Cass Foundation Centre

The building responds to the lines of the landscape within a triangular piece of land, a trapezoidal form is set down low into a small valley with a sedum planted roof. This forms a visual extension of the surrounding grass and with concrete fingers stretching into the chalk slopes, interlocking existing and new.

This lower element is also designed to conceal, enveloping the largest volume within the building, a 7m high display space, which partly protrudes through the sedum, reflecting the scale and material of Studio Downie's earlier visitor gallery in Goodwood.

Greys and whites refer to the indigenous flint and provide a starkness between inside and out, hard and soft. The calm, robust interior of exposed white concrete and blockwork walls contrast with the softness and changing spectrum of the outside landscape. Unlike the earlier visitor gallery where boundaries were blurred with a flow between inside and out, here there is clear separation with the fins linking to the copse.