Ratcliffe Orchard

Introduction Cabinet Verses








The Ratcliffe Orchard is a new den of vice, a sink of misbehaviour - or rather a systematic consolidation of the illicit activities that have long existed in this place in a more disparate form. The complex is a carefully controlled environment, monitored and fortified; shops and casinos, brothels and drug dens.

The proposal begins with, and depends upon, a beautiful orchard, reinstated on the site where one stood centuries before. The orchard takes the place of a walled industrial estate - already unique from Ratcliffe's other fragments in its overt insularity - but retains the wall, inside of which its fruit may be more effectively cultivated and protected.

Through propaganda, rumour, mixed messages, the locals are lured inside the walls, where their repressed desires and base impulses are piqued and indulged. A cup is proffered, its contents poisoned.

An extended complex of venues and hideaways are connected underground by hidden passageways branching from the Rotherhithe tunnel which runs directly below the orchard; a perimeter may be described with specific access points, inside of which the Company sees all. Streets are traps, labyrinths; perspectives distorted; visitors followed; money spent and dependence nurtured.




© No Spinoza
2008