Monolithic flint house by skene catling de la peña responds to its rural setting

지질학적 특성을 풍경에 녹여낸 계단형 집, 영국 와데스돈의 플린트하우스

지형에서 이끌어낸 여섯 가지 컬러층을 외벽에 적용해 하늘로 점차 옅어지게 만드는 입면 구성이 돋보여

영국 남부의 버킹엄셔 와데스돈 지역의 황무지에 들어선 플린트 하우스는 계단 모양의 이색적인 주택이다. 주택은 3개의 침실과 식당, 주방, 서재의 한 동(465sqm)과 스튜디오 별관(115sqm)의 다른 한 동으로 구성되어 있다. 무심한 듯 잘 경작된 농장을 배경으로 놓인 두 개의 계단은 지역에서 발견되는 지리학적인 특성을 주택의 표면에 한껏 머금고 있다.

주택의 벽면은 지층에서부터 상부까지 여섯 개의 컬러층으로 구성되어 있다. 외관의 그러데이션은 하부의 검은 쇄석조각에서 시작하여 회색층으로 점차 옅어지고 상부로 가면서 하늘에 녹아 없어지는 것처럼 보인다. 집의 이름에서 그대로 드러나듯 플린트는 흑요석과 관련된 석영 광물질로 남쪽 해변에서부터 노퍽주까지 뻗어있는 석회암층에서만 발견된다.

건축가는 이러한 지역적 지질학적 특성을 십분 활용하여 거친 주변 환경과 조화를 이루는 디자인은 선보인 것이다. 서로 마주하고 있지만 계단의 상부층은 다른 방향을 향해 있다. 집의 지붕이 되는 계단참에는 군데군데 녹화되어 땅과의 관계맺기를 이어간다. 측면에서 보면 계단은 위로 올라갈수록 점차 상승하는 듯한 단면으로 인식됨으로써 입면의 질감을 더욱 북돋아준다.

돌출되고 비어진 입면의 일부는 창이 되거나 발코니나 출입의 영역이 되기도 하면서 거주자의 동선을 돕는다. 집의 외벽을 장식하는 길고 반듯한 사각의 여러 창은 플린트하우스의 생생함을 만들어주는 동시에 거주자에게는 외부의 다채로운 풍경을 전달하는 장치이다. 계단형 외관의 특이함 탓에 집의 내부 역시 지층은 넓지만 상부로 올라갈수록 좁아지는 구조를 취한다. 외부 지형색을 집 안쪽으로 깊숙이 끌어들인 검은 유리 천장과 하부의 수공간은 사뭇 신비한 동굴을 연상케한다. 무한한 공간에 대한 색다른 접근과 기억과 욕망의 혼재됨 등은 플린트하우스의 풍경 만들기의 감성적 색채를 더욱 짙게 물들이고 있다. ANN

Architect_ Charlotte Skene Catling, Jaime de la Peña

자료 Skene Catling de la Pena, Photo by james morris

Skene Catling de la Peña were asked simply to respond to a site in the grounds of Waddesdon, a large Estate in Buckinghamshire, with a building initially intended for the curator of a new archive building. The Flint House consists of three bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen, library and study, with a self-contained annex studio, of 465 and 115 sqm respectively. Flint is a quartz related to obsidian, and is found only in the chalk seam that extends from the south coast to Norfolk. Flint is an ancient material related to jasper, obsidian and onyx; a hard, crypto crystalline form of quartz found in one geological seam in the UK, and in abundance on the surface of the ploughed fields surrounding the site. The architecture was generated from this neolithic material, the geology and the immediate ecosystem. The site is a remote island, a strange, still, anomaly of wilderness within highly cultivated agricultural fields. The Flint House and Annex form two stepped, linear monoliths that appear pulled from the landscape as geological extrusions of infinite age, with the rough texture and rawness of their surroundings. The buildings are both viewing platforms and condensing lenses for the surrounding panorama.

