# The Bladders: A legacy project by Jonathan Walker

Another project from the 2010 President's Medals would be The Bladders by Jonathan Walker for the University of Westminster (one more !). This project introduces an half organic, half industrial architecture supplying the City of London with a new series of water cistern that adapt their sizes to the amount of water contained inside of them.

Here is the text written by Jonathan:

The project is a model for the extension of London’s ailing water treatment cistern, and thus is a response to the classification of London as a city of ‘serious water stress’. The proposal looks towards the date 2031 when London’s reservoir cistern is expected to be unable to meet demand and when projected shifts in our climate will bring hotter, drier summers.
Inspired by natural membranes and tensile structures, the project envisages a municipal water treatment system located on the London Olympic Park. HOK/Peter Cook’s Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects are given a purposeful and sustainable legacy. The stadium's outer structure and seats are reused in the proposal and the remaining basin cradles a pair of giant bladders storing water of a similar quantity to the regular reservoirs further up the Lea Valley. The Aquatic Centre shelters an anaerobic digester stomach and other components of the water screening process.
The Bladders return a segment of the Lea Valley back to its role before the ‘Olympic invasion’, as a ‘backyard’ for Londoners. The valley acts as a void, dividing East London from the main body of the city, and has always been a place where the city's utilities can be hidden away and one can escape the confines of the city streets. The spectacle of the Olympic Games is substituted for a performative utilitarian architecture to enhance the capital’s ‘life-support system’.
The Bladders lie bloated and endlessly reshaping depending on how much water is in them. The large membrane structures sag, fold, swell and flatulate. They are sustained by a set of instruments performing specific operations across the site. The instruments' residual spaces and the watery bodies upon which they operate present a bizarre architecture where, alongside utilitarian function, performance and recreation can be sought.

tutors: Susanne Isa, Sasha Leong & Markus Seifermann

Front page news in the local London newspaper - A legacy project for the Olympic Park

General Arrangement Plan

Instrument No.4 - Retractors - used to spread open and grip onto skin for repair


Flacid Skins - aesthetical transformation of membranes through lack of water


General Arrangement Section

Instrument No.1 - Flank Buttresses - stabilizes the Bladders and controls the inflation and deflation of the inner chambers

Plan and Section of a Flank Buttress showing conoid and reclaimed Olympic stadium seats
Instrument No.2 - Thirsty Walls - performative water collection

Instrument No.3 - Clamps: Draw-off Towers - controlled draw-off of water reserves. Clamps avoid over-topping and maintain structural stability of the Bladders

Instrument No.5 - Dilators - allow access to narrow passages

Section through principal Bladders showing deflated inner chamber


Narrow rift passage
Instrument No.8 - Digester Stomach - separated waste products are digested anaerobically

Illuminated at night - view from Instrument No.10 - Methane Capture Membrane