A 210 square metre wildflower meadow built on a working Thames barge, moored within sight of the Tower of London moat. 5,260 plants across 52 species, 83% of them native to the UK, every one of them rehomed after the run.
Burberry · Tower Bridge · London, UK · 2022 · Luxury and beauty · Design; Production; Project Management
Burberry sponsored Superbloom, the planting of the Tower of London moat with twenty million flowers. As a senior signatory of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the brand needed a physical presence on the river that read as part of the event rather than an advertisement beside it. The work began with a series of Pie Factory workshops bringing together Burberry's sustainability, creative, marketing and production teams to define what sustainability meant for the brand's events, and what it should look like in public. The Floating Meadow was the answer to that question.
A planted meadow on the deck of a working Thames barge, so that no vessel was built for the job. 5,260 herbaceous plants, grasses and native wildflower turf were grown on 123 tonnes of soil over a demountable timber frame, with 130 square metres of wildflower meadow turf and a one metre perimeter path of self-binding gravel running 88 metres around the outside. The planting scheme was specified alongside the moat's own so that the two read as a single gesture across the water, and chosen for species that could be lifted and replanted rather than composted.
The Burberry lettering was cut from Stormboard, a closed-loop recycled plastic panel made in the UK from 1.4 tonnes of plastic recovered from UK waterways, the equivalent of 58,000 plastic bottles. The logo itself was picked out in 200 white Alpine Aster and 200 white Sea Thrift. Steel edging was welded rather than glued and the frame bolted rather than nailed, so every component came apart in the order it went together. Nothing was painted. Nothing was branded on the structure.
A meadow is heavy, and a barge has a limit. The installation came to roughly 150 tonnes against a vessel capacity of 600, and it had to be balanced so the barge sat level when afloat, with the substrate calculated saturated rather than dry, because the Thames does not offer a dry week on request.
Then the river itself. The meadow was built dockside at Pierhead North Bank over five days, towed to Mark Brown's Moorings on the morning of the Queen's Jubilee, moved again to Butler's Wharf six days later, and de-rigged back at Pierhead. At the first mooring only three people could board the pontoon at once, reached by boat. Public access at the second was capped at thirty visitors at a time in twenty minute slots, with no electricity on the meadow at all. Every one of those numbers was a design constraint before it was an operational one.
Zero waste to landfill or incineration. All of the plants and some of the soil were rehomed to The Listening Space, an NHS community garden in North London, and its community networks. 1,000 seed maps were given out to visitors, printed on 100% post-consumer waste seed paper with water-based inks. 950 people visited across the run, and the activation became Burberry's most viewed content capture piece on social media to that date.
Following it, Pie Factory was asked to write Burberry's internal framework and guidelines for sustainable events and activations, covering materials, suppliers, venue sourcing and recycling, with a carbon measurement tool. Those guidelines are now in use across Burberry events globally.
Carbon figure withheld pending final reconciliation. Material, waste and planting figures tracked by Pie Factory's in-house sustainability team. Indicative, calculated in house, not independently audited.
Stormboard closed-loop recycled plastic panel. FSC plywood. Mild steel edging. Self-binding gravel and MOT Type 1 sub-base. Reclaimed Euro pallets and log rounds. Seed paper from 100% post-consumer waste. Water-based inks. Low VOC paint at 16g per litre. Plants, soil and wildflower turf.