Swansea
Print Workshop @
Kings
Lane Warehouse
now viewing: Kings Lane Warehouse / The New Building / Architect's Proposal / Design Concept
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Design Concept
Despite our decision to retain the existing facades and salvage the internal structure, we do not regard the building as precious. Rather, we regard the idiosyncratic nature of its scarred shell as something to preserve and exploit. We liken this remaining shell to a palimpsest, a surface whose past layers and erasures are still largely visible. In turn, we view our intervention as simply another layer, another series of marks born of new demands, new logic, new functions.
The strategy goes as follows: lift the building’s roof, prop up its facades, gut its interiors, and insert within the shell a new object. This new object is foreign; its structure possesses its own logic and materiality. On the lower floors, this object is sometimes visible through existing openings; where the existing shell ends, this new object rises above it. The existing shell will be pinned back to the new internal structure with exposed steel ties visible on the facades. These ties mark the lines of the new floor plates and express the act of restraining that which has been rendered unstable by the new object within it. The ties, along with the new roof and altered facades, are curious signals of the appropriation and revitalisation of the King’s Lane Warehouse.