Improvements at Altab Ali Park are part of High Street 2012, initiated by Design for London with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to enhance and celebrate a series of interconnected high streets that link the City at Aldgate to the Olympic Park at Stratford. The stonemasonry department of London’s Building Crafts College has made a significant contribution to the project.

More than £1million worth of improvements at Altab Ali Park, intended to make it a more welcoming public space, are part of High Street 2012, an ambitious programme initiated by Design for London with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to enhance and celebrate a series of interconnected high streets that link the City at Aldgate to the Olympic Park at Stratford.

Last month (12 March), the redesigned park was re-opened by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman. Among the features of the Park is carved Portland limestone ‘furniture’ designed to resemble archaeological remains. It was made by the stonemasonry students of the Building Crafts College in Stratford, London.

The whole of High Street 2012, which includes more stonework from the Building Crafts College, is due to be completed in May, ahead of the start of the Olympics on 27 July.

Opening the redesigned Altab Ali Park, the Mayor said: “I am pleased to unveil the new look Park which visitors will benefit from greatly.” He said the Park and Whitechapel Road, as part of High Street 2012, would help create a lasting legacy from the 2012 Games for Tower Hamlets.

Originally, it had been thought the Olympic marathon might come along this route and the intention was to smarten it up as the attention of the World fell upon it. In fact, the marathon will take a different route.

What is now Altab Ali Park was the site of the 14th century

St Mary Matfelon Church, the original White Chapel from which the area takes its name.

The park was re-named in memory of Altab Ali, a Bangladeshi clothing worker from the area who was murdered in a racial attack in 1978. His death marked a turning point, as 7,000 people marched from Adler Street in Whitechapel to Trafalgar Square to demand police protection for the Bengali community. This culminated in the National Front being forced out of the area and a Shaheed Minar (which translates as ‘martyr monument’) being erected in the Park.

But the Park had become unwelcoming to many people. It was well used, but lacked the design and ‘furniture’ to accommodate that use. It was often taken over by large groups of young Bengali men from the business schools in the area. They congregated on the play equipment or sat on the Shaheed Minar, which dissuaded others from using the Park.

The architectural practice chosen to reclaim this public area for the whole community was muf. It was Cristina Monteiro at muf who approached the Building Crafts College for the stonework the practice wanted for the Park. Katherine Clarke, an Artist Partner with muf at that time and, as the lead designer, was instrumental in getting Altab Ali Park built.

“Our ambition,” Katherine Clarke told NSS, “was to make accommodation for all the users of the park without prioritising one over the other, and to understand the site as a microcosm of the wider neighbourhood of this part of London where, historically, many different cultural, religious and political influences have shaped the fabric and the people who live here.

“The design is conceived as a matrix of the religious history of the site and of the secular, making a setting for the Shaheed Minar, a spatial trace of the realm of faith and an acknowledgment of the attachment to place; to landscape.”

The design makes a setting for the visible remains of the churches on the site and traces the invisible (but known) history of the churches and churchyard that were there over the centuries. There was, of course, an archaeological dig carried out (in conjunction with the Museum of London and with the help of local school children) before work started.

The site had been intersected by a landscape setting for the Shaheed Minar monument. The renovation of the Park has brought the two aspects, the old Churches and the newer monument, together, so that these two elements are used to create a place that remains a commemorative park with a strong identity, while still offering space for play and repose – for all generations.

The key move was to create a new east-west route through the park by creating an elevated walkway that can also be used as south facing informal seating.

This 38m long walkway-cum-seating traces the edge of the last church that stood on the site (from the 18th century) and makes a social space with views back across the park to the Shaheed Minar monument framed by a landscape that has new lighting, paths and groves of silver birch and pine trees.

The Portland limestone pieces from the Building Crafts College mark the fragmented footprint of the previous churches – because as well as the original 14th century White Chapel there were also 16th and 18th century successors on the site.

These stone pieces are designed to delight all generations. One, for example, is a table with a board made of Kashmir Gold and Carrara Marble set into it for a game called carrom. The stone it stands on has been designed fairly loosely as if it were from a piece of string coursing. Another has grooves snaking along it so children can use it as a track to roll their marbles down.

Supervising the carving at the Building Crafts College – and doing some of it himself – has been Nigel Gilkison, head of stonemasonry. He told NSS: “The students took the architects’ sketches, made them into working drawings, got them signed off and produced the stone. There are 14 stones in the park – the largest is 3.6tonnes.”

And everyone was so pleased with the work that the college was asked to produce more stonework for other parts of the High Street 2012 project. NSS hopes to bring you another report about that after it has been installed in May.

The architects approached the Building Crafts College because the college was inaugurated, through the Carpenters’ Livery Company, by the 19th century philanthropist Sir John Cass, who is buried in what used to be the graveyard in Altab Ali Park. London stone specialists PAYE had also been working on various parts of High Street 2012 for more than a year at that point and many of their masons have attended the Building Crafts College.

Katherine Clarke said she was glad muf had decided to approach the Buildings Craft College. “It was such a pleasure to work with them,” she says. And the feeling was mutual. Nigel Gilkison says the various architects at muf they spoke to had been “spot on” with the students, taking them to their offices and on-site, explaining the larger concept of the project and how the ideas had developed. It had given the students a great opportunity to gain experience of working closely with architects.

He said that while the stonework was supposed to look as if it had originally been part of a building, it was very much stylised to make it suitable for its broader role in the Park. And, he says, the College did charge a commercial rate for producing the stone.

As well as the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, attended the re-opening of Altab Ali Park.

He said: “Altab Ali Park has such a rich history, which reflects so many different eras of London’s past. Now it is a wonderful space which will be used long into the future and is a fantastic example of the legacy we are building for neglected public space in London ahead of, and long after, the 2012 Games.”