The Marble Arch Mound – The Triumph That Never Quite Was
As someone who has been a critic of the Marble Arch Mound and as yesterday was its last day of opening it seemed only right that I head into town to visit it. Obviously, with the wall-to-wall media coverage about its final few days, there was a queue to get in. It was moving so not too bad and you didn’t need to have a timed ticket thankfully.
The Marble Arch Mound was meant to have opened last summer and be a significant boost to tourism to this part of Oxford Street as part of an overall £150m regeneration scheme run by Westminster Council but it has had many issues.
Aside from the obvious aesthetic issues – here’s my take on some of the wider fundamental problems that this project represents for the construction industry and clients:
Living walls, green roofs are easy to get wrong
There have been many examples where living walls, green roof-style projects have gone wrong and when this happens - it is clear to see – the plants and trees die.
Living walls tend to look great at the start but take a lot of ongoing maintenance including irrigation to keep them that way. Some examples where things have gone wrong are outlined in this piece by the Architects Journal magazine last year. And this point leads very well into my next point.
This project should have been led by a landscape architect
They understand, work with and have been trained in working and creating landscapes. They would understand how to navigate this type of project in this location and would be well placed to outline the risks and even if the scheme is viable. Having an understanding about how to create a temporary structure that enables flora and fauna to thrive, and flourish should have been a key element of this brief but sadly has been overlooked.
'Stararchitect' fever
The era where councils head to a household name architect to deliver prestige is still sadly here. Clients are often blinded by a name that they want to be linked to rather than choosing the practice that is best for the actual job. The fact that a very similar concept by the architect MVRDV was originally submitted for a Serpentine Pavilion as a concept 20 or so years ago which was subsequently scrapped should have been a warning. But it wasn’t.
Having a ‘Stararchitect’ on board undoubtedly gives kudos to a scheme and helps to secure those all-important newspaper column inches which would be a great help for a project that wants to bring crowds flocking back to the West End.
While working with well-known architects has its benefits it also means there’s a correlation with an eye wateringly high level of fees as you are capitalising on their immense brand/star power.
It was late and then it was opened prematurely
As more issues came to light with the Mound it seems like more money was literally thrown at it. This project should never have come to site in the first place, to be honest as it had so many red flags that were clearly missed.
And if you read the Council’s own investigation report Internal Review – Marble Arch Mound Report (Part 1) authored by their Chief Executive Stuart Love: “Many of the checks and balances which the Council has in place were circumvented in an attempt to deliver the Marble Arch Mound project at high speed and in order to obscure the actual costs.”
And then with the media spotlight on it rushing to get it open really did spell disaster for the flawed project.
The initial budget tripled
The budget of £2m leaped to £6m including operational costs. I do wonder how much it will cost to dismantle it too – there’s a lot of scaffolding to come down and keeping the site secure for 10 days until it’s dismantled will still require security and staffing.
Let’s be honest most superstar architecture firms don’t tend to be known for coming within budget or even producing designs that are buildable. Therefore, they’re not necessarily the best people to oversee the actual implementation of a construction scheme on site.
Quite often they come up with a crazy concept and it’s then novated (handed over to) to an Executive Architect firm with far more experience and skill in working with contractors and site teams to get things built. This doesn’t seem to have happened in this instance, so all the project management problems identified in Stuart Love’s interim report make sense.
Reputational damage from a mismanaged scheme
In summary, the Marble Arch Mound is an example of mismanagement of a flawed scheme with a client who ultimately just wanted to make the scheme happen regardless of logic and even bypass their own internal checks and controls.
It’s a stark lesson for what really shouldn’t be done when trying to innovate and try something new especially in a time where regeneration and getting an economic boost has become even more critical to our towns and cities.
Best and worst bits of my Mound visit
Anyway, here are my best and worse bits about my visit yesterday.
Best bits
The art exhibition by Antony James on the ground floor at the end was brilliant. We all really enjoyed it and it was nice to find it just after descending all the scaffolding of the mound. It all tied well together.
The scaffolding as you descend the Mound is constructed around is really impressive although it should be at a cost of over £1m.
It exceeded the level of footfall that it wanted to get. Over 240,000 visitors over the 200,000 target that Westminster Council wanted. This is a positive however the part that many were visiting to ridicule it probably wasn’t in the initial project brief!
Many of the wildflowers on the part adjacent to the stairway up were still alive – one woman behind us was actually grabbing handfuls of them and told not to by a member of staff.
The pigeons seemed to like one side of the mound and have a new home.
Worst bits
It has a really small viewing deck. After trekking up 136 steps (my 6-year-old counted) and for the cost I was expecting something quite frankly bigger.
The mound isn’t actually high enough to really see over anything was our big conclusion – it’s not even taller than the neighbouring relatively low-level building at the top of Oxford Street. And yes, I still stand by my earlier post that if I had to pay £7 quid to get into here – I’d rather pay a bit more and head to a rooftop cocktail bar on Park Lane.
Many of the trees were clearly dead or and some of the planting had come away and you could see what was underneath.
Anyway, that's my take on the Mound and I'd love to hear yours.
