Rafter Walk Celebrates Award Win

Rafter Walk has been recognised with the Engineering Award at this year’s Building Beauty Awards, celebrating the project’s standout contribution to the built environment. The award, presented by the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, recognises exceptional projects that elevate how places look, feel and function.

Judges praised the boardwalk’s clarity and confidence, saying: “The simplicity allows the structure to speak for itself. Its drama comes from its elegant natural form and its historical allusions.”

Designed by award-winning architect Asif Khan, the red timber boardwalk was intended to “evoke the crossing of time” — and, just a year after opening, it’s now officially award-winning. Since launching with a wild and wonderful party attended by more than 2,500 people (among other creatures), Rafter Walk has quickly become a celebrated part of Canada Water’s evolving landscape.

A walkway made for nature and for people

Rafter Walk celebrates both the natural environment and the history that make Canada Water such a special place. The 170m walkway traverses wetland habitats created to boost biodiversity and provide a haven for nature — a collaboration between British Land, the London Wildlife Trust, Townshend Landscape Architects and contractors Galldris.

It offers people the chance to get close to wildlife without disturbing it. At night, clever lighting illuminates the walkway while avoiding light pollution for the creatures below.

The boardwalk’s red colour comes from an eco-friendly stain, chosen to avoid any pollution of the watercourse or impact on wildlife. The stained finish weathers more quickly than a painted one, and the plan is to re-stain every few years — part of an approach that prioritises kindness to the local natural environment over ease of maintenance.

Accessible by design

Rafter Walk is designed to be accessible to all. The three entrances are level with the pavements and carefully marked for those with visual impairments. Its gentle undulation and wave were planned with wheelchair users, parents with buggies and those with additional access needs in mind. Openings in the balustrades allow everyone to view the water and wetland environments.

Celebrating our heritage

Khan’s design also references the footsteps of the rafters for whom the structure is named. In the heyday of the docks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these skilled workers would hop between floating timbers unloaded from ships arriving from across the Atlantic, arranging them into rafts sorted by size, quality and ownership.

They would lash timbers together with coir rope or hammer in staples to form rafts that could reach more than 20 metres in length. Using long metal-tipped pike poles, they manoeuvred the rafts to timber ponds where the wood was kept to season. It was difficult and dangerous work — rafters risked being crushed or dumped into the water when baulks of deal shifted unexpectedly, amid busy docks teeming with moving vessels.

Rafter Walk also passes the Deal Porters sculpture, remembering another group of workers who prepared cargo for its onward journey. The wooden fins supporting the walkway recall the structures used to stack timber, and offcuts have also been incorporated into the artistic hoardings along Marker Way.