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Landscape of Memories

Landscape of Memories Preamble The project deals with two derelict buildings and their adjacent landscape. St Mary’s Chapel (12th century) used to be one of the most important destinations of pilgrimage in the UK whilst in the Banqueting Hall (19th century) the eminent industrialist and inventor of the modern artillery Lord Armstrong - entertained his no less prominent guests. Surrounding the buildings is Jesmond Dene, native woodland curated and constructed by Lord Armstrong in accordance to the picturesque ideas of the time but allowed to sprawl naturally since. Nowadays it is a public park with a unique character. The landscape becomes a cemetery and two journeys lead through it. A collection of peculiar white sand-cast concrete buildings are scattered across the landscape, a memory about mortals they store. The body travels through them in preparation for the mushroom burial. Over time gleaming white burial caves will sprawl around the funerary architecture creating a unique landscape condition across the site. A memory about North East as the birthplace of religion lines the second journey. Amongst the burial caves landscape offers glimpses of surviving physical memories of Christian churches. One day the cemetery will disappear without a trace leaving the landscape to blossom. Only the ecclesiastical fragments forever drown in the meadow and brushwood.

Public Journey

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Storing a memory about religion Found Landscape Condition Densely Wooded Landscape The Forgotten and Overlooked Memories of the Ruins A Fading Ecclesiastical Memory Exhibiting Physical Memories about Christian Architecture Spaces Holding a Memory about the Journey of Gospels Three Layers of Construction A spiritually uplifting space

Private Journey Landscape Storing a Memory Zumthor’s Zinc Mine Museum – a journey through a memorial landscape. Journey through Landscape of Memories Building in a Densely Wooded Landscape Glimpses Amongst Woods The Contemporary Grotto Self-sustainable Mushroom Growth Cycle as Architectural Expression Sand-cast Concrete 1:10 Detail Construction Report

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Public Journey Storing a memory about religion In the 7th century, the kings of Northumbria in North East England set the mission to spread the word of Christianity across the isle. In the 15th century, the streets of Newcastle were flogged by pilgrims eager to pray within the narrow walls of St Maryâ€™s Chapel and kneel before its sacred relics. Today it is a forgotten ruin. Twenty Christian churches are abolished yearly and join a collection of ecclesiastical fragments scattered across the country in various states of decay. To preserve the memory Lindisfarne Gospels are returned to the North East. A Museum of Religion gathers religious relics of the region and spatially preserves the memory about monks carrying the sacred book and St Cuthbertâ€™s body from Lindisfarne to Durham. Over the years the surviving physical memories about abolished Christian churches fill the landscape.

North East as the birthplace of England’s Christianity The kings of the Kingdom of Northumbria in North East England set the mission to spread Christianity across the isle during the 7th century and Holy-island (Lindisfarne) and Farne Islands were given to monks that delegated their lives for the conversion of Kingdom’s people. Most notable ones arguably being St Aidan and St Cuthbert who later became the patron saint of Northumbria. St Cuthbert was buried in Lindisfarne, however, the constant Viking raids forced fellow monks to exhume his body and carry it through the country first settling in the St Mary’s & St Cuthbert’s Church on Chester-le-Street before re-burying the body in Durham - resulting in the foundation of the city and Durham Cathedral. Along with the body, two books were carried on this journey - the St Cuthbert Gospel and Lindisfarne Gospels, one of arguably the most important surviving written relics in the UK. Currently, both are being exhibited in the British Library.

View of the interior of the Maastricht Dominican church. A flower show in 1899 or 1903 (Hermann Bopp), bike storage in 2000 (unknown) and book store in 2007 (Etienne van Sloun).

Adaptive Church Re-use Church is establishing a unique relationship with the local communities. It is turning into a crucial symbol and an empty shell simultaneously. An undeniable landmark for the locals that is entered only every few years - showing visitors around the city. But then it is presented with proudness and this proudness dictates that the re-use or demolition of these unused shells would be something amoral.

The Picturesque Religious Ruin Painting The UK is scattered with picturesque abbey and church ruins. Their eerie beauty has long been an inspiration for artists, in particular during the Picturesque and Romantic period of 18th and 19th centuries. English Watercolorist’s Thomas Girtin’s paintings of the Lindisfarne Priory and Bamburgh Castle from the time will be exhibited in the Museum of Religion to preserve this memory. Recent surveys highlight the falling role of the religion in the UK.

The fall of the Religion Statistics show that the number of people in the UK identifying themselves with a religion is considerably decreasing over the last years. This is particularly affecting Christianity (British Social Attitudes Survey). The Church of England (2016) adds that a quarter of the rural churches have an attendance of fewer than ten people with only 2% of the population visiting the church weekly. As a result, about twenty Christian Churches are closed yearly with 80% of them being listed structures (Haynes, 2008). With religion as a weekly ritual fading, UK risks becoming filled with religious ruins. Unless the society begins accepting and encouraging their re-use.

Left: Mapping the artifacts holding a memory about North East as the birthplace of Christianity in the UK.

Interior of Lindisfarne Priory. Thomas Girtin (1797)

Scale: Region Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Found Landscape Condition Jesmond Dene Long walks through Jesmond Dene to gather the essence of the park. One moves amongst the heavy roots of the trees whilst their dense canopies cover the park in eternal dusk. And for every heap of light finding its way through a story is revealed. There lies a short glimpse of a gleaming white wedding dress and a derelict fragment of architecture. Peculiar moments scattered across a wild landscape. The composite drawing merges a measured survey about the picturesque history of the park and a poetic survey about the conditions this heavily wooded landscape offers.

Landscape Looking Upwards A unique and eerie park is Jesmond Dene. Wild chaos feels accepted and encouraged here. An eternal dusk encloses the visitor and the city remains somewhere far away. There are trees, the sparkling river next to the feet and a mirror of this river up there, amongst the tree canopies. With gaze remaining upwards the river shows the way.

Peculiar glimpses amongst the trees in Jesmond Dene.

Unique Trees of Jesmond Dene The native woodland of Jesmond dene consists primarily of ash, hazel, oak and holly. It was notably altered when Lord Armstrong acquired the narrow valley in the 1850s. Dozens of unique tree species from around the world were introduced, many of them survive today. A Giant Sequoia grows near the Banqueting Hall. Its counterpart in the US is named the largest living tree on Earth. Near the quarry remain the last two witnesses of a Chinese garden planted by Lord Armstrong, a magnolia tree and bamboos. However, the most unique tree of Jesmond Dene bears no relation to Lord Armstrong. The “Shoe Sycamore” is the result of a centuries-old local tradition whose origins remain unclear. Nevertheless, the tradition remains alive as a pair of shoes is thrown up into the tree as an important period in a persons life is coming to an end. The tree received nationwide fame after being featured in Julia Darling’s novel “The Taxi Driver’s Daughter”.

The tree canopies of Jesmond Dene.

The Picturesque Memory in Jesmond Dene When Lord Armstrong acquired the narrow valley in the 1850s alongside woodland the existing river was altered by blasting out the riverbed downstream and using the rubble to construct a series of romantic waterfalls and rock islands higher up the stream. Nature was landscaped and constructed in accordance with the emerging picturesque ideas of the early 19th century.

Left: Composite Drawing. A measured survey about the tree species introduced by Lord Armstrong and a poetic survey about the conditions of the landscape.

The Picturesque Memory in Jesmond Dene.

Scale: Jesmond Dene Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Densely Wooded Landscape The Site St Maryâ€™s Chapel (12th century) used to be one of the most important destinations of pilgrimage in the UK whilst in the Banqueting Hall (19th century) the eminent industrialist and inventor of the modern artillery - Lord Armstrong - entertained his no less prominent guests. Surrounding the buildings is Jesmond Dene, a native woodland curated and constructed by Lord Armstrong in accordance to the picturesque ideas of the time but allowed to sprawl naturally since. Nowadays it is a public park with a unique character.

Controlled Ruin No.1 – St Mary’s Well Text: Local Newspaper Cuttings, Vol 92 (1995) Author: Newcastle City Library Archive Quote from: James Horsley’s poem ‘The Holy Well, Jesmond Grove’ 1891 – Those steps, once numbered with the creed, ‘tis said; Would like Bethesda’s pool of old, be sought; By stricken ones, who to the spring were led; In hopes some miracle might here be wrought; May kindly hands be raised to tend the weal; Of broken cistern and of crumbling shrine; And by their care for sacred stones reveal; Their love and reverence for things divine.

A forgotten path winds past St Mary’s Well. It remains unannounced but its presence can be felt beneath the mature trees.

Garden of four seasons Piet Oudolf

Serenity Joseph Noderer

Left: Mapping the journey through the site. Starting at the city cemetery, past St Mary’s Well and Chapel into Jesmond Dene towards the river.

Controlled Ruin No.2 – St Mary’s Chapel Text: An Account of Jesmond, AA3, Vol 1 (1904) Author: F.W. Dendy Quote from: Robert White’s poem ‘The Tynemouth Nun’ 1829 – “It was told me by the gardener, an intelligent man, that in digging about the ruins he found several skulls, that he places them together in the earth and planted on the spot a Yew tree that grows amongst other shrubs and flowers in the interior of the chapel, at the breach in the wall on the side towards Heaton Dene.”

A dense woodland amongst residential housing. St Mary’s Chapel is the gatehouse.

Gatehouse into the park Cy Twombly

Part of a City George Shaw

Controlled Ruin No.3 – Banqueting Hall In 1919 an unknown soldier collected a seed from a bombed church on a Belgian battlefield. The seed accompanied him on his way back home and was planted in the shadow of the Banqueting Hall. The sapling has since matured and it is the Banqueting Hall that is left to crumble under the shadow of this majestic tree. For locals the tree stores a memory about the terrors of WWI. A flower sometimes rests on the rock amongst its roots.

Peculiar glimpses can be caught amongst the eerie, wild landscape.

Gradually Revealing Paul Fowler

Monuments amongst the leaves James Somerville

Scale: Three ruins in Jesmond Dene Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

The Forgotten and Overlooked Memories of the Ruins Story Drawing Forgotten and overlooked stories are merged in the landscape of memories. Story Drawing became the medium to overlay and curate multiple layers of these stories. The feeling of the site, the memories of the buildings and a dream about their spatiality, pieced together from multiple mediums, are curated into a single, intuitive strand of thought whilst the experimental ethos of the drawing relieves the pressure of using it as a direct architectural inspiration.

