Dalston Mill

Dalston Mill, part of the Radical Nature exhibition, was created by architects EXYZT. The site was based on the Agnes Denes 'Wheat field-A Confrontation' 1982 where she planted a two acre wheat field in Battery Park landfill, NY. Dalston Mill recreates this on a smaller scale in Hackney, taking over a disused railway line and waste ground and filling the site with a 20m long wheat field and mill.
When I entered the site it felt like a secret garden. I walked though an arch knocked out of a wall and then was in the mill where they were producing bread and serving drinks at the bar. Then I was drawn to the wheat field surrounded by disused building and a garage and realised I wasn't in a disused site, another area of waste ground, but was in an urban retreat, the new place to be in Hackney, with people sitting in deck chairs and talking round the bar.
The site is a brilliant precedent for what we could do and should do to abandoned spaces in London, and the the site showed that it worked by the amount of people that were there and interested. It showed that if we reused our waste grounds by creating places that are interesting and that draw people to them, they wouldn't be abandoned and ignored anymore.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=9311