Botanical Biome | Workbook

BOTANICAL BIOME Botanical Experience and Garden

By Peter Winterburn University of Northumbria

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Location

Gibside Estate 54.922043, -1.728628

Newcastle Upon Tyne 54.967613, -1.607563

Site A - Kitchen Garden 54.920096, -1.733105

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Site B - Stable Block 54.923458, -1.722753

Context

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Client Breif

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ibside Hall (and estate) is the ancestral home of the Bowes Lyons, linking it directly to the current royal family. Gibside Hall is Grade II* listed, sits aside a SSSI site and work is being done to see it removed from the ‘Buildings at Risk’ register.

The principle core is William Blakiston’s 17th century hall, built during the reign of James I &VI (1603-25), with additions in the 18th and 19th century evident. However, studies on internal floor timbers date to the 1470’s and there is evidence of building upon the site from this time.

William Turner is known to have visited Gibside in the early 1800’s, producing a number of painted and drawn studies of the hall and estate.

The Hall is the principle building that defines the estate as the domain of an important family and acts as the epicenter from which outlying estate buildings and estate development is established. These include pleasure as well as need and establish the productive and practical character of the wider estate.

Design an intervention to alter, re-inhabit, re-imagine and re-use one of the following sites within the Gibside Estate …

Site A - Gibside Garden House and the Walled Kitchen Garden Site B - Gibside Stables and its environs You are asked to develop imaginative, speculative and meaningful solutions for the National Trusts development plans to improve and build upon visitor provision and experience.

The specific nature of the intervention; what it is used for and how the site it is inhabited is to be determined individually within the thematic narratives of each site, placing the visitor at the centre of the proposal. You should consider the specific historic, topographic, genealogic, literary, architectonic, narrative and wildlife and natural contexts as catalysts for the development of a proposal and programme.

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Sites

Site A - Gibside Garden House and the Walled Kitchen Garden

Site B - Gibside Stables and its environs

The walled Garden of Gibside will have been both productive and pleasurable. The head gardener of the estate will have lived on the estate, in the garden house which abuts and is part of the escarpment that defines the garden and is of modest construction in comparison to the grandeur of the Hall, Orangery and Chapel. The garden will have provided a large proportion of the sustenance for the residents and extended to pineapple pits, curvilinear glasshouses and the outlying Orangery, celebrating the family’s wealth and providence through the ornamental taming of nature through the growth of exotic fruits.

The stables block is the estates secondary visitor hub and is the largest enclosed building accessibly to visitors on the estate. It was the stables for the family’s equestrian stock and a coach house for their horse drawn vehicles, whilst providing residence for stable hands and coachmen. As a gateway to the wider woodened and agricultural landscapes to the south of the estate, it contains a café, children’s education space, exhibition, artists’ studios and a residential dormitory.

Consideration

Consideration

Develop a proposal that provides a visitor experience that expresses the significance of the walled garden and productive growth as a contributory narrative of the estate. This brief provides opportunity for building manipulation and addition, consideration of the notion of edge and perimeter and can also draw the orangery into its context.

Develop a proposal that provides a visitor experience that expresses the significance of the stables as a contributory narrative of the estate. This brief provides opportunity for building manipulation and addition, consideration of the notion of typology, perimeter and outlying ‘bothies’ and former lumber shed. Consider a programme that could reconsider the stables as a venue or as a reinvigorated continued use.

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Design Statement

‘Botany’ “The scientific study of the physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance of plants.”

‘Biome’ “A large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat.”

The Garden Cottage houses an exhibition of plants and flowers in their native climates. The exhibition spaces ranger in temperature and humidity from dense Rainforest to scorching Desert. The final exhibition space houses some of the native species of the Gibside Estate; this space is fully open to the elements and allows the visiting public to traverse between the Walled garden and Cottage garden. The spaces are enveloped in semi-translucent plastic; [Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene], which distorts the light and creates sense of detachment from the building it resides within. Corian is used in the Cottage to create a bright environment for scientific research to be conducted; as the spaces become more public the Corian fades away revealing the existing structure, taken back to the existing brickwork.

The function of the walled garden has been retained as a place for agriculture, through the addition of towering vertical greenhouses, whose translucent façade and geometric structure play with the natural light of Gibside. They sit atop large grassy plates which create a new public space that maintains the sense of Visual connection which features heavily in the design of the Gibside Estate.

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Concept

Forms within Nature The designing language of ‘Botanical Biome’ is derived from extensive research into the living and natural environment of the Gibside estate, I began by researching the differing types of flora found natively on the estate. I then investigated the cellular structure of some of the plants within the estate and derived the following concepts from them:

Layering

Repetition

Adjacency

As an additional piece of research I looked into other natural forms under intense magnification, below illustrates salmon scales under increasingly intense magnification from 1:1 to 1000:1, I then layered the unmagnified image with the most magnified, this was the basis for the design of the garden; hexagonal shapes conformed into layers to mimic the layers of a topographical map.

The split level garden is constructed from numerous hexagons grouped together resembling the structure of a beehive. Through the design process these layers have become more regular and shallower to accommodate for easier public access.

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Native Plants of Gibside

Lycopodium Clavatum

Equisetum Hyemale

Oreopteris Limbosperma Mountain Fern

Gymnocarpium Dryopteris Oak Fern

Polystichum Setiferum

Dryopteris Carthusiana

Taxus Baccata

Ceratophyllum Demersum

Ceratocapnos Claviculata Climbing Corydalis

Tilia Cordata

Ribes Spicatum

Scutellaria Minor

Lathraea Squamaria

Pinguicula Vulgaris

Carex Laevigata

Carex Pallescens

Festuca Altissima

Hordelymus Europaeus

Scirpus Sylvaticus

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Plant Cells

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Scales in Magnification

1:1

50:1

100:1

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1000:1

Overview

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Site Plan

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Spatial Planning

Research

Sales/Reception

W.C.

Exhibition

Borial Forest

Chaparral

Desert Rain Forest

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Jungle

Conditions

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Section Drawing

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Tubular Steel Frame

Air-filled ETFE Bags

Growth Bed

Raised Ground

True Ground Level

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Velux Fixed Skylight with Ventilation

Sprinkler system

ETFE (Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene)

Galvinized Steel Planter

Existing Garden Wall

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