From the Thames to Eternity

From the Thames to Eternity is a temporary reuse of fifty-eight granite stones removed from Joseph Bazalgette’s C19th Thames river wall at Victoria Embankment. London has no native stones, and these large blocks of granite could contribute to many projects and building life cycles in the City over the next thousand years and beyond. In the meantime, the stones have been placed at seven sites across the City to provoke discussion about circularity, material lifespan and cultural heritage at a time when stone can make a significant contribution to a more sustainable built environment.



The embankment river wall was built from many thousands of granite stones, sourced from quarries across the UK, mainly in Cornwall and Scotland. The resultant embankment is part of the iconography of modern London. Today the population has grown greatly, and the sewers are unable to cope with the increased demand. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is being constructed beneath the Thames to increase the system capacity. A few sections of river wall are being removed to enable the connection of the old sewer to the new, providing the stones for the project which weigh around one tonne each.



In a fortuitous twist, the use of these stones in this temporary re-use project has directly resulted in their next re-use in the permanent King Edward Square public realm project in the City. As a whole, the project both exhibits and amplifies the significance of what is a critical stage in the act of re-use, when materials are in limbo between one building life cycle and the next.