Old Billingsgate

With Allison Swartz and Hanbyul Oh.

“History is not the worship of Ashes but the preservation of fire.” - Gustav Mahler
The site that the old Billingsgate fish market sits on in London, was the beating heart of London since it served as the Roman Port of Londinium until it was closed and privatized in 1990. In the site's two thousand years of near continuous history, the market existed in many different forms, all variations of an arcade of columns. In 1990 the building was made private and iron gates were installed between the symbolic arcades of the fish market. The goal of this project is to continue the intangible history of the site, by exposing the old surface of the market, with wireframe arcades running through the site as memories of the arcades in the past, and a market occupying the basement space below.