ST. DUNSTAN IN THE EAST (London)
What is the role of historic sites in cities today?
How do we re-use them?
What deserves preservation? And what should we allow to fade?
The project investigates such questions through a design intervention at St. Dunstan-in-the-East, a ruined church in the City of London, now functioning as a public garden. Rather than preserving the site as a static relic or opposing the new to the old, the project proposes a model of progressive preservation -one that both safeguards and reinterprets the historical environment, while enabling future transformation.
The proposal reimagines the site as an archive of its own archiving: a layered space where history is not just kept but re-experienced. The archive is not limited to objects or records, but includes the very act of documenting, tracing, and interpreting the ruin -much like the evolving understanding that emerges from sketch to model and to final built form.
The intervention introduces a new topography that transforms the site into a “garden of archive”, revealing fragments of the original church, while composing new spatial narratives. The design consists of two primary elements:
- A new surface, forming the ground of the proposal, constructed to uncover traces and generate alternative readings of past events and urban change.
- A suspended monolith, inserted into the former nave, hovering above the ground. This object acts as a focal point, a space of concentration and reflection, bridging memory and projection.
Together, these layers form a collage-like composition -an architecture that neither erases nor imitates the past, but engages with it critically. The intervention offers not just a way of seeing the ruin, but a way of seeing the city itself: layered, evolving, and open to reinterpretation.
Credits
Design Team: Tasos Theodorakakis
Survey & 3D Scanning: Staff of B-Made Bartlett School of Architecture London & The Survey of London