Pertaining to Place
We wanted to set the autumn term projects around the symbiotic relationship seen all over the world between architecture, its materiality and place. As a quick fire research project, we divided the students into small groups and gave them a specific longitude on the globe centred around between the latitudes of 45º N and 51ºN. The project was called Parallels and the idea was to compare architectures from the point of view of their material use and climatic control, noting that the sun angles for each geographic area is roughly the same. The technical and aesthetic contrast between each was clear to see.
We followed Parallels with a design project set within the South Downs National Park and more specifically the extraordinary place known as Birling Gap, a few miles west of Eastbourne. The project was called Edge Condition. There is an existing visitor’s centre at Birling Gap, run by the National Trust. It provides shelter and sustenance to the many visitors who walk the Seven Sisters Country Park and motorists visiting the amazing beach with its shear backdrop of towering chalk cliffs. The building is literally on the edge and is being systematically dismantled as the cliff profile erodes away, sometimes metres at a time.
Edge Condition asked the students for proposals to rehouse the visitor’s centre within this amazing landscape setting. The idea was that the Parallels project should provide some jumping off points of exploration into the use of materials that pertain to place and what architectures were possible from that. The brief also asked the students to engage with climatic responses with exposure to wind, rain, ultraviolet radiation and in deed salt spray as well as a position on how the proposition would cope with rapid coastline erosion. The project also set the ethical question of what an appropriate level of development was for an area of outstanding natural beauty and delicate eco-systems.