- Location: Sevenoaks Nature Reserve, Kent, UK
- Design Stage: RIBA Competition Entry
design statement
CONCEPT: TO BUILD A CLUSTER OF INTERLINKED ‘BARNS’
Drivers behind the concept:
• Site use: Using the 1990 satellite photo to identify the mature green area. It can be concluded that a significant part of the site growing trees of less than 25 year’s old. This inform the architect to establish sensible building coverage.
• existing tracks/path are reconfigured (in a ‘doing something and doing nothing’ manner) to achieve a simple loop to articulate the daily parking/service/and overflow parking.
• The estimated 800sqm building mass is broken-down into smaller ‘buildings’ to minimise the overall massing and volume. This also generate irregular edges clutching with their settings.
• To reflect the English Rural context, ‘Barn’ prototype is chosen to shape the building, which is traditional yet contemporary, simple yet enriched. External Materials are mainly stone and timber. External metal elements are painted dark-green. With similar transparency regime, these ‘barns’ pointing dominating spaces towards distant landscape and views.
• The Centre is divided into 7 function groups: Café, Office, Exhibitions, Studio, Toilets, Concourse, Reserve. Visually dominating spaces are identified as Studio, Cafe and Exhibition, and second tier main spaces are the rest except the concourse, which links them together.
• The Concourse integrated the entrance lobby, retail, circulation and storage/plant etc. this was trying to reduce pure circulation to a minimum.
• The Café / Toilets and three small school storage rooms could be accessed directly from outside.
• The studio is adjacent to a large outdoor area/terrace overlooking the West Lake, this are could be served by the kitchen. The current scheme presented the location of Studio and Office as such, however, the two blocks can be swapped, depending on how much view/landscape each area desires and how independent the Studio needs to be operated.
• The building clusters are positioned as such to enable phasing and decanting, integrating nearby retained buildings, the low-cost scenario would be even not to demolish the existing visitor centre and revamp this area according to new brief.
• Make the reserve management staff building a part of the building cluster while enable phasing and choice of connecting and disconnecting.
• The flat-roofed Concourse incorporates scattered bespoke rooflights, which can interact with the display units of the retail area below.
• The Exhibition pavilion can be divided into two halves, one for static exhibition and the area facing the Concourse can be open and flexible for unforeseeable exhibition design, and merge with the retail area into a larger space.
• Proposed Structure: timber frame over reinforced concrete slab, slate (natural or textured synthetic) roof tiles, flat-roof: rubber-coated roof over plywood substrates, defused single-pitched roof lights
Come down to the cost issues:
• Total Gross Floor Area:675sqm, total Gross External Area: 813sqm. Where the Visitor/Wellbeing Centre GEA is 673sqm, the Reserve Management Staff GEA is 140sqm
• Construction cost for the main buildings @£1,700=£1,144,440. The reserve management staff building (this area can be built in slightly lower standard and workshop plus half of the timber storage are suggested to be unheated to save the cost and reflect the nature of the workspace) estimated at £1,400 per sqm and £196,000 total (equivalent to an average single-family house)
• The external/landscapes are estimated as £345,000 including external road system revamping to 3.4m single-way national rural road standard, landscape proximal to the building, geo-grid/grass-block car parking area, external M/E servicing etc.
• Total building cost arrives £1,675,440.
• plus 15% overall professional’s fees £251,316, and 5% contingency £83,772.
• The above make the total project cost£2,020,528. Slightly over the brief budget.