Langley Vale Visitors Centre

This project is a successful competition entry for a visitors centre in Epsom, Surrey.     Our building proposal attempts to meet the key criteria inherent for any architectural project; that is, a balance of functionality, budget, and aesthetics.The aesthetic or poetic motivation for our proposal comes firstly from its setting and use and secondly from its purpose as a tribute to those affected by WW1 and as a commerarative landmark.  We considered these two issues as indivisible. We started with an emotional response to the landscape which is a quintissentially English, gentle, ‘green and pleasant’ context. The building must engage with this particular landscape in an appropriately gentle, sensitive and initimate manner.

The form of the building derived from this image.

The design concept is also geared by an emotional response to issues of war and memory. The design and form of our proposal and its relationship with the ground landscape and particulary with the ground plane derived from these considerations. Our idea, specifically is to provide a discrete, simple, abtract, familiar and memorable form that will draw and inspire the public to dwell on the memory and history associated with WW1 and also provide a beautiful architectural environment to learn about the woodland and local wildlife.

The names of those who ‘played a role in WW1’, as the brief described, are  too many to mention. However, our proposal was to paint names on the inside perimeter of the oval sloped ceiling. These names would be lit-up at different times of the day as the sun tracks through the space. White stones to the perimeter ring will also record names of those who lost their lives.