RIAI | Irish Architecture Awards

Citation

Overseas - under £100,000

The architect has taken the relatively straightforward requirements of a small, pond side photographer's hide and fashioned a building that is poised on the edge of the pond in a faintly predatory manner. The building is infused with naturalistic metaphors - the scaled or feathered roof, the extravagant plume of the lookout box, the skeletal shadows cast internally by the rooflight - which together establish a relationship between building and pond, observer and observed, which is, in itself, the essence of the brief.

Architect's Description
The site is an old pond on farmland near Kettering. The land was used as a US reconnaisance airbase during World War II. The client takes still life photographs of natural objects set against veils of light. She will photograph insects on the surface of the water, using the water as a veiling device. A large boom is to be constructed which will swing over the pond, acting as a horizontal tripod. We developed the design by comparing the camera lens hovering over the water surface, capturing images of insects, to the reconnaisance flights from the base, bringing back images from remote landscapes.