ARCHITECTURE AND POETRY
MAY 2023
The exhibition Architecture and Poetry is on display at Hay Castle from May 26th - 3rd September. The exhibition begins on the Castle exterior with a newly commissioned light poem from poet-sculptor Robert Montgomery and culminates in Pelé Cox’s verse inscription for Eric Parry’s Building 7 at Chelsea Barracks as well as the words of bilingual poet Gwyneth Lewis for the Wales Millennium Centre at Cardiff. Alongside this, the exhibition details three architectural designs by our practice which were inspired by poems, including the International Rugby Experience at Limerick which has its origins in the poem Beowulf. These architectural exhibits are complemented by a collection of concrete poetry from the 1960s to the present including The Mouse’s Tale by Lewis Carrol. To visit the Hay Castle website click here.
Níall will be giving a lecture at Hay Castle on the 30th May talking about the links between poems and some of our projects. Please click here to find out further details.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, SPORTS PAVILION
NOVEMBER 2019
7:45 AM, London Bridge. The train from Uckfield just entered the station and is spitting out hundreds of commuters, flowing past us. We hop on the now empty train and leave London to visit our timber sub-contractor’s workshop in East Sussex.
We are fast approaching the construction stage of our Sports Pavilion project for Balliol College in Oxford and were invited to review a mock-up of the roof structure. The pavilion roof is formed of slender sweet chestnut glulam joists; 10 layers are stacked on top of each other, each layer cantilevering further into the space, creating a coffer.
1:50 model
From outside the roof structure expresses itself as a lantern, popping up in the centre of the building. The lantern is fully glazed, allowing for rays of sunshine to enter through the stacked glulam. In the evening, the dense timber lattice will be highlighted by a subtle glow, originating from LED strips, that are recessed in the top of the glulam joists.
The mock-up in Inwood’s (timber sub-contractor) workshop
Lighting strategy detail plan and section
The mock-up was used to test the connection details between the individual layers of glulam, the construction sequence, and the integration of the LED strips and the associated wiring. Preceding the assembly of this mock-up, these details have been worked through and coordinated in many lengthy design workshops, involving the contractor, structural and electrical engineers, the timber sub-contractor, electricians and us architects. As such, it was even more enjoyable to review the mock-up with all the parties involved and to see our combined efforts bearing fruit.
The carpenters who built the mock-up and the Electrical Engineer, Design Manager, and Architect discussing the installation and accessibility of the LED strips