Sevenoaks Wetland Trust | 428
Location
Kent
Type
Competition
Year
2017
Client
Coniston Cricket Club
Our vision for the new building is of a series of dark simple organic forms sitting quietly by the lakeside extending the current facilities with the minimum additional floorspace to provide a diverse experience to new groups of visitors. The building does not try to compete in any sense with the delicate environment of the SSSI, but merely to offer generous, flexible, interior and exterior spaces for quiet enjoyment. We attempt here to reinforce the ethos of the brief, and we place real value on the existing landscape and it’s ability to take one out of oneself, relax, and enjoy the pleasures of nature. The broken line of timber buildings separate out the ambitious scope of the brief into distinct parts which can be phased, with the majority of visitors using the most northern building just south of the refurbished Tadorna bungalow, and its re-landscaped garden. Other gardens are created between the sections. The central building houses the wellbeing and staff spaces, with the final phase a storage building and workshop with secure parking and recycling. Materials and building elements, are chosen to be sustainable, made off-site, pre-fabricated, therefore limiting noise and disturbance during construction. This approach also reduces on site construction time, and allow for a carbon negative, super insulated, high performance, and a low energy ‘passive’ design solution. The external living wall and fence towards the lake provides additional habitat for insects and invertibrates, screens the increased numbers of visitors from the lake and reduces the visual impact of the larger building. We also limit the external openings for security and maintenance reasons. The black zinc roof incorporates rainwater harvesting technology with underground rain water storage, solar heating panels to provide hot water, photovoltaic panels to provide electricity, and glazed roof lights for high internal levels of natural light, reducing the requirement for artificial lighting and energy.
Drawings
