Hanna Benihoud’s Sculptural Trail Through London’s Hidden Edges
From 6 May to July 2026, Borough Yards becomes the site of a new public artwork by London-based artist and architect Hanna Benihoud. Titled What Blooms Beneath, the installation moves through the London Bridge neighbourhood as a trail of sculptural forms, inviting visitors to look more closely at the spaces around them and to consider what might be growing just out of sight.
Rather than presenting a single, fixed encounter, What Blooms Beneath unfolds gradually. Benihoud describes the works as “blooms”, placed across Borough Yards like a series of visual clues. Some appear at key entrances, while others emerge more quietly from walls, arches and corners. The result is an artwork designed to be followed, encouraging the viewer to move slowly through the site and discover each piece in relation to the next.
The project began with spring, although not its most obvious or decorative expression. Benihoud was drawn instead to the hidden stages of growth: the underground life of mushrooms and fungi, the quiet activity that takes place before anything visible breaks the surface. These ideas inform sculptural forms that suggest the natural world without directly imitating it. The works feel organic, unfamiliar and gently otherworldly, as though they have appeared from within the architecture itself.
Material plays a central role in the installation’s delicacy and presence. Each sculpture is made from crin, a mesh-like, weatherproof fabric more commonly associated with millinery than large-scale outdoor installation. Benihoud and a team of weavers spent more than 200 hours producing the works, creating translucent structures that shift from light cream through pinks and deep burgundy tones. Their softness contrasts with the brickwork and railway arches of Borough Yards, allowing the installation to sit between strength and fragility, permanence and impermanence.
Rebeca Guzmán Vidal, Co‑Founder of Curate Real Estate, managers of Borough Yards, says: “Borough Yards is a place made for exploring, so What Blooms Beneath feels like a natural fit. Hanna has an incredible ability to read a place and respond to it. Her work encourages people to slow down, look more closely and notice the details that are usually overlooked. It brings a real sense of curiosity to the streets and arches, and we love how it invites visitors to experience Borough Yards in a new way.”
Some of the larger works reach two to three metres in height, while others are smaller and more discreetly positioned. At times they climb across brick walls as though naturally occurring; elsewhere they appear tucked beneath arches or spilling from architectural edges. This relationship between artwork and site is central to Benihoud’s practice. Having trained as an architect before founding her North London studio, she approaches public space not as a backdrop, but as an active material. The passages, corners, textures and histories of Borough Yards shape how the work is seen and experienced.
Borough Yards itself gives the project a distinctive context. Set within restored Victorian streets and historic railway arches near Borough Market, the neighbourhood is already a place of movement, discovery and layered urban memory. What Blooms Beneath responds to this atmosphere by softening the physical edges of the site and drawing attention to details that might otherwise be passed by. It asks visitors to look up, look around and notice how art can alter the rhythm of a city space.
For Benihoud, the project also continues a wider enquiry into who shapes urban environments and how overlooked spaces might be reimagined. Her work often explores the boundary between architecture, public life and storytelling, transforming tunnels, dead ends, squares and passageways into moments of unexpected encounter. In What Blooms Beneath, this interest takes on a quieter, more organic form. The fungi-like structures become a metaphor for growth in hidden places, for networks below the surface and for the possibility of beauty emerging where it is least expected.
Hanna Benihoud says: “As an artist and architect I have a passion for blurring the lines between the two disciplines. Making work within Borough Yards has been a unique opportunity to experiment with the physical edges of our city and sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole into the strange and captivating world of fungi that I may never find my way out of.
Supported by MTArt Agency and Borough Yards, What Blooms Beneath marks Benihoud’s most expansive installation to date and her first time working with crin. Temporary by nature, the installation nevertheless leaves behind a lasting question: what might cities look like if we paid closer attention to the overlooked, the soft, the strange and the quietly growing?
What Blooms Beneath is on view across Borough Yards, London, SE1 9AD, from 6 May to July 2026. Entry is free.
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