'The Imitation Custom House' proposes a building in the River Thames adjacent to the existing 19th-century Custom House and speculates on an architectural methodology in which the Thames is the medium of construction. The project proposes an architecture whose construction is rooted in the ‘poetic’, whereby histories of the site are reinterpreted in the construction process. In the distant past, the Pool of London was animated by the tides which brought ships bearing exotic commodities; for the Imitation Custom House, the tides facilitate its production. Concrete is employed as a material for its dependence upon water.

The project asks how concrete might be used to deal with time in three ways: casting with and against an existing building, using temporary formwork as permanent architecture, and casting with concrete using the tides of the River Thames.

The notion of the ‘copy’ is challenged, and it is argued that more value might be afforded to a ‘copy’ that to its ‘original’ due to the process of its own production. The Imitation Custom House proposes that architecture might be concerned with the process of construction rather than with the resultant building.