Smithdon school 

_Hunstanton_ENGLAND|2017

The Bridge Campus locates in Hunstanton, more precisely, at the Smithdon Secondary School’s plot, a school planned by Allison and Peter Smithson. Hunstanton is a small town on the English Eastern coast whose population barely exceeds 2.000 inhabitants.

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The plot frames the boundary between the city and the English green countryside. Therefore, starting from a frame intersection, the establishment of a new access is proposed. This new access, will determine the placement of the main volume, which will find its place facing the pre-existing school. The confrontation of the two pieces together with the creation of the new access to the plot, will make the volumes perfectly fit in the space generating a new magnetism with each other which will straighten then up.

In addition, based on the repetitive operations on the ground plane performed by the Smithson all over their works such us; The half-buried spaces in Upper Lawn’s garden, The elevated platform of ”The Economist” complex in London or the spectacular conical hills of the Robin Hood Gardens. All in all, topographical mechanisms that seek to link the project to the plot, a hollow is generated under the Bridge piece, providing a new circulation to the project and generating, at a time, the central space of the Campus.

The will of building the least amount of elements as possible indeed, shows the opportunity to incorporate the current school’s space in the program of The Campus. Nevertheless, the Smithdon school shouldn’t be judged by the young age the Smithson projected it, but with the maturity and precision they executed it. A Mat-building, whose module allows us to extend it on our whim. So is the case of the library, which will consist on the addition of a new module to The School which will both, reinforce the connection of the library with The Bridge and follow The Smithson’s concept of opening the building  to the landscape.

To sum up, a project that is defined by the willingness to dialogue with the pre-existing architecture and by the wish of cooperation with the landscape to conceive The Bridge;

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 • THE BRIDGE CAMPUS •