SMALL ACTS: Construction, Habitation, Energy and Landscape

“(Learning) from yesterday, today acts prudently, lest by his action he spoil tomorrow”

“An Allegory of Prudence”, Titian, c. 1565-1570

In June of 2008, students of Unit 7 re-constructed a Timber Room inside a former agricultural shed on the Hadspen Estate in Somerset for the artists Hilary Koob-Sassen and Rut Blees Luxemburg. In response to this endeavour, the studio has been invited by Niall Hobhouse, the estate’s custodian to use the historic landscape of Hadspen as a site of further architectural exploration, experimentation and construction. To initiate our project, he has asked us a very direct question: What should a contemporary agricultural landscape look like and how should it work?

There are existing proposals for the densification of established settlements on the estate by Florian Beigel + ARU and Stephen Taylor Architects. The studio will make proposals for a third settlement in a more peripheral location that will attempt to establish a site for independent and sustained social and economic use. The settlement shall consist of a small factory/workshop, a combined heat and power plant, a garden and accommodation. Precedents for the ordering of differently scaled buildings shall be drawn from a diverse range of sources.

In anticipation of the major design project, students will be asked to design a belvedere or viewing platform for a site of their choice on the estate. The resulting proposals will then be re-sited to address issues of distance and scale, first in a jointly designed plan that addresses the broader landscape and then in a geometrically realised configuration around the existing Parabola Garden. An existing design for a belvedere will be constructed by the studio in the landscape utilising materials sourced from the estate in late March. Like Marcel Duchamp’s “Why not Sneeze, Rrose Selavy?” it is intended to be a speculation on gravity.

At a strategic level, the studio will address issues of water management, short life and long life crop growth and large-scale installations of micro-renewable technologies and test their impact on the landscape. Through research, calculation and observation, we will ask if it is possible to independently secure the energy provision for the whole of the estate, whilst maintaining the biodiversity necessary to sustain other forms of life. We hope this year to achieve a more developed understanding of physical, chemical, biological and human principles that frame and underpin architectural production and energy use.

Whilst acknowledging the interdependent relationship between the countryside and the city, and the many degrees of artificiality evident in rural landscapes, we hope to develop a respect for life with nature. To support this endeavour, we will make short field trips to other sites in Britain, including Orford Ness, Sizewell, Dungeness and the Upper Lawn Pavilion by Alison and Peter Smithson in Wiltshire.

We intend for all architectural and landscape proposals to be presented in a systematic manner in order that they may be interrogated for unintended consequences.