VERNACULAR JOINERY

Practical Making and Testing of Detail Models

Material study exploring vernacular timber joinery.

Radically challenging the use of wood as a sustainable solution for joining structural elements.

Joint models were made and tested at 1:2, 1:5, and 1:10 scale, scrutinized for feasibility, sustainability, craftsmanship, and cost-effectiveness.

Community and Immigration Centre Gravesend

Accustom House is a Community and Immigration Centre that explores resilient, alternative approaches to immigration and asylum-seeking.

The project reinterprets local vernacular architecture, traditions and features of the peripheral landscape to create an efficient, financially and environmentally sustainable programme as a riposte to the recent policies implemented by the government such as the Rwanda Plan. The intervention takes place on the existing Customs House and Immigration Office site in Gravesend, Kent.

The existing outbuildings are retrofitted and connected by a structural system to create spaces for living, leisure, education, work and social interaction.

The architecture draws from local vernacular archetypes such as the Oast house and cruck frame, weaving foreign and local communities into a synergic scheme. The Kentish Oast house is reinterpreted as a pottery kiln, kitchen oven, hop kiln and heat source for the building.