The architects propose with this work the integration of the architectural heritage in the construction, and how the material can be combined with the structure to generate an architecture that has been lost over time.
Description of project by GROUPWORK + Amin Taha Architect
The brief made time available to investigate context and a number of possible loose fit solutions for a replacement building that would sit within the all but vanished grounds of an C11th limestone Norman abbey. Originally built by Baron Jordan Briset, it was expanded and remodelled until its C16th dissolution brought religious revolution, precipitating a gradual erosion through subdivision and conversion into grand houses for the newly protestant barons. Oliver Cromwell bringing republican revolution and replacing baronial mansions with a new and sober home before the restoration saw yet further subdivision into smaller rented properties that by the C19th briefly housed Marx and a visiting Lenin. Ignominiously a furniture sales room occupied a the remains of the original abbey dining halls and cloister before fire and the 1970’s left only a few stones and the road layout as a memory of the nunnery.
The Normans discovered that limestone, when kept freshly wet from the quarry remains soft enough to more easily carve before calcifying for strong fortifications. Helpful in successfully establishing conquests and later for finer tracery in religious and buildings of state. For arguably better weathering, fire and structural integrity that knowledge and skill of combining material and structure to help define an architecture has been lost through the ubiquitous layering and over cladding frames.
Using self-finished structural materials, carved and fallen columns, revealed cloisters and mosaic floors 15 Clerkenwell Close at first alludes to a local physical and social archaeology, but also raises questions on architectural heritage and its integration within a broader culture. Reminding us the literacy of the built and broader environment is based on understanding and disseminating through construction the poetic possibilities inherent within the structural and aesthetic qualities of all materials available that make up the vocabulary of all architectural languages.
The stone; was sourced from the same bed as at Portland, Devon, though from a quarry across the channel (in Norman territory) that had only gone down to 350m years (same period as the original abbey) and which would therefore reveal more clearly the fossilised coral, ammonite shells, quarts seams and pockets. The retention of these natural finishes is highly unusual today as the link between architects and quarries has also been lost, with prepared small sample tiles often being the only connection and understanding of the material. The decision to allow the fossils and the quarry master’s sub-division of the stone bed to speak was intentionally part of the broader philosophy of material, structure, working and design skillsacting in unity to make architecture. That heritage was perhaps more recently reengaged by Edward R Ford, earlier by William Morris, again in Luis Sullivan’s writings but is a common cyclical theme in architecture whether as the ‘parlante’ of the enlightenment or arguably more intuitively as at Palazzo Strozzi by Benedetto da Maiano.
