Week 1 - Who is a River?
A beginning traced in currents - following the Thames not to find answers, but to listen, to observe and to remember how water holds both history and change.
Introductions always begin with movement - a journey before understanding.
Our first week opened with a question that felt both poetic and elusive: Who is a river? The brief asked us not just to observe the Thames as a body of water, but as a living entity with histories, relationships and voices of its own. It set the tone for the year - one of reflection, interpretation, and sensitivity to the layered systems that define place. We began to consider how the river shapes those who live along it and how, in turn, people have sculpted and redefined its edges across time.
Travelling the river meant entering its rhythm – a slow unveiling of scale, texture and memory.
Our first site visit traced the river’s path by boat, departing from university and heading toward the O2. The Uber Boat journey offered a new perspective on the Thames – gliding between banks and shifting skylines, the city unfolding through reflection and light. What had always seemed static from above became fluid and connective. Each part along the route hinted at the complexity of this vast system: economic, ecological and deeply human.
Walking the river’s edge became an act of recollection - each step stirring fragments of the past.
From the O2, we continued on foot, following the Thames Path all the way to the Dial Arch pub at Royal Arsenal. The route moved through familiar territory and in that familiarity surfaced small echoes of the past - moments spent with friends, fragments of family visits, flashes of memory layered over the changing fabric of the city. The walk became both observation and reflection, a quiet reminder of how the personal is intertwined with the urban.