A Story Drawing The Banqueting Hall could not be entered so its existing qualities were investigated through online resources. Whilst allowing to decide which internal spaces to retain their true spatiality and character remained uncertain. The Story Drawing is a dream about the spatial journey through the Banqueting Hall created by overlaying its memories. In 1883, Armstrong gave the park to the people. The Banqueting Hall was to be used for arts, science, literature or education. By 1970, the building sat abandoned and survived as a controlled ruin. In 1986, an artist’s organisation led by Jennie Speirs Grant and Ken Grant moved into the site. It remains their studio today. In a recent video interview, they remembered the time they moved into the abandoned building and talked about the interaction between the spaces and their sculptures today. These stories are overlayed atop the memory of Nicola Tesla visiting the Banqueting Hall in 1892 and a slightly romanticised impression about all the other Victorian banquets Lord Armstrong organised for his prominent guests. Finally, the feeling about a wild landscape, attempting to reclaim the building is added. Once the story was constructed in the mind a rough moodboard of images was assembled before intensifying the chosen interior spaces and composing the whole drawing in accordance with the spatial progression through the Banqueting Hall.

Screenshots from Adam Banks’ film Armstrong’s Banqueting Hall. (2006)

Fading Stories of the Chapel A hospice once stood just north of the St Mary’s Chapel for the pilgrims streaming from across the country in their eagerness to pray within the narrow walls that hold a memory about the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, drink the miraculous healing waters from the well and kneel before the sacred relics brought from the Holy Land. Today the Pilgrim street remains the sole memory as the oldest existing ecclesiastical building in the Newcastle has been largely forgotten.

Video: Armstrong’s Banqueting Hall, an interview with Jennie Speirs Grant and Ken Grant Author: Adam Banks Ken: ‘I had the key to the top doors, and we let ourselves in. It was pitch black.’ Jennie: ‘My sort of recollection of coming down was coming into a building that was pitch dark apart from a fest in cable down the stairway with lightbulbs sort of screwed into the cabling. Some water coming through the roof, sort of dripping onto the landing and then coming all the way down to the bottom of the building and opening this door on a kind of flood of light from these top skylights and in a kind of surreal way of a part bench in the far corner with grass growing through the floor. And I think timbers that had been left loose just sort of hanging precariously sort of above this space. And actually, it was very interesting because we just said straight away: well this is fine we can work here.’

Screenshots from Walter Reeve’s film Jesmond Dene. (1951)

Reference Images for the Story Drawing.

Left: Story Drawing. Curating the forgotten and overlooked memories of the Banqueting Hall.

Scale: Three ruins in Jesmond Dene Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

A Fading Ecclesiastical Memory Third most significant destination of pilgrimage in the UK St Mary’s Chapel has been merging with its place for nearly a millennium. Today the ruined nave has become the gatehouse of the park. One steps into the landscape through the chapel and nature’s bright yellow and green explosion of summer is tamed in a greyish-yellow sandstone frame. But every year, as the winter comes and removes the colors from nature, a deep green and brown artifact appears amongst the trees. For three months in winter, the chapel becomes a special moment amongst the dense woodland. In pagan beliefs, the surrounding nature is observed to aid and explain human life. Seasonality has become a reference for mortality. The winter is necessary before spring can arrive. When working on the painting cycle “The Four Seasons” (1995) Cy Twombly, amongst other things, references the links between pagan divinities and seasons and interprets “The Human Seasons” poem by John Keats.

Quattro Stagioni Cy Twombly (1993-5)

The Human Seasons (John Keats) Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

Weathering of acetylated pinewood over 24 months. (Detail, 2018)

St Mary’s Chapel. Summer 2020

St Mary’s Chapel. Winter 2100

Landscape next to St Mary’s Chapel. Summer 2500

The last open coffin ceremony is taking place. White fabric trembles in the wind above the heads of the mourners and the visitor recalls a wedding dress spotted earlier in the other side of the park. Over time it becomes recognised as a plea for privacy. The landscape belongs to the family of the deceased for the moment. A timber roof structure slows down the decay of the ruins. The pinewood is acetylated and the greyish-yellow timber meets the sandstone walls whilst the deep structure is somehow reminiscent of the surrounding tree canopies. Later in the evening, the first grave will be dug. The landscape now stores a memory about a mortal.

A fragment of the St Stephen Church has just arrived to the sculptor’s workshop in the chapel. Lord Armstrong laid its foundation stone in 1868. It had sat redundant in Low Elswick (Newcastle) since 1984. A sculpture to remind about one of the potential locations of the original St Mary’s Well will be carved from it. The landscape has been filled up with glistening white mushroom burial caves. A new landscape condition has been crafted. The acetylated pinewood structure has weathered to an ever so slightly greenish light gray. The chapel glistens green.

All the mycelium burial caves have deteriorated and returned to the earth. All the bodies have been fully decomposed by mushrooms. The cemetery has fulfilled its role and disappeared without a trace leaving the landscape to blossom. Only the ecclesiastical fragments, alongside glimpses of sand-cast concrete, forever drown in the meadow and brushwood. The timber roof structure has reached its lifespan and been removed. St Mary’s Chapel is again deteriorating faster.

Left: Seasons of St Mary’s Chapel. West elevation.

Scale: St Mary’s Chapel Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Exhibiting Physical Memories about Christian Architecture Re-using St Mary’s Chapel as Sculptor’s Workshop The religious significance of the Chapel has long faded. It is the masonry shell that is attempting to preserve this memory today. But for me four stone walls fail to communicate much more than a church outline. The memory has already escaped, the story must be retold with what has been left behind. As a provocation, the eastern wall of the Scheduled Monument is partially demolished for re-using part of the chapel as a sculptor’s workshop. A place where sculptors carve the surviving physical fragments from churches abolished in the North East in search for religious memories stored in these pieces of masonry. These artifacts of Christian architecture then fill the landscape around the central sculpture - the St Mary’s Chapel. Its empty shell is again filled with life and some long-forgotten stories are re-told.

Masonry holds the memories of civilisations. Uruguayan sculptor Gonzalo Fonseca often reclaims pieces of masonry from demolition sites before carving highly detailed and peculiar miniature worlds. Only by working with the present can the past be told is his belief.

Piazza. Persian Travertine. (Gonzalo Fonseca, 1985)

Developing floor plans

The divine memory stored in church ruins

Whilst there are no more streams of pilgrims visiting the chapel it felt crucial to recognise the importance it still holds to some people. There is a monthly open-air public worship taking place and three niches of pilgrimage still in use inside the chapel. As a consequence, the sculptor’s workshop borrows only a segment of the chapel thus not obstructing its surviving religious function. However, one of the three niches of pilgrimage would be destroyed thus sculptor’s first commission will be to carve a fountain from the rocks that once formed the niche. This fountain will be placed atop where the original St Mary’s Well is suspected to have been just East of the chapel. The rest of the rocks would form a small walled garden framing this new/historic place of pilgrimage.

When a religious building in the North East is abolished its empty shell appears to carry on a certain divinity in the eyes of many people. As a result, money is spent to freeze the decay and the memory. An investment that can never be recovered in a space that nobody uses. A physical part of the masonry or another artifact from the abolished church is transported over to the St Mary’s Chapel where this embodied religious memory is respected and intensified by the sculptor. An attempt at changing the perception towards abandoned church shells with the hope to encourage the general acceptance of adaptive re-use amongst society.

Left: Axonometric and development model. Re-using the St Mary’s Chapel as a Sculptor’s Workshop.

Scale: St Mary’s Chapel Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Spaces Holding a Memory about the Journey of Gospels Developing floor plans for the Museum of Religion Upon entering a church one is somehow elevated a bit closer to heaven. Whilst remaining skeptical about abandoned masonry shells telling divine stories there is no denying the unique spatial story they tell. A memory about monks carrying Lindisfarne Gospels from Lindisfarne to Durham is stored in the churches they visited but somehow a reverse memory, about being inside these structures, is embodied in the gospels themselves. The Museum of Religion spatially re-tells this story. The proportions of the spaces holding a memory about this journey have been overlayed over the existing floor plans when developing the floor plans for the new home of gospels and the sculptor’s workshop. The religious artifacts are exhibited in spiritually uplifting spaces somehow reminiscent of the churches they are gathered from.

Mircea Eliade in his text “The Sacred and the Profane” traces how the memory of the sacred inevitably sustains even the most profane contemporary life. Uplifting spatiality is discussed as one of the examples.

The Sacred and the Profane cover. (Mircea Eliade, 1963)

Composing the floor plans The mind is calmed by the structural rhythm of religious architecture after the world is relegated behind its heavy walls and the spirit reaches towards heights no domestic architecture can unlatch. This is the unique context religious artifacts were made for and they should forever be exhibited in spaces reminiscent of the like. After mapping the spaces aiding for the creation and survival of Lindisfarne gospels their unique proportions and rhythms were borrowed and overlaid atop the existing Banqueting Hall floor plans in an intuitive composition before sharpening it against the specificities of the site in a model.

Designing through a 1:100 development model. The realities of the site begin shaping the spaces.

Left: Mapping the Journey of Lindisfarne Gospels.

Composing floor plans by overlaying spaces holding a memory about the journey of the Gospels over the found condition.

Scale: Banqueting Hall Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

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3 4 b

Room sitting on the water.

Museum of Religion looking from the bridge.

Inside the deep structure of the gallery.

Museum of Religion. 1. Public Entrance. Foyer. Information desk. 2. Private Entrance. 3. Staff Entrance. 4. Gift Shop. 5. Storage. 6. Up to Staff Offices. 7. Gallery Space. 8. Dance hall. Celebration of Life. 9. Gospels Exhibition Space. 10. Cafe. 11. Tool Store. Changing Room. 12. Room sitting on the water. 13. Last Open Coffin Ceremony. 14. Sculptorâ€™s Workshop.

The Public Journey. Visiting the Museum of Religion. a.

The visitor car park faces into the native woodland. Glimpses of the river can be caught amongst the tree canopies stepping down the valley. A dense, freshly planted woodland separates the museum from the road and car park. A new journey is carved through the Gatehouse. William Turner’s ‘Holy Island’ (1829) and Thomas Girtin’s ‘Bamburgh Castle’ (1799) are the first artworks visitor encounters. The story about North East as the birthplace of Christianity is told here. Glazing pierces the old Gatehouse wall and reveals an intimate internal garden below. Henry Moore’s ‘Mother and Child (-hood)’ (1983) sits there. This is first of three internal gardens visually linking the private and public journey through a sculpture. They never meet physically. Stepping inside the gallery space first being amongst the deep structure. The head of St Aidan of Lindisfarne appears amongst the battens. His body rests somewhere below, enclosed within dozens of crosses covering the second sculpture garden where the two journeys meet. Looking through the deep structure, water is gathering on the roof and catching the beams of light managing to find their way through the dense woodland. Soft, filtered light is reflected into the gallery space after bouncing off the water. One descends the staircase and meets the artworks. The deep structure remains high above, its character forever changing with the light coloring it.

