February 1953: hurricane-force winds combined with a spring high tide in an unprecedented storm surge reaching 5.6 metres. In a desperate response, 16 ferro-cement barges originally commissioned for the Normandy Landings were sunk to shore up the damaged flood defences, remaining abandoned on the Thames foreshore at Rainham ever since.

Launched in remembrance of the calamity 70 years on, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s prototypical 239th station is a buoyant and self-righting architecture, calibrated to withstand the same extreme weather conditions. Anchored to the fragmented layers of a turbulent site history, providing defence, security and conservation, yet erasing its presence amongst the fog and everchanging waterline, the aluminium assembly acts as a sentinel to the portents of tidal cut-off and rising sea levels.

The design for disassembly employs the pragmatism and adaptability of aluminium prefabrication first tested with the presbyopic erasure device: a kit-of-parts construction optimised for performance and maintenance among the concrete barges but configurable, mobile and readily deployable as an adaptable intertidal rescue station.