Saltmarsh

Forty kilometres of path, seventeen signs, and one rule: nothing stands taller than the reeds.

Saltmarsh is a tidal reserve of a little over three thousand hectares, crossed by forty kilometres of path, about a quarter of which floods on a spring tide. The reserve had accumulated ninety-one signs over thirty years, in six different systems, several of which contradicted each other about where the paths went.

The brief said wayfinding. What we had to work out first was how much signage a landscape like this can carry before the signage becomes the thing you have come to look at. We surveyed every existing sign and mapped where visitors were getting lost. It was four junctions, not ninety-one. We proposed removing far more than we added.

Survey flight, February 2023. The channel network was traced from this series to produce the map artwork.

Junction 04, the busiest of the four where visitors were recorded turning the wrong way. One map plate, one direction plate.

Brent geese, October to March. Three panels are removed for the overwintering period and stored; their posts remain.

Seventeen signs replaced ninety-one. Nothing in the system stands above 1,100mm, which is roughly the height of the reeds at the end of the season, so the horizon is uninterrupted from every point on the path. Recorded wrong-turnings at the four problem junctions fell to near zero over the following season.