Left: Re-using Banqueting Hall as the Museum of Religion.

Cutting through the historic walls, catching glimpses of sculptures in the woodland outside, seeing religious artifacts disappear amongst the structural forest inside. Walking amid deep structure on the way to Gospels exhibition space before dining below it. A long narrow final gallery exhibits the paintings by Ramsay Gibb documenting the current landscape condition of historic pilgrimage routes through the UK. One exits by the river.

Site Section. The journey of the family. The spatial progression from St Mary’s Chapel to the River.

The Private Journey. Celebration of life. Preparation of the body for mushroom burial takes four to six hours. During this time a celebration of life takes place inside Banqueting Hall. A new heavily planted woodland leads to a small ramp that offers a long view of the whole valley and the river down below. An existing window aisle provides a new, private entrance into the Banqueting Hall. At the midway point of the staircase, a serene internal garden offers privacy. Henry Moore’s ‘Mother and Child (-hood)’ (1983) sits in the garden and seems to gaze across the hall towards another garden dominated by a wire mesh portrait of Vulnerable Bede. End of the staircase frames the sculpture of St Aidan of Lindisfarne, resting within a forest of crosses. A new skylight fills with light the celebrations inside the Dance Hall. Its tiled floor is renovated. As the body is prepared it is brought over to the room sitting on the water. Relatives farewell the guests and head down. In the anteroom working clothes and tools are equipped. The last room extends over the river. Slots are left into the uninsulated raw sand-cast concrete walls allowing to see and hear the waterfall below the body. The only light enters through these slots or reflects off the corrugated zinc roof.

Crossing Holy Island Sands Ramsay Gibb (2011)

St Cuthbert’s elevation Ramsay Gibb (2012)

The character of the Thorncrown Chapel by Euine Fay Jones is about the interaction between its deep structure and the light. The wood is varnished to intensify this exchange.

Scale: Banqueting Hall Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Three Layers of Construction Precedent analysis of Sverre Fehnâ€™s Hedmark Museum There are three layers of construction in the Hedmark Museum by Sverre Fehn. The 13th century stone walls store the memory, the contemporary timber roof structure slows the decay and a network of ramps situates the visitor somewhere between heaven and earth. The ramps architecturally search for a new horizon each time a visitor encounters an artifact. When stepping inside a church one is spiritually elevated with feet remaining on the ground. There have been three phases in the continuum of St. Moritz Church - baroque church, bombed ruin, plain church. Its spatiality remained. An ecclesiastical spatiality in the Museum of Religion is reconstructed through three layers of construction. The found ruin and concrete walls separate from the world, lightweight timber roof structure filters the light and a series of sculpture gardens exhibit the religious artifacts somewhere between heaven and earth.

Composing Spatiality Having overlaid the spaces holding a memory about the journey of the Gospels for developing the floor plans next their spatial and atmospheric qualities are borrowed. An attempt to reconstruct this intangible uplifting feeling of religious architecture by interrogating and diagramming the constructional pillars of churches. Finally, the boundary between the park and the building is blurred to allow a continuous journey through a wild landscape, sometimes constructed, sometimes natural.

Three layers of construction at Hedmark Museum.

Left: Axonometric of the journey through the Museum of Religion.

Diagramming Museum of Religion. The found ruin and concrete walls separate from the world.

Diagramming Museum of Religion. A series of sculpture gardens exhibit the religious artifacts.

Diagramming Museum of Religion. Lightweight timber roof structure filters the light.

First layer of construction at Storhamar Barn: Old Walls.

Second layer of construction at Storhamar Barn: Concrete Ramps.

Third layer of construction at Storhamar Barn: Timber Roof Structure.

A ruin by Allied bombing raid. An empty shell with presence and no decoration. (image author unknown, 1944)

A Baroque church by Jakob Herkommer. An uplifting spectacle with religious paintings, woodcarvings and stonemasonâ€™s details. (image author unknown, 1944)

Plain church by John Pawson. All detail stripped back to intensify the found proportion, heavy base and special light. (McCarragher, 2013)

Scale: Banqueting Hall Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

A spiritually uplifting space Exhibiting religious artifacts in Jesmond Dene When stepping inside a church the light changes, the temperature changes, the smell changes and even the taste changes. For just a moment the man is elevated closer to heaven. The world is left behind the heavy walls, the structural rhythm calms the mind and the carefully filtered light flows from somewhere high above. In Jesmond Dene, one moves between the heavy roots and a filtered light flows through the dense tree canopies. And every once in a while there are moments, just glimpses when fragments of architecture glisten through the leaves. My architecture attempts to exhibit the religious artifacts in spaces where the spatial experience of being inside Jesmond Dene is overlayed with the uplifting experience of stepping inside a church.

Gallery Space. Internal Perspective. 1. Wall Build-up: 200 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, white pigment, bronze tie cap 150 mm thermal insulation, DPM layer 250 mm in-situ concrete, sand-cast finish when above ground 2. Floor Build-up: 20 mm pine planks, varnished 75 mm cement screed with underfloor heating pipes, 250 mm centres 150 mm thermal insulation, DPM layer 300 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete slab 100 mm thermal insulation 150 mm gravel fill

Gallery Space. Technical Detail.

Gallery Space. External Elevation.

3. Roof Build-up: 20 mm pine plywood sheet, varnished 120 mm thermal insulation 1.5 mm DPM layer 20 mm pine plywood sheet 50 mm square timber battens, 600 mm centres 0.7 mm corrugated zinc roofing sheets 4. Geothermal pile foundations. 5. Stacked travertine blocks: 152x202x403, bronze spacers 6. Double glazing: 10 mm + 20 mm cavity + 10 mm, steel window frame, timber/bronze casing

Three layers of construction.

Development of the spatiality. A visceral feeling about moving through a densely wooded landscape overlaid with stories from artists, overlaid with an uplifting spatial experience reminiscent of ecclesiastical architecture.

Left: Museum of Religion internal perspective. Heading towards the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition space.

Scale: Banqueting Hall Public Journey: Memory about North East as the Birthplace of Christianity

Curation as Architectural Strategy: A visceral site reading translated into the spatiality of the proposal through four layers of curation. Layer 1: Found Condition of the Site Long walks through Jesmond Dene to gather the essence of the park â€“ mature trees crafting an eternal dusk but for each heap of light finding its way through there is a peculiar moment revealed amongst the wilderness. A measured survey about the picturesque history of the park and a poetic survey into the existing conditions of the heavily wooded landscape to retain and intensify. Layer 2: Found Condition of the Ruins The Banqueting Hall could not be entered so its spatiality and character were uncovered through online resources. The Story Drawing overlays the physical dimensions of the spaces with stories from artists working there currently, memories from the buildingâ€™s past and the visceral feeling about a wild landscape uncovered earlier. Layer 3: Composing Floor Plans Banqueting Hall is re-used as a museum of religion with exhibition spaces somehow reminiscent of the edification only experienced inside sacred buildings. Proportions of spaces holding a memory about the journey of the Lindisfarne Gospels are overlaid atop the existing floor plans in an intuitive composition before sharpening it against the specificities of the site in a model. Layer 4: Spatiality & Construction The haste of the world remains outside the heavy walls of a church, its structural rhythm calms the mind and a filtered light washes its ceiling. For just a moment, man is elevated closer to heaven. In Jesmond Dene, one moves between the heavy roots and a filtered light flows through the dense tree canopies. And every once in a while there are moments, just glimpses when fragments of architecture glisten through the leaves. My architecture attempts to exhibit the religious artifacts in spaces where the spatial experience of being inside Jesmond Dene is overlaid with the uplifting experience of stepping inside a church.

Layer 1

Layer 2

Layer 4

Layer 3

Private Journey Storing a memory about mortals

Extract from a poem by Hannah Collins: The sun rises and hovers over the woods. Little mice run through the undergrowth. The hushed voice of some singers floats across the air with the songs of morning birds and in the distance is the sound of passing cars. A faint path through the vertical trees marks the hunterâ€™s space. The hunter carrying flowers searches around the flat grey stones overcome by natureâ€™s abandon in a mass of peaceful green. In this most absent of crowded places the visitors search their childhood experiences and their souls keep company with my end of century mind. The hunter moves through this overgrown space in the quietest of ways allowing the breeze to lift his spirit gently.

Unsustainability of current funeral methods

Landscape storing a memory

The vast majority of Europeans recognise only two types of funeral - traditional burial or cremation, but awareness is rising that both methods are not sustainable. Our last action in this world is to poison it. Cremation releases greenhouse gasses as do metal coffins and concrete retaining walls used in traditional burial, whilst the Western society’s beliefs reject any re-development on the vast areas taken up by funerary landscape even after they have gone derelict.

St. James’ Gardens in London were opened in 1788 as the new burial ground for St. James’ Picadilly. By midnineteenth century it reached its capacity and closed down before being re-opened as a public garden in 1887. Only a few headstones remain in place. Currently, all of the 60,000 bodies are being exhumed to make way for the HS2 high-speed railway. Dorothea Hackman, a local churchwarden, was joined by clergy and local residents in a memorial service next to the construction site to protest the “outrageous digging up of the dead for spurious activities like this (Hackman, 2018)”

A vandalised Jewish cemetery in Poland. Poem by author on the left.

Public funerary culture “The Magnificent Seven” Cemeteries of London with their elaborate Victorian age headstones and picturesque landscaping were spaces for leisure and public funerary culture. Mortality was encountered in a garden. Since the headstones have become somberer and the cemetery has turned into acres of wasteland at the edge of the city. The death is hidden but one can not hide the unsustainability of current funeral methods.

A Humble way to go The green burial movement has emerged in the UK recently to revert the abandoned graveyards into public parks by accepting the natural decomposition of the body. However, this process releases a large amount of toxins often bringing more harm than benefit to the surrounding environment. An American scientist Jae Rhim Lee has been searching for a way to return back to the earth in the cleanest and most beneficial way possible. The investigations have led to developing a burial suit with mushroom spores incorporated into the fabric allowing the toxins to be stored and released gradually thus enhancing the quality of the soil and embracing the neverending cycle in nature where death creates new life.

