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Hawkhurst Inc.

Part 2 Project 2021
James Hatton
University of Kent | UK
Hawkhurst Inc's intentionally ambiguous premise is that there is an increasing tension between architectural history and heritage, and the future imperative for a Carbon Net Zero built environment.

It offers an alternative future out of this seemingly contradictory impasse, a heretical interpretation of William Morris’s SPAB principles, where the historic fabric of Rye's citadel properties are systematically replaced, on-demand, by SIP panel replicas, exquisitely manufactured, and then manicured to order, in chiaroscuro lighting, befitting the contemporaneous artistic depictions of artisanal precision. A sometimes secret, often complicit, ballet of manufacture and distribution is reciprocated by the postmodern sale of architectural salvage to offshore buyers.

Divergent structural grids are inferred from the notion of waves of time detracting and reflecting off the incised stepped prominence of its location, sitting between the coastal floodplain of the River Brede’s Rock Channel, and the Castle above. References are made to the maritime history of Rye as a centre of ship building, in the conception of a series of Vierendeel truss tubular hulls, above a steel framed substrate, itself an extension of existing repurposed dockyard building beyond.


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2021
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