The lowest courses of flint are blackest and rough hewn with large gallets in black mortar joints. The walls and terrazzo roofs fade in six coloured strata as the flint progresses up the building, from galleted black through finely knapped grays and finally into courses of long, narrow blocks of white chalk, where the building appears to dissolve into the sky. The watercourse is lined in raw flint nodules, used as it is found in the ground. The programme moves from the utilitarian and open spaces at the centre of the site to more contemplative, private rooms buried in the existing trees at the far ends of each building. There are plays with old typologies, techniques and materials; the internal ‘river’ reinvents the historic grotto, but using raw nodules of flint, still covered in chalk, with their ancient underwater origins. It carves a mysterious, internal cave through the structure that separates the public spaces from the more introspective, with views across water, through fire and expanded in reflections. The ceiling of black glass mirrors dark water below, creating an impression of infinite space, drawing the landscape deep into the core of the building, mixing memory and desire.

The Flint House was conceived as a larger project, a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, where the initial architectural concept could be explored and expanded through collaboration with other media, to create a synthesis of the arts as a ‘total artwork’. The architects and client invited artists working with photography to create alternate readings and recordings of the architecture as it developed and was constructed, thereby questioning conventional architectural representation. The responses varied from engaging directly with the materiality of the building, to recording the individuals who constructed it, to reflecting on the client and the commission itself by restaging artworks from the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon. These responses transformed the ephemeral moments of the process of making architecture that are otherwise lost, and fixed them forever. Music is the ultimate abstraction of architecture. Yet at the same time, it is uniquely capable of reinforcing the underlying architectural narrative and creating a new spatial and temporal experience.

Charlotte Skene Catling Charlotte Skene Catling co-founded Skene Catling de la Peña architects in 2003. She has written about architecture, design and fashion and has contributed to the Sunday Telegraph, The Burlington Magazine, The Architectural Review and ARCH+. She runs projects that border architecture and other disciplines such as film and music in parallel to her practice. Charlotte taught a post-graduate architecture unit at the Royal College of Art between 2007 and 2012, advised as a consultant in the formation of the London School of Architecture(LSA), and is completing a research project with the photography department of the Royal College of Art and the Rothschild Foundation focused on representation in architecture. She is external examiner for the University of Greenwich and currently teaches at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology(KIT) in Germany.

Jaime de la Peña studied architecture at the University of Westminster. He has practiced in Berlin with the Maximiliano Burgmeyer Architektburo; in Sri Lanka with Geoffrey Bawa, and in the UK with Walters and Cohen. He set up Skene Catling de la Peña with Charlotte Skene Catling in 2003 and remains a regular collaborator, as well as working on his own projects in the UK, Spain and Sri Lanka.

Location: Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom

Type: Residential

Collections : RIBA National Award Winners 2015

Architects: Skene Catling de la Pena/ Charlotte Skene Catling, Jaime de la Peña, Theodora Bowering, Amaia Orrico, Tomoaki Todome, Samuel Chisholm, Tom Greenall, Jordan Hodgson, Daniel Peacock

Collaborators & Consultants: Marc Frohn

Client: Lord Rothschild

Client Advisor: Colin Amery

Landscape & Garden Designers: Mary Keen, Pip Morrison

Interior Designer: David Mlinaric

Structural Engineers: eHRW Engineers Haskins Robinson Waters, Adam Redgrove, Stephen Haskins

Mechanical + Electrical Engineers: Max Fordham Associates: Kai Salman-Lord

Civil Engineers: Infrastructure Design Studio: Martin Jones

Quantity Surveyors: Selway Joyce Partnership: Nick Tarrier, Ed Smith, Hui Meng

Flint Consultant: The Flint Man: David Smith

Lighting Consultants: Spellman Knowlton Lighting Design: Claire Spellman, Christopher Knowlton

Ecology Consultant: Bernwood Environmental Conservation Services: Chris Damant