The Tidal Museum

Imagining a museum as a regenerative institution hosting scientific experimentation and education for London.

Story:

The Tidal Museum is a proposal for a new site-specific project which reimagines the museum as a symbiotic human-made organism existing within the ecosystem of the river Thames in England. Perched on the edge of the waterway, this versatile structure composed of tidal-interactive exhibition rooms, on-site research laboratories, satellite sampling vessels, and bioremediative sanctuaries creates a reactive part of the river ecosystem that aims to bridge the gap between conservation and cohabitation. It serves as a space for international and interspecies collaboration, while proposing a restorative and transformative way of relating to the environment.

The heart of the space is a series of interconnected chambers, which flood through multiple mechanisms according to the tide movements of the Thames. Acting as galleries, these platforms craft a narrative of the river as its water is pumped, filtered, sampled, and analysed. This ever-shifting interior offers a site for empirical analysis and climate rehabilitation. Reactivity is at the core of the museum: it is designed to address the pace of emergency, acting as a modular, modifiable base for rapid responses that constantly evolve with the tide of the Thames. Connected directly to the vast network of canals, satellite vessels act as data collectors, portable nature reserves, and in-situ messengers, both broadcasting the museum’s core message as well as gathering research without disturbing the riverbed. 


The Tidal Museum produces knowledge through public participation, institutional transparency, and long-term resilience. The museum functions as a conversation anchored in the specific location of the Thames and offers a new space for critical reflection. It supports and fosters projects that situate bodies of water within social, economic, and cultural contexts. The multiple functions of the building, ranging from filtration to nutrition, are complimented by a cross-disciplinary approach to produce research-driven exhibitions, workshops, and talks. The café also acts as an experimentation for the future of local food. All events hosted by the Tidal Museum aim to create dialogues exploring social responsibilities of academics, corporations, governments, and individuals in questioning how we can rethink environmental and social sustainability at various scales. These scales will examine the ecosystem from socio-economic and ethnocultural perspectives to propose new visions of community and participatory design that are as adaptable and fluid as bodies of water themselves. Beyond connecting a network of stakeholders investedin the educational, urban, and environmental well-being of the river, the Tidal Museum provides opportunities for interspecies collaboration by using bivalve friendly materials that allow live aquatic organisms to sustainably filter wastewater. The expertise, ideas, and discussions generated from the Tidal Museum will be shared and reviewed with policy makers in order to develop partnerships, training programs, and other initiatives that might contribute to long-lasting change.

Several questions are raised as global water scarcity, unpredicted floods, and rising sea levels increasingly define the needs of our societies: how can the shifting definition of museums reflect the fluctuations in a river’s tidal morphology? How could these shifts affect communities and their relationship to next generations? How can institutions improve their responses to continuously changing environments?

Team:

Alexander Taylor
Flora Weil
Grace Pappas
Rebecca Lardeur

Presented at:

Museums for Climate Action, ‘The Museum as Organism’
The Marine Frontier Symposium, ‘The Tidal Museum’