From Thames to Eternity

The benches in front of St Paul’s Cathedral are cut from granite that held back the Thames for 150 years. The plinth beside them is printed from what the saw removed.

The granite comes from Joseph Bazalgette’s 1870 river wall, taken down during the Thames Tideway tunnel works and reused by CSK Architects and The Bartlett, UCL, as public seating for the City of London. The stone cut away in shaping the benches was collected, crushed to sand and used as the aggregate for the plinth. Designed by OZRUH and engineered by formDP, it was printed in seven parts at the Innovation Park Zürich, then assembled, post-tensioned and grouted on site. The result is a single monolithic object. Bronze plates set into its top carry the commemorative text: where the stones came from, and how they got here.