Project Lacey Green

Project Lacey Green is concerned with the relationship between design, making and place – examining how the communal act of building can affect architectural processes and forms.

Initiated as a final design thesis at the Royal College of Art, the built outcome of the first phase is a new music pavilion for St John’s School.

It was developed with input from construction professionals, teachers, parents, children, and a team of international design students who participated in a two-week design/build workshop. Regional manufacturers and suppliers enabled the project through the provision of in-kind donations, and the timber structure was fabricated at Grymsdyke Farm, a research and production facility in the village. As a reciprocal frame, with each member resting on the adjacent one to create an interlocking lattice, the structural design reflects the ethos of collaboration and interdependence within the project as a whole.

The double-pitched volume, clad in black lapped timber siding, references the local vernacular of barns and outhouses. Whilst the back of the building is braced by the lattice structure, the front portal frame remains open – allowing for performances in the summer, when an audience can sit on the grassy mounds in front of the pavilion.

The design development of the second phase, when the space will be enclosed as an interior classroom, will start in the New Year – with a view to construction taking place over summer 2016. Through this process of incremental and collaborative completion, the project suggests ways in which built structure can become an ongoing framework for social and cultural infrastructure.