Design for a new landmark for Aldgate at the site of the original gate in the London wall, for The Architecture Foundation and the Livery Companies of London. The scheme comprises an industrial temple of cast iron amid a desert landscape of gravel and soft-pour rubber, taking its name from the latin phrase traditionally chanted at each papal coronation.

The scheme pays tribute to Chaucer’s tenancy in the gate as a tax collector, during which he found inspiration for the Canterbury Tales. We currently intend that a literary curator will select a cross-section of 30 modern Londoners from an online competition of blogs, 23 of whose tales will be selected to be reinterpreted in prose and each cast onto an individual column in our 6 x 5 grid. Seven omitted columns facilitate pedestrian flow across the island site, but also represent the 7 tales left unwritten by Chaucer. Two further tales which were left incomplete are represented as half-height columns, with gas burners installed at their heads.

As an inaugural opening event our modern pilgrims will be invited to an open-air summer banquet amongst the surreal ruins, in the shadow of the Gherkin, as Chaucer’s pilgrims once would have done. Subsequently, throughout the 2012 Olympic period, organisations will be able to charter the island on weekend evenings for similarly decadent celebrations.