Retrospective Futures 3

Above: Site plan for the Research and Development Centre for Wind Energy, Newhaven, 1992.

Preface

I realised that a good many of my degree and diploma level projects had plenty of future thinking into the issues surrounding sustainability and the built environment. I thought the material was worthy of dusting off, digitising and celebrating as a series of retrospective future thinking posts for the Sustainababble blog. This project from 1992 foresaw the scale of investment needed to establish a UK-based wind energy industry.

Above: 1:500 scale site section and 1:100 scale building long section vertical section through the Research and Development Centre for Wind Energy, Newhaven,1992

Research and Development Centre for Wind Energy, Newhaven, 1992

For the thesis project of my fifth year of architectural studies, and now at the Architecture School of Brighton Polytechnic, I was given the latitude to develop my own brief. My idea was to design a research centre for wind energy. My Tutor, David Robson thought he had just the site for such a proposition in Newhaven at the foot of the cliffs and the enormous harbour breakwater.

In the early 1990’s there were no wind farms either on-shore or off-shore and yet it seemed clear to me this was another of those future industries that was sure to play a part in working towards a sustainable society. In my research I stumbled on the fact that the UK had a staggering three-quarters of the European wind resource within its land mass and territorial waters. With forty years of hindsight, it is utterly depressing that UK companies just didn’t believe enough in that future to put the necessary investment in. As such, pretty much all the wind farms in the UK use overseas technology – it is a multi-billion-pound industry.

What should a research and development centre for wind energy be composed of? That was the main question my early research into the thesis project needed to answer. I determined that it should have office and laboratory space, an observation tower, some overnight accommodation, an interpretation centre for the general public as well as a marshalling yard and workshop space for assembling and maintaining the turbines. The laboratory space was raised above the workshop space and included an enormous wind tunnel which had a lowerable testing rig which could then be accessed and set-up at ground level.

This project was the first time I really started to get interested in creating micro-climates for convivial human habitation. In later years, I would develop more sophisticated strategies for ‘climate defensive layering’ such that each element of the surrounding landscape and the building envelope itself would play an iterative role in reducing the harsh extremes of climate. One of my points of departure was observing the old and super tight streets of Hastings ‘old town’ and the Laines of Brighton (or ‘Brighthelmstone’ as it was called when it was just a diminutive fishing village). In effect the tightness of the external spaces between the enclosing buildings created a wind shadow in an otherwise super-exposed location. 

The outer defensive layer of the proposal was a beach shingle wall which drew from the language of coastal defences of Martello Towers and the sea forts off Portsmouth. This would do the bulk of wind deflection but also protect the softer fabric of the inner built forms from projectile beach shingle which is a real issue for coastal sites near the tidal zone during storms. Once inside the outer defensive ring, timber framed parallel wings of accommodation were formed around well protected courtyards which were open to the sun but shielded from the wind.