55/02: A manufactured architecture in a manufactured landscape

Extract

The spectacular surroundings of Kielder Water & Forest Park, in Northumberland, England, are a confluence of opposing states: the man-made and natural; the utilitarian and recreational; the beautiful and isolated; shaped by weather converging from east and west. Kielder Castle was built in 1775 as the Duke of Northumberland's hunting lodge. In recent years the territory has gained notoriety for a series of innovative art and architectural commissions including Belvedere by Softroom Architects (1999), Kielder Skyspace by the American artist James Turrell (2000), Minotaur by architect Nick Coombe and artist Shona Kitchen (2003), and Kielder Observatory by Charles Barclay Architects (2008). This paper outlines one of Kielder's most recent additions – a shelter entitled 55/02 – the result of a collaboration between sixteen^*(makers) and manufacturers Stahlbogen GmbH. The work rekindles the symbiotic relationship between design and making once central to the production of architecture. The reawakening of this tradition has been stimulated by the mainstream adaptation of CAD/CAM as an industrial and disciplinary medium which binds the protocols of drawing with those of fabrication. However, as this account of the project shows, the relevance of an increasingly digitised world extends beyond the production of 55/02 as an artefact – it forms the basis of the architecture's relationship with its locality as an industrial, historical, social, cultural and manufactured landscape [1].