Taming Time

PROCESS TAGS

CONTENT TAGS

Biodiversity Circular Economy in Architecture Community Craft and Materiality Ecology History and Heritage Infrastructure Landscape-driven Redefining Rural Regeneration and adaptability

LOCATION

Crumlin, Caerphilly County Borough, Wales, United Kingdom

Project Description

Remediation to Harmonious Use

This thesis project explores the relationship between heritage and nature conservation within the context of spatial design at Crumlin Navigation Colliery.

The inspiration for this focus originated from both a response to site, and consequent vision for the project, as well as personal interest. The vision became shifting the site's use from being exploitative to sustainable use, encompassing utilising the natural elements on site renewably, in a sustainable way for people and the environment, and then also whilst dealing with the simultaneously celebrated and contested industrial heritage. This made the harmony and understanding of the relationship between, heritage and nature paramount.

The spaces for this proposal were developed by exploring tangibly layering the stages of land use onto fabric, and through blurring and connecting the landscape and architecture. Maintaining elements of ruin, adding contaminated timber and rammed earth each celebrate respective stages of site, representing former pride and abandonment then proposed remediation and harmonious use. Spatially, blurring and connecting interior and exterior, in the final stage of interventions to create the harmonious relationship between architecture and landscape has manifested in the variety of spaces and structures. These range from enclosed interiors, to walled gardens, to open land with structure, or enclosure created by plants.

Conservation in this context is designers of space determining what is valuable and what should be brought to the future or back from the past. However, these designers are not only people, but also plants and time. This project has displayed that often the aims of heritage and nature conservation can coexist, as shown through soft capping, and using local low carbon materials to show intangible heritage tangibly, however sometimes they also counteract one another such as with remediation of the tangible pollution. The most positive and sustainable future will be when both conservations collaborate.

A vision image collage showing how site was used in the past, for the coal mining industry, compared to the intended future which is utilising the land and buildings sustainably, improving economy, society and environment. — Photography and Photoshop Collaging to Show Vision based on Response to Site

Explorations into approaches to tangible and intangible heritage through the repair of plant pots, exploration of the meaning of wild with a living model and collage representing the blurring of boundaries between interior and exterior or landscape and architecture which provides a good premise to explore the conservation philosophy towards heritage and nature.

Diagram showing plant species to be grown on site in intervention one and two, with the first focusing on plants that can remediate heavy metals from the soil, and the second focusing on benefitting numerous species, as well as people. — Sketches and Diagram to Catalyse Programme Resulting from Extensive Research

Two collages showing how the history of site, particularly its land uses, can be layered tangibly onto the buildings through the use of contaminated timber initially followed by remediated rammed earth, making the buildings become inherent museums, and sketches exploring how the site has applied a similar approach to its land and building use in the past, and should continue to in the future. — Collage and Sketches to Explore the Conceptual Relationship Between Land, Building and Materials

A massing model and site plan for both stages of intervention on site, the first the remediation and the second the harmonious use. — Physical Massing Model and AutoCAD to Phototshop Site Investigations Showing the Two Interventions in Site

A final section from intervention two showing the restaurant and the temperate glasshouse, with the explored design ideas integrated. — Final AutoCAD and Photoshop Rendered Section of Stage Two Interventions

Rose Nicholson

MArch

My ethos regarding architectural design is creating spaces that improve the value of spaces for people, the environment, and economy of what was, for now and the future, in other words, sustainable design. My personal approach to adding value in these ways is through integrating nature and appropriate tectonic approaches into the design, whilst having a sound understanding of context. I particularly enjoy designing through making, as seen in my explorations in making models, and other crafts.

rose.nicholson@hotmail.co.uk

https://rosenicholson.myportfolio.com