice was given that a private bill was to be presented to Parliament for the construction of the City of London & Southwark Subway (CL&SS). The promoter of the bill, and engineer of the proposed railway, was James Henry Greathead, who had, in 1869–70, constructed the Tower Subway using the same tunnelling shield/segmented cast iron tube method proposed for the CL&SS.

Thamesplace: habiter et traverser la Tamise (Londres, GB)

Hestia Maillet-Contoz

Thamesplace habite et traverse un bras de mer tortueux dont les courants saumâtres et contraires entaillent Londres depuis ses origines telle une liquid history. La Tamise offre aux londoniens le spectacle perpétuel et discret de ses marées, dont le rythme et la présence scindent la ville en deux rives historiquement antagonistes. Les mouvements lents et répétitifs de la rivière se révèlent par des éléments fixes et mobiles, mus par l'énergie cinétique de l'eau. Thamesplace est une entité autonome et architecturale, un lieu, au creux du plus ample méandre de la rivière londonienne: entre le fastueux complexe culturel de Greenwich et la péninsule socialement contrastée d'Isle of Dogs. Thamesplace hybride le langage de la grande infrastructure et de l'espace public en théâtralisant une traversée, en-dessous puis au-dessus de l'eau, établissant ainsi une chorégraphie du mouvement avec la Tamise. Les barques et navires poursuivent sans entraves leur ballet incessant tandis que les piétons et cyclistes défilent ou dérivent entre Nord et Sud. Thamesplace réinterprète et amplifie les lectures d'un site, ludiques et démocratiques, où l'on s'y baigne, s'y prélasse, où l'on se restaure et se donne en spectacle. Enfin, Thamesplace conjugue les activités “tamisiaques” du passé avec les besoins de mobilité d'une population toujours croissante en rappelant les mots de R. Rogers: «[...] allowing the Thames to become a focus for activity rather than a sterile gulf between North and South London».

2016

Thamesplace: habiter et traverser la Tamise (Londres, GB)

Les circulations d'eau dans les massifs cristallins alpins et leurs relations avec les ouvrages souterrains

Les circulations d'eau dans les massifs cristallins alpins et leurs relations avec les ouvrages souterrains

Thamesplace: habiter et traverser la Tamise (Londres, GB)