Hollingbury Parkland – Material Flow and Modulation 

Hollingbury parkland – material flow and modulation – engages with architecture as transformation, performance, and a material representation of impermanence. The architecture blurs the lines between construction, usage and demolition or ruination whilst engaging materially with the landscape and local vernacular. 

The site, Hollingbury Golf Course and Hillfort, is perched above Brighton in the South Downs National Park. The landscapes transformation is entrusted to a group of craftspeople; a ceramicist, arborist, carpenter, papermaker and robitition. Working together these craftspeople not only construct and manage this new landscape but also produce wares to attract visitors.  Within the various workshops, the material effluence of each process is exploited by the other processes. For example, waste from the carpenter is used in papermaking; whilst waste from the arborist’s landscape management is used for firing the ceramicist’s kilns.  

Sensitive to the local ecology the construction of the parkland is continuous and experimental in nature meeting the needs of future endeavours as and when they are required. Impermanence is accepted and exploited. The architectures materiality also forms an inherent synergy with the landscape itself. Timber from the site’s woodland is harvested to form tree truck columns and waste flint from excavations become gabion foundations.

1:20 Material Flow Elevation Study 

Here clay and paper are activated by water to produce a material flow and modulation over time. The building fades in and out of the landscape as it is constructed and eventually is demolished or ruined. 

A Landscape of Deteriorating Models  

Formwork for Deteriorating Models  

1:2 Elevation Study 

The Beacon to Fragility