Scale: Society Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Landscape Storing a Memory Death in the contemporary city An acknowledgment about the unsustainability of current funeral methods emerges alongside society’s rising environmental consciousness and the ever-increasing population predictions. Discussions about green burial strategies gain traction. However, first city’s fear of our mortal nature needs to be dismantled by returning death to the city centre and consciousness. “The Magnificent Seven” Cemeteries of London with their elaborate Victorian age headstones and picturesque landscaping were spaces for leisure and public funerary culture. Mortality was encountered in a garden. The precedent analysis aims to trace how these ideas have evolved through the decades in a selection of projects where the memory about a mortal is stored in a landscape as a series of moments of raised consciousness during a journey.

In medieval paintings, before the ration of Rennaisance, all the elements are represented in their purest form, allowing for a scene more coherent than a photo of the same event. A pond is drawn from its top, the fish within from their sides. Facades scale down but interiors scale up and events that occur over a life’s span are able to coexist in one single image.

The Siege of Rhenen (Master of Rhenen, 1499 - 1525)

Woodland Cemetery Gunnar Asplund & Sigurd Lewerentz (1940, Sweden)

Brion Cemetery Carlo Scarpa (1977, Italy)

Igualada Cemetery Enric Miralles (1994, Spain)

Vardo Memorial Peter Zumthor (2011, Norway)

Zinc Mine Museum Peter Zumthor (2016, Norway)

A memory about the mortal.

A memory about the Brion family.

A memory about the mortal.

A memory about the burnt witches.

A memory about the miners.

A composed sequence, which leads on a journey through a new rolling landscape of graves. At the end of the cycle, all the living things return to nature. Architecture quietly references the natural landscape.

A composed sequence in a heavy material leads through a garden, whilst framing the surrounding landscape and the sky. A garden to reflect on the life and death in serenity whilst kids play and dogs bark.

A composed sequence rests in the Catalan hills bellow horizon. A constructed tiered landscape of death provides streets and squares in search for a link between the past, present and the future generations.

A composed sequence extends beyond the buildings and borrows the wild landscape, the church with its graveyard and the approach through the town. The context stores the memories, the buildings just focus the gaze and the mind.

A composed sequence humbly hints towards the grueling existence of a 19th-century miner. The journey through the landscape has stored the memories - the buildings just focus the gaze and the mind.

Development of Memorial Architecture Memorial and residential structures are the oldest architectural expressions of the humankind. There has always been the practical need for the safety of shelter and the psychological urge to emphasize the piece of land where a body rests for the last time. The social and cultural developments have constantly altered the acceptable forms of remembering a person’s life, but the necessity to house the memory in a physical structure that outlives the fragile nature of the body has retained significance throughout time. For ancient civilisations, the funeral ritual generally varied greatly between the kings, whose superiority was expressed by a breath-taking architectural spectacle celebrating the union between the earthly man and the divinities, and a common grave pit or bonfire for the poor. Often the catacombs were filled by artifacts of the deceased but they were of religious meaning and not accessible to the public, meaning they should not be considered the predecessors of museums.

“When we find a mound in the woods, six feet long and three feet wide, raised to a pyramidal form by means of a space, we become serious and something in us says: someone was buried here. That is architecture.” (Adolf Loos, 1910)

Pyramids and mausoleums for kings, common grave pit for the poor.

Rural Christianity piles all bodies in God’s Acre.

Left: Journey drawings through landscapes storing a memory.

The enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries saw great advancements in approaches to storing a memory across Europe. In the UK the Victorian age (1837–1901) brought with it the growth of the civil awareness with personalised headstones and monuments challenging the religion’s monopoly over memory and resulted in the “Magnificent Seven” urban cemeteries of the London – key for public funerary culture (Djuric, 2014).

In Uk, the 19th century brings the great urban cemeteries with bold architectural and landscaping expressions.

Victorian age brings a taste for inscribed headstones and monuments.

At the beginning of 20th-century modernist movement reject the monumentality and demand poetic value and interaction.

The French revolution introduces military cemeteries for uniting the nation and mausoleums dedicated to famous people.

The post-war trauma equally affects the cemeteries. What used to be a vibrant public park in the middle of the city gets relegated to the suburbs in an attempt to erase death from everyday life (Worpole, 2003). The following century sees more turning-points in the funeral architecture. Cremation sees the oldest form of memory – the human dimension of a mound – losing its role as the locus of remembrance whilst the recent increase in society’s environmental consciousness coupled with the rapidly rising population sees green burial techniques gaining traction. During the same period, the memorial and museum architecture storing a memory about life has largely stalled in their expressions ever-since the great boom in their relevance during the 1980s.

Cemetery as a park in the middle of the city bringing with it a public funerary culture.

However, it was in France where the typology was advanced the furthest resulting in memorial and museum architecture finally separating from the cemetery. The French Revolution (1789 – 1799) introduced the memorial architecture as it is understood today, with military cemeteries celebrating the French democratic identity through honoring the great human sacrifices (Berggren, 2000). At the same time, the individual endeavor is admired by publicly accessible dedicated mausoleums, hinting towards museum architecture (Panthéon, Paris for the great intellectuals of France). The catastrophe of both world wars sees an explosion of “The Unknown Soldier’s” memorials, but the wounds are too deep to be covered up by an empty slogan – it’s the sacred duty. People demand a new way for the post-war memorial architecture. The modernist movement responds by substituting the depersonalised monumentality for a poetic value encouraging interaction and independent interpretation (Mosse, 1996).

Cremation forces a new funerary landscape. Grave loses its function as the locus of remembrance.

Cemeteries are relegated to the suburbs. Death becomes invisible.

Natural burial raises together with society’s environmental consciousness.

Scale: Society Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Place sensitive architecture storing a memory about a life. Zumthor’s Zinc Mine Museum – a journey through a memorial landscape. Precedent analysis of Peter Zumthor’s Zinc Mine Museum The essay discusses how Peter Zumthor’s interpretations of the spirit of the place in Allmannajuvet’s Zink Mine Museum create a deeply evocative and meaningful place of remembrance by reducing the architecture to pieces of furniture encountered during a journey through the landscape. The analysis begins by recognising the historical and theoretical context of the project and discussing the development of memorial architecture. Equally, the strong historic link between the landscape and the spirit of the nation rooted in the Norwegian Romantic Nationalism will be discussed before interpreting its contemporary reading in the Tourist Route Project. Two of the routes projects will be analysed. Beginning with the Torfhatten bridge through a cave by Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk that introduces the terminology of landskip and landschaft and points out their synergy achieved through an architectural promenade, and following up with Zumthor’s use of promenade in his earlier project for the Tourist Route Project – the Vardo Memorial – where an additional layer of sensuality is added to the constructed journey. The second part of the essay highlights the interpretation of each of the previously mentioned contextual layers in Zumthor’s proposal and discusses his pursue for the “museum in the landscape” where the memories of the miners have been stored throughout the kilometerlong journey through the landscape and the buildings become solely pieces of furniture placed along the journey for focusing the mind and the gaze.

Collective Memory:

Figure 4

Figure 2

Figure 5

“Devoid of traces of vegetation these feldspar masses are so white that one took them for snow glaciers. Wild and terribly desolate they rise and surround a monstrous cone of rock. Steep and gnarly it raises high into the sky, and like a petrified giant it blocks the canyon for us.” (Tønsberg, 1848) Figure 3

Figure 7

Figure 6

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Figure 2: Section between Husum and Borgunds Church. Norwegian Romantic Nationalism. (Knudsen, 1887) Figure 3: Tønsberg shows interest in both the aesthetics and geology in his account of Nærøy Valley. Figure 4: Norwegian coal extraction landscape. (Waider, 2017) Figure 5: Sohlbergplassen Viewpoint framing a single view. (Stikbakke, n.d.) Figure 6: Holmbakk’s competition entry drawing for Torghatten project. (Holmbakk Architects AS, 2009) Figure 7: Torghatten (Knudsen, 1872) Figure 8: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Friedrich, 1818)

Left: Experiential Journey Drawing of Zumthor’s Zinc Mine Museum.

The evolution of memorial architecture has always been influenced by the equivalent philosophical debate. Of particular importance to the development of “designed memory” is the theoretical work of Maurice Halbwachs (1950), who introduced the theory of Collective Memory – the acknowledgment that memory hardly ever maintains the purity of how it was experienced by the persons involved. Instead, it is influenced by a wider collective framework who reconstructs the past in socially and politically acceptable forms of the present (Djuric, 2014). The embodied, pure memory survives no longer than three generations before becoming an interpreted cultural memory for a whole society (Assmann, 2006). According to Broszat (1990), this implies memorial architecture reduces historical understanding as much as it generates it by exaggerating the memories with layers of national myths and explanations. Norwegian Romantic Nationalism: The memory of a country is directly linked to its history and for Norway, it has been rattled with wars. After a tiring period under the Denmark–Norway union when the country was essentially controlled from Copenhagen, a hope of an independent Norway swelled the country at the beginning of the nineteenth century following the signing of a constitution. Only a few months later the celebrations turned to sorrow with Norway being forced into a union with Sweden against its own will. A symbol was necessary to maintain the dream of an independent Norway in the hearts of the people for the ninety years it took to come to reality. The Norwegian Romantic Nationalism with photographer Knut Knudsen at its forefront recognized landscape as an image that could foster a national identity (Larsen, 2014). [figure 2] Celebrated simultaneously through poetic observations by artists and geological and topographical measured precision by scientists. [figure 3] Years have gone by, Norway is an independent country and the perception of its landscape has changed with it. The celebrated harshly romantic picturesque view has been transformed by gas and oil industries into vast industrial landscapes. [figure 4] The nation has always been strongly rooted in its unique landscape condition, whose toughness and untamable beauty fill hearts with pride about the unbreakable spirit of a nation in search of its independence - whilst its hidden geological treasures, formed hundreds of millions of years ago, ensure its economic stability nowadays. The Tourist Route Project (TRP): Zumthor’s Zink Mine Museum alongside his Vardo

