Decadent Reuse: Penhale Story
Research thesis question: Abandoned and ‘Uncanny’ Military Sites; Approaching the Adaptive Reuse of a physically unapproachable and mentally charged Military sites such as Penhale Camp in Cornwall.
Throughout this project, we have peeled back the layers of contentious heritage, collective memories and entangled experiences of the site. The programme for the site was specified through rigorous research, maintaining a practical use was imperative to the utilitarian nature of the history of the site.
Our thesis project reacts to the current holiday house development on a Penhale Military Camp site. It has recently received planning permission despite controversy among locals. Our proposal focuses on more sustainable development through material reuse as well as on the needs of locals.
We have designed a scheme that is responding to the geology, military, and mining history of the site. We experiment not only with the reuse of the site material but also with traditional town layouts. We reused the existing military camp buildings and through specific removal and reuse of certain buildings, we created a Wave research Centre with cliffside dwellings.
