transient-X-traction Part 1 Project 2008 Emily Thurlow University of Nottingham Nottingham | UK The edge condition is a place of tension, escalation and often conflict. Its inherent variety and contrast set the location for my projects, between 2 biological regions: water and land. At this point, nature is all controlling, and often results in the redundancy of Architecture. Yet it’s unique infrastructure offers much more than its hostile repute, being a point of heightened activity, movement and life. By the process of extraction, an opportunity arises to control and sustain an ecosystem: an oasis on the edge.In an environment of constant change, the architecture is able to respond to nature, slowly shifting with the cliff retreat. Consequently, new programmes and opportunities are created through space –time. The result: Architecture that is no longer a separate piece of landscape, but successfully woven into natures system. Emily’s ‘transient extraction’ project draws on the careful investigation of an environment – the chalk cliffs at Eastbourne - where dynamic temporal relationships form a complex system. She follows her own interest of observation and develops a brief that brings site, its physical change, weather, flora and fauna into a new balance - probabilistic in intention, challenging in execution.The proposed construct delights through its tenderness and adaptability, its innovative programming and delicate integration. The harnessing of natural resources of the immediate and relative environment combines elements of geology and ecology to form new shifting nodes of interaction.The project responds on a functional level with an intelligently developed structural geometry, turning the retreating cliff into an initiator of calculated change of form. Aesthetically its character is expressed through an authentic application of materials and critically the architecture dares to enter un-chartered territory, where references are rather found in the contemporary scientific discourse than in the architectural library.