HOTeL@eDALE Part 1 Project 2002 John Knight Manchester School of Architecture Manchester | UK My approach to this project was determined by a series of contextual studies conducted during a residential study visit. The atmospheric qualities of the landscape were recorded in parallel with topographical data and patterns of human use. The existing uses including a railway platform and car park for walkers were significant in that they marked the site as a gateway into Edale village and The Pennine Way beyond. I undertook a number of context studies relating to form, chroma and route. These studies attempted to understand the elements of the landscape, merging to form a greater whole. These studies were developed in the studio using models, collage, drawing and CAD towards an interventional form that was capable of absorbing and holding some of the essences recorded at first hand.Initially looking at route and marks as they progressed I became more interested in form and the concept of the landscape being built up from a series of folded plates. Programmatic detail was absorbed into the studies developing a sense of scale and event that symbiotically combined with the more abstract generative forms and existing programme on the site. The initial idea was distilled and sharpened using a combination of precedent studies and mixed media modelling. A simple lead sheet model was used to refine the folded plate. Visiting and studying buildings dealing with shifted landscape planes such as The Delft Institute of Technology library helped me to understand how to deal with abstract landscape forms meeting stronger more rational forms.The technological development of the scheme arose from a dialogue between `place form` and `product form` and the application of `green` environmental systems. A strict spatial, material and constructional hierarchy is observed with volumes appropriate to function, mass materials used as primary ground elements and a lightening of the structure towards the top.I feel that the building integrates with its context whilst remaining uncompromisingly contemporary. The HOTeL @ Edale is remarkable for the range and acuity of exploratory techniques and strategies leading to a thoroughly resolved articulation of programme and form. The proposition is sophisticated, benefiting from a rigorous distillation of contextually derived `gesture` incorporating a mature and elegant handling of programme with a translation into material that is both thoroughly plausible and poetically charged. The conversation between form, programme and site is evidenced by development work in a range of media each contributing significantly to the nature of the resolved proposition. Inherited topographical and programmatic circumstances have been carefully woven into the formal intervention enhancing the concept that the building provides both a destination and a threshold. The programme is divided between social functions and the more private bed / workspace accommodation split by the existing lane that has been literally `cross programmed` as an electronic public space creating a `loci` amidst the pragmatic scattering of inherited surfaces and uses. The materialisation strategy is simultaneously rational and experientially potent. The character of space, light, materials and tectonics are sensitively balanced within the credible articulation of an effective contemporary construction system. The contrasting construction systems have been folded together to reveal both their own nature and allude to the landscape beyond. The contrast and articulation of the junction between the two primary forms is well handled acknowledging their programmatic and constructional difference. The project succeeds in being legible from the immediate tactility of `nearness` to `farness`- the identification of a distant mark in the landscape. The development of an experiential narrative via routes and views between interior and exterior reflects this moving from the privacy of a room to the publicity of social space within and around the building and the horizon beyond.The project emerged from a teaching programme including reference texts from Kenneth Frampton and Stephen Holl. Their influence is evident in the development and realisation of the site specific, the experiential quality and the tectonic character of a project executed to a consistently high standard at every scale.