Remarkable Places
“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature”
― Henry David Thoreau, Life in the Woods
We were recently appointed to design a new family home in a large abandoned quarry in mid-Wales. One of the many industrial artefacts leftover from the previous century. Although this is not a natural landscape, it’s hard not to feel wildness here through a combination of monumentality and silence.
The secluded nature of the site and its inner cauldron-like walls create a microclimate a few degrees warmer than the surrounding environment and sheltered from the prevailing wind, providing a rich habitat for local fauna and flora.
Further down, the basin of the Quarry has filled up with spring water over time, creating a deep volume of ever-changing colour and surface pattern. The exposed cliff edges and working plateaus are overgrown with rich biodiversity that's slowly erasing the memory of human presence.
Working in these raw landscapes is humbling. The overhead cliffs feel threatening and their presence is nullified by the glass surface of water that fills the majority of the quarry and equalises this dramatic site.
The main focus of the home will be to retain the natural wild setting that has evolved, healing the scars of the site’s industrial past. The home, therefore, will need to have a significant low impact footprint. These among other things are the strategies we continue to explore in our studio.
For more images of the landscapes we build within check out our Pinterest board.