Habitat: Degree 51N/-0E

Installation, film and community collaboration with artist Susanna Round

Habitat: Degree 51N/-0E explores the relationship between urban landscape, community gardening and cultural memory. Developed by Michael Hrebeniak and Susanna Round through UCL East’s public engagement programme, the installation takes its title from the geographical coordinates of the lost Manor Gardens allotments, formerly situated close to the present campus. 

The installation combines a structure made from recovered waste materials with a miniature allotment. Children from St Winefride’s Catholic Primary School and the Little Manor Play Project participated in its design, planting and cultivation. Their involvement connects the work to the intergenerational exchange of gardening knowledge that characterised Manor Gardens, while its improvised construction recalls the allotment buildings assembled from reclaimed materials. 

An accompanying film explores the transformed pre-Olympic landscape, incorporating images from Mark Aitken’s This Was Forever (2007) and Emily Richardson’s Memo Mori (2009). The planted structure and moving-image work examine how the memory of a place can be sustained after its physical traces have disappeared.