The Gardens Project is a multi-disciplinary team of leaders in art, design and horticulture, working with, and on behalf of, our North Kensington community.
Over the next year, we will build a beautiful new garden, and document our progress through this website. We will also make short films about the people who live here, celebrating their stories, and journeys.
Remembering the original gardens of Convent of Poor-Clares the Colettines, we propose to add a grid of beautifully handmade pots, in different shapes and sizes, with unique and exuberant plants, lifting all our hearts.
Bureau de Change (founder/directors Katerina Dionysopoulou and Billy Mavropoulos) has won several awards, including Architect of the Year (Sunday Times Awards, 2019), and the Manser Medal 2016 and 2019.
Bartlett graduate Katerina Dionysopoulou trained at Foster + Partners before joining Heatherwick Studio, where she led the teams designing the UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo (winning the Lubetkin Prize), and the iconic Olympic Cauldron for London 2012.
Billy Mavropoulos studied at the Royal College of Art, and trained at Foster + Partners, before working as independent design consultant for Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Selfridges. In 2010 he featured in Wallpaper* magazine as someone who will change the face of design within the next 30 years.
At the RHS we talk about transforming people's lives through gardening, and the healing powers of plants. As a London resident myself, interested in horticulture in urban spaces, I believe The Gardens Project can achieve something exceptional, vibrant, and diverse through intelligent and fun plant choices.
Matthew Pottage is the youngest curator ever to be appointed by the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, their 240 acre flagship garden, visited by 1.2 million people annually. Wisley employs 75-garden staff, 25 students, four apprentices and 100 volunteers. Matthew’s role is to oversee the plant collection, gardens in which they are displayed and all the staff and volunteers. He is also a BBC regular, on their gardening programmes.
I am mixing digital and analogue technologies on this project. High resolution 4k DCI digital video and audio to capture the wealth of stories of this extraordinarily diverse population. Analogue medium format film for the portraits. This has a timelessness that contemporary digital photography cannot replicate.
Hugo Glendinning has been working as a photographer and film maker for thirty years. His output stretches across the cultural industries from contemporary art collaborations in video and photography, through production and performance documentation to portrait work. He has worked with most leading British theatre and dance companies and is regularly commissioned by The RSC, National Theatre and Royal Opera House. He publishes and exhibits internationally.