Project 3- Rural Parasite
From Conception to Presentation
YEAR 1 -
My final year project took place in Lumsdale Valley and was centered around the creation of a Visitor Centre that would attract guests of all ages to the various mill ruins on site. My concept was that of a fragmented mill wheel; inspiration I found whilst on a tour at a local, functional flour mill fifteen minutes off site. My broken mill wheel design, and its constituent parts were split around the site for different functions, and to also minimise tree disruption 9as a vast number of them were protected).
As always, my first port of call was to assess the site and its topography; in this case very challenging and steep, the orientation, the location of the ruins themselves and their measurements, which I found through extensive measuring on site using my friend Bee as a height reference marker. The more information I had gathered, the more I could translate later on in my final drawings.
The different spaces needed on site included a reception and main entrance, a gift shop, exhibition spaces for the local works of villagers in a variety of art fields including film and sculpture, a café, multiple exhibition spaces for artifacts and tools from time gone by that depict the history of the site and the evolution of milling techniques, and an education space for school trips to come and take part in milling activities and to eat in their recess separate from the regular customers in the café,
I approached the site from three different perspectives and considered the terrain and level changes that would require stairs in travelling from a to b, and it was also imperative to consider the lighting and ventilation that could penetrate the space, especially since the location is in the center of a forest on a slope. Stilts and exterior scaffolding had to be considered to ensure the stability and levelness of the separate buildings at; and suspended over, ground level.
In separating the shards of my mill wheel design there was also the question of which building would house each purpose or 'room' and my justifications for this involve the natural flow of the site, from arrival to exploration to rest and sustenance, and also considered orientation. Hard landscaping was also considered in connecting all the component rooms to make a cohesive connected scheme of pathways.
Physical modelling was one of the most vital parts of this project in fully portraying the natural landscape surrounding the site. Yellow foam was used for the ruins and my final scheme was crafted with grey card in accordance to wall thicknesses at the model's scale. My first conceptual models were once again, made of foam, but then there were plentiful iterations in cardboard, in which I explored the cladding on the buildings' exteriors, and which walls would be curtain glass based on their orientation in the Heliodon.
Twigs emulated real trees in my model, and actual pieces of sand and loose gravel gave texture to the landscape which teetered close to a waterfall. Looking at my final model below, you can clearly see how the ruin sits inside the exploded wheel shards, ensuring that from an aerial view, the ruins and the history of the site is the main focus. The fact also that the shards all points towards the center and the ruin in question further enforce the significance of it as a literal 'centerpiece' that informs the buildings around it.
