Sevenoaks Nature & Wellbeing Centre

The site for this competition is within the wooded area of a wetland park. The existing centre required a significantly upscaled programme and additional landscaping/parking.

Our proposal was for a longhouse building drawing on vernacular form and divided into programmatic strips occupying the full width of the building, these strips alternated between open (public) and closed (support) areas producing an A-B…-A rhythm along the length of the building and providing views right through the building when close by.

Given the secluded nature of the site and its inherent focus on the landscape we chose a very low-key approach to the form and materials of the building with the intention that it would visually recede into the woodland and complement retained buildings near by.