Camley Street Natural Park
October 2009
Camley Street Natural Park lies between the Eurostar rail tracks between paris and st. Pancras and Regents canal, it is on the edge of the new Kings Cross redevelopement, and is the site for our landscape architeture project, this term at university. As a start to the project we were asked to visit the site and record our initial emotional response to it. The site consists of several areas based around a pond, including young, light woodland, marshland and meadowland, the site is largely left to develop as nature intends, excluding a small mown area at the northern end of the site where there are two large cages housing rabbits. There is an advanced composting system used on the site and there are also alot of community based initiatives run from the site. The only buildings on the site are used to run these community endevours from and also as a classroom for schools in the Camden area, there are also tables outside the buildings where small plants grown on the site are sold to the general public. The photo below shows my emotional response to the site; the view over the river shoes the old warehouses the other side, so it is a view of industrialism framed by nature, i felt the site was a haven of calm and natural serenity in comparison to directly outside the site which is an extremely busy city transport hub, cold and grey and busy. The ripples in the water also reflect this feeling; there is some sort of change in the water surface at a point close to Camley Street, the ripples stop (reflecting the rush and movement of a busy city), and a calm pool starts (relecting the shelter and calm Camley Street provides).