Memorial are part of a nationwide initiative with 18 scenic routes being developed throughout Norway together with nearly 300 pieces of contemporary architecture to facilitate them. Larsen (2014) argues that TRP can be read as a contemporary trace of the Norwegian Romantic Nationalism and is aiming to represent the landscape in accordance to two typologies – the landskip and landschaft. The terms, their meanings and relationship have been discussed in depth by Olwig (2002) but for the purpose of this discussion, the terms have been simplified as follows. Landskip describes the process of “framing a landscape”, having originally derived from the Dutch landscape paintings, whilst landschaft deals with “recognition of the external processes shaping a landscape”, having derived as a Northern European definition of a managed territory. Majority of the TRP proposals acknowledge the landscape to the degree of landskip by framing a particularly spectacular mountain plateau, fjord, or valley [figure 5]. However, climate change and geological forces have seen an increase in the industrial extraction landscape erasing the picturesque scenery under the influence of national economic strategies. Larsen (2014) argues that projects acknowledging the influence that industries have on shaping the landscape and embracing the landschaft nature of the site, achieve a deeper reading of the place by overlaying the place’s geological memory over its natural beauty. The overlay of landschaft atop landskip demanded an extension of the language. The painted view (single image) is substituted for the architectural promenade (a journey). Architectural Promenade: A term derived by Choisy during his analysis of Acropolis and often used by Le Corbusier to describe a journey that gradually reveals to the visitor a series of varied and often unexpected experiences the sum of which becomes the overall articulation of the architecture. A brief analysis of Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk’s TRP proposal in Torfhatten (2009) highlights how both the beauty (lanskip) and the geologic history (landschaft) of the landscape is celebrated through the use of promenade. His competition entry drawing [figure 6] is a collage including Knud Knudsen’s “Torghatten” photography (1885) [figure 7], a seminal work of Norwegian Romantic Nationalism and Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” (1818) [figure 8] – a self-reflection about the individual’s insignificance before the majestic of nature. The spectacular view of the mountains is the culmination of a promenade, twisting between the walls of the cave and telling the story of the geologic matter that formed the site – the last ice age. Its the rock that frames the view and reminds of the Norwegian cultural history.

Scale: A Norwegian Landscape Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Vardo Memorial: Zumthor’s first project for TRP was the Vardo Memorial (2011), remembering the lives of 91 unfortunates burnt or drowned based on the accusations of witchcraft. Instead of a static “general on the horse”, the memory is embedded in the journey through the local landscape. The promenade starts at the local village, that Zumthor (2006) read as a collection of abstract geometric forms, and leads towards the sea, where his new geometric forms – a line and a dot – mark the place where the witches where drowned. [figure 9] The journey traces the footsteps of the murdered people. After leaving the village, where most of them lived, it leads past the castle, were the witches were kept and tortured, before winding past the church with its burial ground where the ones successfully proving their innocence (by drowning) would soon find their peace, that is if the sea chose to return the body. This cruel relationship with the sea is further expressed by the “line” memorial referencing the wooden racks that used to dominate the landscape when the city was a fishing community and was dependant on the sea. The structure has just enough structural solidity to occupy a stark, weather-ravaged coastal terrain with its Nordic breezes without collapsing whilst enhancing a theatrical contrast between the vast landscape and introverted, brittle and tortured architecture. [figure 10] The strong seaside gusts can never be forgotten inside as the light flickers, the fabric roof trembles and the sound of waves breaking against the rocks fill the space. The history is given a spiritual character and expressed by intensifying the relationship between the architecture, the landscape and the sea.

Zinc Mine Museum: Museum in the Landscape: Simultaneously with the Vardo Memorial, Zumthor designed the Zinc Mine Museum in Allmannajuvet (2016). He found a site where the landskip and landschaft had overlayed, and landscape of enormous natural beauty became the main means of sustenance for the local community for just a few years, from 1881 until 1896 before being abandoned as an industrial landscape. The response is four miniature black structures belonging to the steep topography of the landscape and humbly intensifying its harsh beauty. The architecture hardly resembles the all too common contemporary museum, relevant ever since the 1980s, where a white box is stuffed with artifacts and attracts the visitor through its landmark exterior. Instead, it references some of the arguably most engaging museum designs, such as Castelvecchio, Hedmark Museum or Kolumba Museum among others, where the experience is intensified through crafting an inseparable bond between the architecture and the

exhibits. However, Zumthor recognised that a few old spades are not the only traces left behind by the miners and an additional layer of “landscape as narrator” was added to the museum. Already in Vardo Memorial Zumthor acknowledged the heightened role that landscape plays in storing the memories in the Norwegian context, in Allmannajuvet the selection of tools and other artifacts from the mine are exhibited in just one of the four small structures. The rest of the story is told by the landscape that was re-shaped with these tools. Whilst formally titled as a museum the proposal takes on a memorial function where the kilometer long journey through the landscape stores a memory about the hardship of 170 Norwegian miners who extracted copper from deposits lying 4km below sea level.

Figure 10

Place Sensitive Materiality: Although humble in their footprint and expression, the four structures are the anchors in Zumthor’s attempt to create a kilometer long “museum for a landscape”. As in Vardo, Zumthor was crafting an atmosphere, not a symbol and the material palette was crucial in evoking the memories of the grueling existence of a 19thcentury miner in a clearly contemporary design that establishes a relationship with both the harshly beautiful natural landscape (landskip), and the altered extraction landscape (landschaft). Each material, construction method and detail symbolically references the memories the site holds (Slessor, 2017). Dark and tight is the world of a miner, constructed with a functional ethos in mind. Its contemporary interpretation had to be extremely modest (Zumthor, 2017). A humble material palette was chosen as a result - industrial in its expression, yet appropriate to the changing characters of the wilderness around. The tactile and seemingly hand knitted plywood walls coated with black PMMA, that Zumthor had tested in his Serpentine pavilion, were complemented by carefully engineered glulam pine supports, paying respects to the simple industrial language of scaffolding but expressing an engineered precision made possible by the contemporary construction methods. The clinically finished supports meet the ground exactly where the fading memory of historic stone foundations of the old mine buildings are fighting for their relevance before the moss hides them forever amongst the rocky landscape. Returning zinc to its geological and geographic origins whilst celebrating its beauty, utility and tactile properties might be the best example of Zumthor’s concern for uniting the landskip and landschaft readings of the landscape at every scale. All structures are topped with corrugated zinc roofs that harmonize the terrain and its tree silhouettes, whilst poetically enclosing the cycle of the material and the

Figure 12

Figure 9

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Figure 9: Journey from the village to the sea. Figure 10: Theatrical contrast between vast landscape and introverted architecture. Figure 12: Simple industrial language of scaffolding. Figure 13: Pine supports lead the eye to the old foundations.

rough forged zinc door handles ensure the visitor shakes hands with the industrial past before entering.

Remembering the theory of Collective Memory, an artificial interpretation of the memories has been largely escaped by allowing the unbiased landscape to narrate the story. The structures themselves could have never escaped a romanticised and certainly intensified modern interpretation of the stories the miners could have told but it escapes any pastiche symbolism towards the historic mining structures. Instead, it becomes a theatrical device where an atmospheric interpretation of the memories are sharpened against the site and presented as an inhabitable space. However, Turner (2017) points out that the aesthetic of the architecture has crafted an unwanted symbolism with the narrow openings and the guard-tower stilts strongly reminding of war-time architecture with many visitors reading the structures as a homage to the wars, especially the Nazi occupation - which not only has nothing to do with the memory about the miners, but even more so has been actively hushed from the collective memory by the Norwegian government.

take a moment to appreciate it as the view through the window is awkward whilst on the feet, but sitting down is rewarded with a serene backdrop for gathering thoughts. [figure 15] After presenting landscape as a picture Zumthor tells the story of landschaft in the museum structure. The interior almost loses a connection with the picturesque qualities of the landscape albeit a single framed view. It is the geologic memory of formation of rock masses and the resulting story of industrial landscape that is presented here. Alongside the spades, pickaxes, bolts and chisels, that were found in the derelict mines Zumthor commissioned three books to be on display. The Geology and Mines in Allmannajuvet (Lauritzen, 2012) investigates the geologic history of the place, The Zinc Mines in Allmannajuvet, a short history (Lillehammer, 2012) remembers the mining history and finally Sub Terra Sub Sole (Flogstad, 2012) is an anthology of literary texts concerned with subterranean geology. Once the visitor is introduced to both geological time and natural beauty of the place rough sewn rocks, gathered from around Norway lead the visitor to the culmination of the promenade where cave-like entrance to the old mine leads inside the coldness of the rock [figure 18].

Theatricality of Landscape versus Interior:

Conclusion:

The promenade through the landscape choreographs a changing sequence of views highlighting the two conditions overlayed in the landscape. Twisting through the narrow gorge with its mossy, pine forested sides extending high above and passing the countless waterfalls and avalanches of boulders, one is reminded of the unbreakable spirit of a nation that gathers strength in such a tough landscape whilst the structures create moments of pause where the gaze and the mind are focused on the geologic history that formed the industrial extraction landscape. [figure 16] The journey starts at the foot of the gorge, where the visitor is forced to leave his car and enter the memorial landscape on foot. Each of the structures aim to enhance the found qualities in a unique way, whilst retaining a stylistic unison. Whilst visually clinging on the landscape the pavilions are suspended in the air, and this tension emphasizes the topography of Allmannajuvet. When approaching one of the heavy black boxes it turns out to be suspended high above the path. A bridge must be crossed to transition from the landscape into the building. First structure is the cafe. The interior, like the exterior, is silent. Narrow strips of glazing slash the dark, and sensuously introverted walls that mute for a moment the vibrancy of landscape and frame small moments of it. The cafe has become a gallery where instead of paintings the landscape itself is framed with all its colours and changing seasonality. But one must

Zumthor approached the project through a deep reading of the memories stored across the scale of the landscape, and ensured these memories would be intensified at all scales in his architecture - from the accessibility plan crafting a promenade through a landscape, to the detailing that expresses the qualities of zinc and returns it home. The proposal embodies Zumthorâ€™s (1998) vision of lifting history into the now, and allowing the contemporary architecture to become the next historic layer into the continuum of the place. The tension between the humble but intensely curated pieces of furniture along a landscape offers a place of comfort and enclosure where the gaze and the mind can be focused on the memorialisation and contextualisation of the vandalised lives of those on societyâ€™s margins â€“ of grueling existence that depended on grinding labor in the harsh Norwegian climate with its unforgiving terrain.

The unfortunate memory:

Figure 14

Figure 15

Figure 16

Figure 17

Figure 18

Figure 14: Rugged zinc roof-rugged landscape. Figure 15: The color is in the landscape. Glazing set at seating height. Figure 16: Promenade through the landscape. Figure 17: Introverted architecture of the museum. Figure 18: Norwegian rocks lead on a journey.

