The Breakdown.
Geological Exibition and Laboratory 2022
Through the forest peaks a series of stone layers protruding up from the ground, looking solid and permanent. The main exhibition hall sits low in the landscape inviting light in from above giving the illusion of being underground in a cave held up only by stone. People sit eating their croissants looking out at the eroding landscape around them, held together by planted grasslands and revitalized forests. Outside, as the buildings fragment and the path descents down, geologists conduct their experiments on rocks collected from the cliffs. Suddenly, emerging from the forest a series of education spaces and rockeries appear teaching visitors how erosion is being managed on the site and what they can do to prevent erosion at home. Reaching the end of the path there is the tower. The tower represents the position the cliff once held and since receded away from. Moreover, the tower takes you down through the geological strata acting as a marker of time through the mega-annum.
Circulation, Viewing& Concept Diagram.
Main Exibit
Geological Lab
Teaching Centre
Descent Through Time
Sustainability.
Planning, and understanding the future of this site became a natural progression of the temporal theme of the building. Realizing THE BREAKDOWN will have a considerable impact on the site, the concept of succession, a theory initially developed by Henry Cowles and Frederic E. Clements, to let the disturbed site naturally recover. The process begins with planting simple meadow plants, such as native grasses, that will encourage the forest to grow back in time until it reaches its ‘Climax’ where the oak forest has completely healed. Succession as a planting strategy mitigates intense planting and develops the ecosystem healthily to evolve into a stable entity, surrounding the solid base that is the exibition.
Moreover, the tower, which acts as the eternal yardstick to measure the ersosion and sedimentation of the cliffs will experience significant programatic changes in its lifespan. Starting purely as a way to experience the cliffs as part of the campus and shifting in time to a freestanding measuring point that acts as a sactuary to local flora and fauna. Anticipating these changes promotes a vision of planning for the future, and understanding how to make architecture part of the landscape and be adaptable to the unkowns yet to come.
2023
2025
2035
2075