Green is the new black

Move over, Robert Smithson! Make way, Walter De Maria, Charles Jencks, Andy Goldsworthy et al! Europe’s largest example of land art does not reside in a far-flung location, the grounds of a museum or in a sculpture park. Instead, the four giant manmade conical mounds of Northala Fields—the largest being 26 metres high—lie adjacent to the A40 arterial road in Northolt, west London. Set in more than 27 hectares of public park, the looming earthworks offer a much loved local amenity and dramatic landmark, even if the art world hasn’t yet fully grasped their artistic significance.

“We came up with a project that no one can still believe happened,” says Peter Fink, the artist and creative driving force behind the project, which is located on what was a flat, featureless, derelict tract of outer London wasteland. It officially opened as a park by the mayor of Ealing, the borough where Norholt is located, in September 2008, taking its name from the 11th-century Domesday Book description of the Manor of Northolt.

Born in London but raised in Czechoslovakia, Fink studied engineering in Prague, philosophy at University College London and sculpture at St Martins. He has held teaching posts at the Architectural Association and Bartlett School of Architecture.

Fittingly given his multifaceted experience, he isn’t too bothered with categorisations. “The most important question for me over the past 40 years has been, does an artwork have to be part of an art world system that feeds into entertainment, cultural tourism and art markets, or can it be part of a bigger agenda for social and environmental change?” he says.

With its four hills acting as a natural shield from the noise and pollution of the one of London’s busiest roads, and planted throughout with low maintenance, wildlife-friendly vegetation, Northala has already won many awards. These include a Green Flag, the most prestigious international community award for parks and green spaces.

Indeed, so much is it loved that, in contrast to many London parks, Northala is almost entirely litter and graffiti free. “The maintenance budget never gets fully spent—people feel a psychological ownership of the place,” says Fink, who was in close consultation with the surrounding communities of Northolt for two years as he developed the scheme. “I spoke to literally thousands of people,” he recalls. “And that created a huge energy behind the project, which took it through its more bumpy moments.”

What is also exceptional about Northala is that, despite its colossal dimensions, its environmental impact has been extremely small. Equally astonishing is that it cost virtually nothing to create. In each case this is because its mighty mounds are built almost entirely out of recycled rubble and waste generated by three of London’s biggest civil engineering projects of recent years: the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium, plus the building of White City’s Westfield shopping centre and Heathrow Terminal 5.

These major projects were gearing up at almost exactly the same time as Ealing council was planning its new park, and Fink cannily realised that they would generate enormous amounts of what is known in the trade as “spoil”—excess material which would need to be disposed of. “We offered to take all this spoil at our site, charging between £70 and £90 a lorryload,” he explains, adding: “This meant that the developers only had to haul it a few miles down the road rather than driving more than a hundred miles out of London to the nearest landfill site.”

From August 2004 more than 165,000 lucrative truckloads of demolition materials were delivered to Northolt. (To reduce the effect on surrounding communities, and as part of Fink’s commitment to involve locals in the genesis of the park, it was agreed that this haulage was to take place outside of school dropoff and pickup times.) The move meant that, as well as making the Northala project sustainable, the overall carbon footprint of Wembley, White City and Heathrow Terminal 5 was also massively reduced.

Now, as part of the 360-degree London panorama offered from the summit of Northala’s tallest mound, you can observe the distinctive profile of the new Wembley Stadium in the distance—knowing its waste material was put to good use.

However, creating Northala’s hills was not a simple matter of piling up rubble. All the spoil had to be carefully tested for contamination and then, when it was deemed toxin-free, the crushed bricks and concrete were used as the basis for the mounds. The soil, meanwhile, was sorted into acid and alkaline, with the final planting organised accordingly—accounting for the flourishing drifts of wildflowers that cover the hills of Northala throughout the year.

Northala’s marriage of environmental awareness with a keen artist’s eye is also evident in another functional motif: the boulders of salvaged concrete contained in robust “gabion” steel cages and spread throughout the park. These cages form more than a mile of low-lying walls that punctuate and choreograph the landscape, while also acting as seating and emphasising the curves of the spiral path as it snakes up the tallest hill.

What’s more, hardwood timber taken from all the building debris has been used to create more seating and litter bins, while six lakes have been created on site, featuring fishing piers formed out of sifted and recycled plastic.

“All these elements cost next to nothing and they will last for more than a hundred years,” says Fink.

Whether you want to consider Northala Fields as an artwork, a public amenity, a wildlife sanctuary, a vantage point from which to view London’s landmarks or simply a nice place for a walk and a picnic, this visionary project needs to be celebrated. It is an inspirational example of how art can be both integral to, as well as integrated with, progressive new forms of social and environmental thinking.