Zinc cast site map located at the start of the journey. (Berntsen, 2017)

Scale: A Norwegian Landscape Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Journey through Landscape of Memories The body of the deceased

After the body has been fully prepared for the burial it is raised back up to the route of the living and taken down to a small building sitting at the very edge of the Ouseburn river. A bell rings to signal that the body has arrived and the â€œCelebration of Lifeâ€? is over.

After the open coffin service, the body of the deceased is taken on a journey carved out of the steep topography of the site. Nearest to the chapel is a cold store, in case the rest of the ceremony will be undertaken at a different time. Next is the preparation room, where the coffin is left and the body separated from everything excessive.

A new tunnel under the road is proposed to ensure privacy during the handling of the dead body. Through the tunnel, it arrives in the water cremation and dressing room. Dressing takes no longer than an hour meanwhile the resomation can take up to six hours.

Journey through Landscape of Memories The family

The body arrives under the port cochere and the drapery is drawn over the temporary chapel, sitting between the trees adjacent to the ruins of St Mary’s Chapel. This signals that a ceremony is due to start soon. The family together with the guests gather in the concrete forest for one last open coffin service.

Once the service is over the family and the guests head down to the Banqueting Hall through the Landscape of Memories. At the Banqueting Hall, there is a six-hour long “Celebration of Life” whilst the body is being prepared. Once the “Celebration of Life” is over the family parts with the guests and heads down to the river, where the body or ashes wait for them. Here they get changed from their smart clothes into working ones and pick up their shovels before meeting a stonemason, who leads them to the pre-selected plot of burial. As the family digs the grave the stonemason engraves the initials and dates of the dead into a small piece of stone.

When the departed is buried, the stonemason picks up the tools from the family and leaves them, allowing for a more intimate moment in silence. He heads back down to the building on the edge of the river. Leaves the tools, picks up a ladder and hangs the previously engraved piece of stone into one of the two “memorial” trees next to the Banqueting Hall. It joins all the other pieces and together forms a wind-whistle that sings the thoughts of the departed on windy and rainy days.

Scale: Jesmond Dene Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Building in a Densely Wooded Landscape Architectural language Traditional devotional language of the English picturesque landscape is borrowed and interpreted in the architecture storing a memory about mortals. Grotto, portico/porte-cochere, vaults, stibadium can all be recognised in the heavy, white sand-cast concrete structures. For every burial, a bit of land must be reclaimed from the steep topography of the site. An organic fungi wall, somehow reminiscent of the Victorian age headstones, holds the hill back for thirty years before the earth crashes over and finishes the cycle of the body. A few years later a sapling might be the only evidence of the grave that once laid there and a new cave is dug out nearby. The family members continue visiting the departed and bring candles to the public stibadium grotto in remembrance.

Industrial detritus picked up from construction sites provide an unlikely home for plants in Jamie Northâ€™s sculptures as nature re-colonises an environment altered or even destroyed by human actions.

Remainder. (Jamie North, 2016)

Touchstone. In nature death creates new life A plaster cast of an urn storing the ashes of the deceased. An object with its weight intended to store the feeling of being amongst the dense woodland and ruins of Jesmond Dene. A new life in the form of a plant stems upwards from the ashes and ruins. Poured in small layers and mixed with chopped pastels and drops of ink.

Isle of the Dead, Arnold Bรถcklin (1880)

Discovering the architectural language through the models.

Left: 1:200 Plaster cast Landscape of Memories

Mark in the landscape.

Plaster cast example of funghi burial cave, somehow reminiscent of the Victorian age headstones.

Scale: Building in Jesmond Dene Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Glimpses Amongst Woods A new landscape condition Sand-cast concrete grottoes and funghi caves, somehow reminiscent of Victorian age headstones. Moving through the wild landscape and glimpses, just fragments, of these peculiar glistening white structures are caught amongst the leaves. Sometimes concealed, sometimes revealed. Experienced completely differently in summer and winter. Eventually, the whole landscape becomes filled with the white burial caves and a new landscape condition is created before disappearing without any traces. The landscape always remains living.

Peter Doig records Le Corbusierâ€™s seminal Unite dâ€™Habitation as a bright minimalist grid, slightly reminiscent of architecture, glistening through dense woodland.

Concrete Cabin. (Peter Doig, 1994)

Alexander Pope’s Picturesque Grotto The ideas tested in his Twickenham garden by Alexander Pope served as an influence for many of the emerging picturesque garden designs of early 18th century. One of its unique elements was the grotto, born out of precedents seen during travels through Italy. Today the grotto remains a physical memory about Pope’s changing interests and social status. It reminds of his travels during 1739 that developed a particular interest about geology and mining. Until his death in 1744, hundreds of types of ore and rocks where gathered from around the world and used to decorate the grotto and the light would bounce off the water from River Thames and reflect into the grotto, making each of them glisten in a different tone. A picturesque, carefully constructed mine whose spatial sequence somehow reminds of the ideas of Enfilade – the deeper inside the grotto one is invited, the rougher the wall treatment becomes.

A landscape Condition “The people of Birka slowly filled large parts of the island with graves, giving the landscape a strange appearance found hardly elsewhere in the world: a seemingly endless undulating pastureland and woodland composed of irregular mounds, dotted with large cairns and standing stones. The effect is eerie, even though it is also peaceful and beautiful. The extraordinary mounds at Birka form the last of the great pre-Christian burial grounds, impressive forms in the landscape, which did not appear again until Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz chose to evoke these great collective monuments in the landscaping of the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery at the beginning of the twentieth century.” (Ken Worpole, Last Landscapes, 2003)

Tombstone in Abney Park Cemetery, London (Ludwig M Brickmann, 2005)

South Window of Tintern Abbey (Frederick Calvert, 1815)

Stibadium, the Sole Public Grotto Creating a place where the presence of the deceased remains tangible is a reason for choosing burial ahead of cremation. Somewhere to return to and continue the unfinished conversations. Once the funghi cave disintegrates no trace of the burial is left on the landscape allowing to re-use the land indefinitely. With that, the last tangible thread between family and the deceased is torn. A personal memory has turned collective as people start bringing candles and relics to the public stibadium grotto and its network of caves spreads further and further under the landscape.

Left Above: Under the entrance portico of the stibadium. Left Below: A collection of glistening white plaster fragments.

Scale: Building in Jesmond Dene Private Journey: Memory about mortals

The Contemporary Grotto Mushroom Lab Mushroom Lab sits as the ruling jewel in the landscape. The journey winds under its sand-cast concrete portico - the threshold between the public park and strictly private laboratory. Large glazing tempts to gaze into the vaulted, grotto-like special rooms for mushroom growing and tombstone sculpting. Behind them, the servant spaces lie. The entrance lobby/ staff room and all the wet spaces share the grotto characteristic whilst being hidden from public view. The final layer, pushed into the hill, are the served spaces - laboratory and substrate preparation room. Here the wall finish is clinical and environment carefully controlled.

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The rank and degree of intimacy of the visitor restricted how far one would advance down the enfilade suite of rooms in Baroque palaces. The procession reflected in the spaces, starting with a plain public waiting room and culminating in a grandiose bedroom where all of the ownerâ€™s might was expressed.

Interior. Rome. (Cy Twombly, 1980)

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Mushroom Lab 1. Grow Mushrooms 2. Sculpt Tombstones 3. Staff Room 4. Air Shower 5. Laboratory 6. Prepare Substrate 7. Plant room 8. Unisex WC 9. Disabled WC 10. Changing Room 11. Shower 12. Cleanerâ€™s Store 13. Stibadium

Mushroom Lab section. A progression of spaces, the deeper into the mountain, the more clinical the finish and function becomes.

Clinical laboratory space.

Left Above: Approaching Mushroom Lab. Left Below: Mushroom Lab floor plan.

Pre-fabricated sand-cast panels of entrance lobby.

In-situ sand-cast portico. Threshold between landscape and architecture.

Scale: Mushroom Lab Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Self-sustainable Mushroom Growth Cycle as Architectural Expression Special spaces establishing a visual connection with the Public Journey Parti diagram for the Mushroom Lab saw the ergonomics of a self-sustaining mushroom growth cycle at its hearth allowing for the preparation, plantation and fruition of spores within a single building. Following the fruition, some of the spores are inserted into the mushroom suit, some are planted into the mycelium cave formwork and the rest make their way back to preparation facilities. Fruition, the culmination of this cycle, is celebrated and intensified through the architecture thus exhibiting to the public path winding past the beauty of biology and science making the mushroom burial possible.

Typological speciﬁcities of Mushroom Laboratory The proposal envisions a self-sustainable mushroom growth cycle within confines of a building. The process consists of three stages. Firstly, the spores are prepared in a controlled laboratory environment. Hygiene is crucial at this stage requiring the space to be sealed off from the other stages with an air shower. This space requires a sterile positive air pressure area and a laminar flow hood. Once the spores are prepared they are taken into the Inculation room, where the substrate is prepared and the spores are planted. The acoustical properties and air exchange are the key challenges in this space as the compost tumbler is a noisy machine releasing a lot of moist in the air. Finally, the bags are stored in the Incubation and Fruiting room. The room is dark and warm for a month as the spores colonise the bag, before being exposed to natural light, humidity and fresh air resulting in mushrooms fruiting. This space establishes a visual connection with the public path winding past with the beginning of the fruiting period being celebrated through manually raising the blinds for a theatrical reveal of the space inside - slowly filling up with fog and dampness.

of hard work for a historic factory. The Smells are then dissolved into water and using ultrasonic vibrations, as in the previous precedent, changed from a liquid into vapor thus giving the smells a physical manifestation. Glass pipes are used to present the scented fog traveling through the tubes before being dispersed into the space. In the mushroom grow room, heavy bags will be handled, encouraging the specification of brass tubes instead of glass ones, meaning the moment of fog traveling through the tubes will be hidden but the occasional fine spray of cold air carrying the aroma of a damp Northumbrian forest will nevertheless achieve a unique atmosphere, celebrating the fruiting period of mushrooms.

