In collaboration with Sanchez Benton.
A project for a new building and Arrant Industries HQ in Whitstable which aims to maintain a flexibility of use - with the critical potential for residential occupation in future and the enabling economic justification that provides.
The extreme geometry of what is an unlikely site for a building – neither at the front nor the back - has driven a design brief which, sharing a common thread with other projects, aims to define the largest possible rational unprogrammed space and push explicit function to the periphery of both plan and section.
Currently on site, the project is being delivered with a combination of relatively low self-build skills and the extreme high skill and knowledge of key trusted collaborators and makers in the town. Design decisions respond to the emerging character of the building, and to available skills, materials, time and money.
During the build, students have been invited to a series of site conversations, where the realities of delivering a project in this way are discussed, along with the challenges and opportunities that come with the tolerances and flexibility required to do so in a remotely viable way.
Photography and posters by Duncan Blackmore
Drawings by Sanchez Benton
