Case Study
Yorkshire Sculpture Park

This February YSP was granted permission and £1.7m in Arts Council funding for a £3.8m visitor centre within the 500-acre Bretton Hall Estate, the showcase for work from some of the leading sculptors and artists of the 20th and 21st century. Feilden Fowles has designed the new centre for miminal impact on the site while intensifying visitor response to the landscape.

The building nestles into an impression left by a former quarry, and opens up a new focus and entrance to the park in an area that tends to be overlooked by the YSP’s 500,000 annual visitors in favour of the main entrance’s extensive facilities, galleries and cafe, or the cluster of iconic sculptures by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth in the garden and lakeside, or the regularly changing exhibitions in the simple, industrial, shed-like Longside gallery.

The new building is announced by a large, rammed-earth elevation, richly striated and using earth from the site itself. Passing through the entrance visitors will find the landscape opening up in front of them, thanks to a visually porous, curving structure of a Douglas fir timber frame and extensive glazing.

The building will comprise a restaurant, ‘white cube’ gallery space, public foyer and a shop. Its structure and materials optimise both insulation and ventilation, with an air-source heat pump and a dense green roof, to be planted with moorland grasses to tumble over the edge of the building.

A pioneering, low-energy environmental control system will maintain optimal conditions in the gallery.

Client: Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Architecture: Feilden Fowles
Area: 395 sq m
Cost: £3.8m
Completion: Late 2017

Case Study
Avon Wildlife Trust Cabin

Avon Wildlife Trust was looking to create a modest, low-impact shelter and teaching space for its educational programme in a new nature reserve within the Avon Gorge, near Bristol.

HAB Housing commissioned Hugh Strange Architects to provide a semi-seasonal shelter that maximised enjoyment of the surroundings but avoided the use of glass, as vandalism has previously been a problem. Its response is a simple structure that mimics the typical off-the-shelf, agricultural shed, but adapts it to create something warmer and more welcoming. The timber-frame building is clad in timber panels, with galvanised-steel barn doors that take up the entire front elevation. These can be opened up to allow full enjoyment of the vistas and fresh air.

A purpose-made Douglas fir roof canopy frames the dramatic views and offers shelter from inclement weather.

Simple plywood shelving and storage inside keeps the building workshop-ready. For flooring, Hugh Strange Architects took advantage of existing concrete slab in order to minimalise disruption to the site and keep costs low; the concrete slab was a leftover from the 12-acre site’s previous incarnation as a rubble dump and then as a sports ground. The Trust has spent two years transforming the site into a wildlife haven, with ponds, footpaths, wildflower meadows and more than 4,000 new trees. In the surrounding concrete, the team has planted native flowers in the cracks and trenches so that the manmade will slowly be reclaimed by nature.

Client: Avon Wildlife Trust and HAB Housing
Architect: Hugh Strange Architects
Floor area: 72 sq m
Cost: £30,000
Completion: April 2015

Case Study
Ty Bywyd, The Life House, Wales

It’s been five years in the making, but finally John Pawson’s response to a Living Architecture commission – to create a cutting-edge, modern day secular retreat in the Welsh valleys – is due to launch this summer. Living Architecture’s first property in Wales, Ty Bwyd (which translates as Life House) puts serenity and contemplation to the fore. The simple but luxurious building has been deeply influenced by Japanese design and the architecture of the Benedictine monks (Pawson has previously designed a modern-day Cistercian monastery, so he knows what he’s doing). The house has been constructed from some 80,000 handmade Danish bricks – black on the outside, white on the inside.

These are combined with pale polished-concrete floors, Douglas fir timber ceilings, doors and furniture. It features a spacious living area, large bathrooms and bedrooms, and good storage to maintain the minimalist lines of furniture and fittings. There are areas that cater for both communion and solitude – for the latter, there is a contemplation chamber, buried deep in the hillside, devoid of views and light, as well as an exterior one, where the meditative can calm the mind with views of the Welsh mountains.

A sequence of walks have been curated by the artist Hamish Fulton, leading directly from the house. John Pawson’s verdict? ‘I wanted to create a sanctuary where people feel at home, but never insulated from the elemental character of the surrounding landscape,’ he says.

Client: Living Architecture
Architect: John Pawson
Area: 260 sq m
Completion: Summer 2016