Left: Aesop Nottingham store distillation apparatus. (Mezulis, 2015) Middle: Reeveelateur installation by Mickael Wiesengrun (2014) Right: Matter to Matter installation by Arturs Analts. (Reeve, 2018)

The Fruitition Room The bag hangers are envisioned as a composition of pipes, merging notions of industrial factory and clinical laboratory and are referencing the intentions behind the Distillation apparatus forming a centerpiece in Ciguue’s Aesop Nottingham store. More monolithic pipes express the strength necessary for holding the heavy bags of mushrooms. Meanwhile, the more delicate pipes carry the air, water, and odor. The room is a combination of the practicality underlying the laboratory typology and the curious investigations aroused by the grotto spaces and is envisioned as one of three “special” spaces of the proposal. It efficiently fosters the growth of a mushroom whilst evoking a memory of gathering mushrooms in the unique ambiance of Latvian forests. A touch reveals, that the delicate pipes carrying heat in the growing period, have turned cold and bedewed as the fruiting starts. Microscale atomisers cast into them are dispersing occasional puffs of fine spray. The technology is based on the Matter to Matter installation by Arturs Analts where an innovative technology using ultrasonic vibrations allows to switch between the aggregative states of water through methods of no harm to the environment. The installation is further enhanced by dispersing slight amounts of specifically designed aroma based on the designer’s interpretation of the smell of a Latvian forest - a scent of damp pine needles, stamped grass and soil. Investigations into a setting’s smell are further investigated in the Revelateur installation by Mickael Wiesengrun who produced scents

Left Above: Axonometric of the bag hangers in the Grow Room. Left Below: Mushroom Lab. Spaces for self-sustainable mushroom growth cycle.

Structure as spatial strategy The structural strategy has been borrowed from the Baumschulenweg Cemetery by Axel Schultes. In the book Structure as Architecture Charleson (2005) analyses the building and concludes that the structural walls dominate the plan and provide a clear spatial diagram with the exception of a sole “special” room where another structural language is introduced. Chaotically placed columns fill the large interior volume and “recall the spatial qualities of a native forest” (Charleson, 2005). The columns provide structural support but efficiency has been substituted for a powerful experience that is intensified by a masterly introduction of natural light. Each roof slab-to-column junction has been celebrated with an annulus of natural light washing down the column surfaces. The effect is achieved by specifying the junctions as the narrowest possible concrete beams, barely noticeable unless sought. Mushroom Laboratory scales down and borrows the strategy. Structural walls provide a clear spatial diagram with the exception of the entrance lobby/staff room where a sole column is dominating the space. Natural light is washing down its sides crafting an ambiance of a threshold space where a journey through wild trees finishes into a devotional space. As a result, the structure has been made into an indispensable architectural element, integrated into the expression of the aesthetic of the proposal and enriching it.

Mushroom Incubation room filling up with dampness. (Shields, 2017)

Technological and Typological Considerations All of the spaces dealing with the mushroom growth are a celebration of the process with the machinery designed into the building according to this sequence. The complex wall geometry wraps around the equipment allowing the servicing to be brought up through the walls. This, in turn, removes the typical necessity in laboratory spaces for a raised floor or a dropped ceiling allowing for a continuous resin finish along the floor and wall base as easy maintenance of the surfaces is crucial for the process. No dropped ceiling provides freedom with the positioning of skylights allowing to further celebrate the process by bringing heaps of natural light onto selected moments of the sequence. The narrowness and steepness of the site promoted pushing large parts of the proposal into the hill where the high thermal mass of surrounding earth combined with that of the concrete will minimise the temperature fluctuations and reduce the running costs as all of the laboratory spaces require a controlled environment to a certain degree. The running costs are further reduced through minimising the floor area of the spaces to a bare minimum. With laboratory being a typology of heightened fire risk such approach allows for a high amount of compartmentalisation as well as reduced escape distances, being of particular importance in underground architecture. The fire resistance properties of concrete are a further enhancement in this area. The minimisation of floor area and geometric, clear parti diagram allows to considerably reduce spans with the longest span eight meters and most spans no longer than five meters. Consequently, the thickness of the concrete necessary for supporting a green roof is reduced. All of the strategies will be realised in accordance with the guidelines provided by CIBSE and the Approved Documents.

Left: Baumschulenweg Cemetery ground floor diagram. (Charleson, 2005) Middle: Annuli of light as column capitals (Hamrun, 2013) Right: Strategy scaled down in Mushroom Lab.

Scale: A space in Mushroom Lab Private Journey: Memory about mortals

Sand-cast Concrete A contemporary construction method An architectural language borrowing from the untamable wilderness of the surrounding landscape and recognising the weight of the ruins glistening amongst the dense woodland. One that hints towards the devotional picturesque language of grottoes whilst enhancing the typological necessities of a mushroom laboratory. And a feeling about all living eventually returning to dust and earth for in nature death creates new life.

In the ancient city of Petra in Jordan spaces were carved out of the desert rock. Now, due to erosion, they have started moving between states of natural and man-made. For Batara installation concrete is poured into earth pits and the walls are crafted through the process of removing the sand, referencing the prehistoric building style.

Batara. (Anne Holtrop, 2015)

Sand-Cast Concrete The exterior walls will be cast using sand as the formwork. This innovative concrete casting method has been extensively tested for the last decade by Anne Holtrop in large scale installations under the title Batara. A rough formwork is dug out of the ground before concrete is poured inside. Once set, the surrounding earth is removed revealing concrete that is finished with a sand grain with all its imperfections. The first application of the construction method to a functional architectural proposal is underway as the construction of Shaikh Ebrahim Center started in January of the year 2019, featuring sand-cast concrete walls and ceilings and sand-cast aluminium doors. The Mushroom laboratory emphasizes the process of the construction. An in-situ sand-cast exterior wall is proposed. The interior concrete panels with the insulation securely fastened and covered with DPM will be pre-fabricated in the high-quality factory conditions. Particular care will be taken in ensuring the DPM is covering the insulation entirely as the process of casting exterior walls will be timely and the insulation must remain dry once the panels are erected on site. With panels assembled, a timber formwork is erected around approximately two meters from the wall panels and a polystyrene formwork is secured to the assembled panels. Then sand and concrete are poured in simultaneously from the opposite sides in small layers to ensure it lies correctly on the polystyrene formwork with no caves forming where water could later rest and a minimum of 300 mm depth is achieved at every point. With formwork removed most of earth falls away. More is washed away by the rainwater over the years but some fragments of the facade are never revealed and soon covered by the sprawl of nature. The whole process will follow the HSE guidelines for safe handling of concrete.

Sand-cast plaster test of the construction method.

Environmentally Conscious Concrete Wall Panels

Load-bearing

Pre-cast

Having previously critiqued the unsustainability of the traditional means of burial and cremation it is only fitting that the construction of mushroom burial buildings is deeply concerned with their impact on the environment. Primary structural material is concrete despite its low ranking in the Green Guide to Specification. Bennett (2010) argues the guide mainly considers the embodied CO2 of the materials, which accounts to only 5% of the carbon emissions from a building with the rest 95% generated during its lifespan. He goes on to claim concrete buildings can provide the greatest long-term reductions in energy consumption owing to their thermal mass and the consequent effectiveness of passive environmental strategies. Careful specification can considerably offset the high embodied CO2 of concrete. PFA and GGBS eco-cement were looked upon. In 2010 RockTron developed innovative technology in a push for an ever greener PFA cement - the RockTron Alpha. It recovers the useful eco-minerals from the fly ash, of which there are over 100 million tones dumped in landfill sites in the UK alone, thus making long term fly ash site remediation possible whilst conserving virgin natural resources. Up to 60% of traditional CEM I (Ordinary Portland Cement) can be substituted with the RockTron Alpha for structural grade concrete with Bennett (2010) stating the processing requires 20% less energy and releases less than 10% of the CO2 compared to Portland cement whilst maintaining a competitive price. The company has since gone into administration, however, the method is offered by other manufacturers, for example, Cemex with premises in Newcastle.

Anne Holtropâ€™s Batara sequence. (Princen, 2014)

Construction of the sand-cast concrete wall panels for Shaikh Ebrahim Center (Anne Holtrop, 2019)

Internally Exposed Concrete Panels Buildingâ€™s thermal strategy has been based on the interrelation of three principles - the high thermal mass of concrete is heated up through large south-facing openings and skylights and the heat is kept within the building by a continuously insulated and airtight envelope. For maximising the strategy the structural concrete panels are left exposed. The u-values of the external walls are maximised through specifying a newly developed aerogel insulation foam by Bronx Material Research Centre. According to the data from productâ€™s patent application and the professor Joshi (2016) who developed the material, it insulates 2.6 times better than conventional insulation and simultaneously offers a 30% sound insulation improvement compared to the average acoustic insulation. Yet the aerogel insulation is thinner than comparable products and importantly much greener to produce, no heat treatment or toxic materials are required for its production, no gases are generated and only water is used resulting in recent SGBC (Singapore Green Building Council) certification. The pilot plant has recently been completed in the USA and the product should be ready for mass production at any moment. For maximising the practicality of the laboratory spaces wall panels will have a 3mm translucent resin finish for the regular cleans with pressure washer crucial for mushroom growth. The internal spaces recall picturesque devotional language by interpreting a vaulted grotto. The geometrical complexity of the intended spatiality underscores the benefits of off-site construction, allowing to considerably minimise waste whilst ensuring the precision in the production of primary structural elements.

In-situ sand-cast concrete imagined construction sequence diagram.

Left Above: Mushroom Lab South elevation. Left Below: Sand-cast plaster sample model.

Scale: Building in Jesmond Dene Private Journey: Memory about mortals

1:10 Ground Floor to External Wall Detail Thermally efficient concrete construction With any insulation between the floor slab and the wall slab geting squashed a continuous line of insulation can not be achieved in concrete construction. An additional layer of insulation running beneath the floor slab, occasionally even wrapping around the foundations can minimise the cold bridge. However, given its length and geometric configuration, it nevertheless remains a key factor as highlighted in the statistics provided by Schock Bauteile GmbH (2016). At present, about 17% of the total thermal transmission loss in buildings with good heat insulation (passive house standard) is attributed to thermal bridges, with window reveals (6%) and wall connections (8%) accounting for most of this share. Schock Novomur is an innovative offset block with a thermal conductivity of 0.266 W/(m*K) whilst maintaining a compressive strength of class 20. Schock advertises the product as an offset block for brickwork and concrete blockwork, but the principles should be the same with a concrete panel substituting the blocks with the slight alteration of casting reinforcement rods into the concrete elements of Schock Novomur allowing to securely fix the concrete panels on top. Alternatively, the Schock Isokorb could be adjusted and used. Specified for concrete this product minimises the cold bridge in balconies.

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11 10 9

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3 2 Schock Novomur in section and plan. (Schock Bauteile GmbH, 2016)

1. Floor Build-up: 6mm slip-resistant resin finish with decorative quartz aggregates 75mm cement screed with underfloor heating pipes, 200 mm centres 75mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 1,5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 300mm reinforced concrete slab 150mm gravel fill 2. Service trench. 3. Schock Novomur offset block with cast in reinforcement bars. 4. Stainless steel floor support. 5. Wall Build-up: 200mm pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, white pigmented 150mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 1,5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 250-500mm in-situ sand-cast concrete, white pigmented 6. Pre-cast concrete window frame, white pigmented. 7. Brass window frame, aged finish. 8. Saint Gobain Antelio Planitherm: double glazing, 10mm+20mm cavity+10mm 9. Polystyrene formwork. 10. Concealed Aco Raindrain stainless steel chanel. 11. Irregular granite slabs, sawn in grooves for slip resistance. 12. Balfour Beatty Geothermal pile foundations.

1:10 External Wall Detail to Roof Detail Extensive green roof An extensive green roof should help maximise the thermal performance of the most vulnerable of building’s skins and significantly improve the sound insulation, ensuring serenity to the surrounding cemetery. Simultaneously, it extends the life expectancy of the roof by protecting the damp proof membrane. and minimises building’s negative impacts on local ecology. The roof would house draught tolerant Northern plant species allowing to diversify the local fauna whilst ensuring its self-sustainability without an irrigation system that would considerably increase building’s water consumption. Two bird boxes on the roof will provide a welcoming environment for local bird species. All elements of the extensive green roof system are specified in accordance with the Evagreen extensive warm roof system chosen due to guaranteed long life performance of the materials, locality and the sustainability commitments by the developer, like a chlorine and halogen-free membrane. Dealing with Water: Gutters are provided around the perimeter of the skylights and a hidden gutter is following the outer wall. The green roof will store the rainfalls and gradually allow water to soak through the soil and travel towards the gutters along the waterproof membrane. Gutters then guide the water towards the pipes cast inside the external portico columns where it will fall to ground level and be disposed of away from the building, into the soil. The whole process is concealed from sight. Maintenance: An extensive green roof itself requires minimal maintenance. A yearly inspection should be undertaken searching for undesirable plant material. However, the heavily wooded site will intensify the necessity for roof light washing and gutter cleaning form leaves. With the proposal being pushed into the slope, allowing level access from the North for easy and safe maintenance. A few metal clips will be discreetly incorporated into the chimneys ensuring safety around the roof edge in wet or snowy conditions in consideration of HSE guidelines. 1. Extensive Green Roof Build-up: Sedum planting in Evagro sedum mat 130 mm soil-less substrate 1 mm Icopal filter fleece 60 mm Evadrain drainage mat Expanded shale protection and storage fleece ICB single ply membrane 150 mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 1,5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 200mm Pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, white pigmented 40 mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation, spray painted 2. Stainless steel. 3. Wall Build-up: 250-500mm in-situ sand-cast concrete, white pigmented Polystyrene formwork 1,5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 150mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 200mm pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, white pigmented 4. Brass window frame, aged finish. 5. Concealed curtain, manually operated. 6 . Saint Gobain Antelio Planitherm: double glazing, 10mm+20mm cavity+10mm

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Construction Report Human comfort and safety strategies Accessibility: Within walking distance, new public parking is being developed with allocated spaces for disabled people and a cycle store. The path leading through the landscape is resurfaced with level surface granite slabs with sawn in grooves for slip resistance. However, the topography of the site allows only the public buildings to be accessible without assistance. Seating will be provided throughout the landscape. Concealed drainage ensures level access into buildings and fire-rated open grain oak doors are treated with mineral paints to achieve a dark finish to contrast the white concrete walls and allow the visually impaired for easier negotiation through the building. All publically used detailing, like door handles and handrails, will have a brass base with a timber finish ensuring a pleasant tactile experience and consistent materiality throughout the landscape both inside and outside to further assist visually impaired. 1800 mm turning circle/circulation

1500 mm turning circle/circulation

areas of potential improvement

access from disabled parking to entry

utility stair, R=170 G=250, 16 raisers

60 mm handrail to wall 40 mm wide handrail terminated at end 2250 mm

150 mm 320 mm 500 mm 600 mm

300 mm door handle to wall

assistance to employees with visual/hearing impairments

columns lacking contrast elevator to disabled parking

es slop hy proved p a r g Ap topo 1:20 ( n ting exis per tha ) M stee ment u Doc

provision of 450 mm benches to allow rest

steep slope, handrail should be provided

14,5 m

15,5 m 17 m

13 m

14,5 m

15,5 m

FD.30.S height width (mm)

30 min fire resistance

Fire hazard

60 min fire resistance

Escape route, distance (m)

Cavity barrier

250 mm

dimensions allow a disabled shower

Fire Strategy: With laboratory being a typology of heightened fire risk Approved Document B was carefully adhered to. Each of the stages of the mushroom growth cycle is compartmentalised with the spaces at the highest risk of the fire pushed deepest into the hill to minimise the potential of an escape route being blocked. The compactness of the plan reduces escape distances. Bare concrete walls have high fire resistance properties whilst the exposed spray-painted aerogel insulation remains cool whilst being exposed to temperatures of up to 1100 degrees Celsius. FD.30.S height width (mm)

950 mm

14 m

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10,5 m

Acoustic Design

Thermal Strategy

Services Integration

The inherent sound-damping qualities of concrete should essentially remove any external noise pollution. With risks of high internal noise pollution from the building services and laboratory equipment, the ceilings would be sprayed with pigmented foam considerably enhancing the acoustic qualities and simultaneously providing an elegant and tactile finish as can be seen in the allconcrete Waterline Museum by Anne Holtrop. The aerogel insulation foam developed by Bronx MRC is specified, offering a 30% sound insulation improvement compared to the average acoustic insulation whilst being much greener to produce. No heat treatment or toxic materials are required for its production, no gases are generated and only water is used. Doors will be fitted with the Lorient FinesseTM door seals that will simultaneously satisfy the acoustic, smoke and fire protection and even the thermal containment requirements.

Building’s thermal strategy has been based on the interrelation of three principles - the high thermal mass of concrete is heated up through large south-facing openings and skylights and the heat is kept within the building by a continuously insulated and airtight envelope. According to Sassi (2006), 60% of the energy used in a typical dwelling in the UK is for space heating. Allowing passive strategies to heat and cool the space can simultaneously reduce running costs and considerably offset the carbon footprint of the building over its lifespan as well as remove the potential of any technical difficulties associated with mechanical strategies. Passive strategies will be maximised by using the inherently high thermal mass of concrete. A direct passive solar gain system is utilised for the south-facing spaces with the exposed concrete interior being directly heated up from the sun. Once left bare, the concrete walls act as a heat sink absorbing the solar radiation throughout the day and cooling the space by a couple of degrees. Once the working hours are over, the heat is slowly reradiated into the space and nighttime passive cooling, operated through vents located into the window frames, will extract the warm air and prepare the space for the next day. According to Benett (2010), the variation in diurnal temperature in the UK makes this strategy particularly effective. However, Sassi (2006) points out that the strategy can bring implications for low occupancy buildings during wintertime as the space will be uncomfortably cold in the morning and will take a long time to heat up. This can be addressed by turning the strategy from a diurnal cycle into a seasonal cycle as can be seen in the Mile End Park where the ground was insulated and waterproofed in a six-meter radius around the building allowing the system to remain unaffected by periods of excessive heat or no sunshine. Due to the proximity to the river, pile foundations are considered to be the best choice for the proposal and potentially the strategy from Mile End Park could be interpreted by insulating the pile foundations and allowing for the excessive summer heat to store down there. Nevertheless, the pile foundations will be updated with plastic piping infilled with a heat transfer fluid extracting heat from the ground and using it for underfloor heating. GSHP is likely to function for building’s lifespan with no maintenance costs (Benett, 2010). The existing trees growing in front of each of the south-facing windows act as natural louvers with the foliage providing solar shading during the summer months and allowing more heat to enter the building during the winter months. According to Thomas (1999), trees let through 1025% of the light when in leaf and 60-70% when bare.

1. Underfloor Heating: Space is heated by underfloor heating pipes that are circulating by the heat extracted through the geothermal pile foundations. 2. Services: Services are running through a trench along the edges of the room. Where necessary they are brought up and into the space through the wall geometry. 3. Natural Ventilation Stacks: Ventilation concealed within the geometry of the internal walls. 4. Heat Recovery System: Whilst traveling down the air will be pre-heated using a rotary heat recovery system by the stale air escaping parallelly through the same chimney. 5. Wind Chimneys: During mushroom fruiting period fresh air is pulled in through the wind catchers based on the Bernoulli’s principle. 6. Artificial Light: Artificial lighting’s direction is aligned with that of natural light to escape any double shadows forming. 7. Natural Ventilation Inlets: During mushroom fruiting period fresh air enters through vents incorporated into the window frame. 8. Manual Thermal and Glare Control: Concealed, manually controlled blinds.

Ventilation, Air Handling and Humidity In an airtight building, sufficient air movement is essential for occupant health and wellbeing. Ventilation rate must remain consistent and with the densely wooded site impacting outdoor wind regime mechanical ventilation is specified for each space. All the laboratory spaces are being monitored by sensors allowing the Building Management System to adjust the required airflow and save energy in times of inactivity. The airtight envelope, exposed concrete,and specificities of mushroom growth would result in high internal moisture levels. Traditionally, the mechanical ventilation would be assigned to deal with this, however, Finnish research has proposed that hygroscopic (moisture absorbing) materials are nine times more effective in dealing with indoor humidity compared to mechanical ventilation (Liddell, 2008). In detailing and furniture open grain, untreated timber will be used extensively. In the non-laboratory spaces and the Grow Room natural strategies of cross ventilation and stack effect will be utilized at every opportunity to reduce the building running costs. For the cross ventilation, fresh air enters through vents incorporated into the frame of the south-facing openings and stale air is extracted based on the principles of stack effect through the sand-cast column extending as a chimney in the entrance lobby/staff room. This chimney parallelly acts as a wind catcher as the geometry of its top is based on the principles of a wind scoop allowing to pull fresh air in based on the Bernoulli’s principle. The BMS will receive a signal when the exterior wind conditions are favorable to open the louvers and suck the fresh air in. Whilst traveling down the air will be pre-heated using a rotary heat recovery system by the stale air escaping parallelly through the same chimney.

Left: Accessibility and fire strategy.

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Scale: Mushroom Lab Private Journey: Memory about mortals