More about the proposed design plan
In our reinterpretation of John Soane’s Primitive Hut we have inverted Laugier’s famous frontispiece illustrating the origins of architecture- a scene in which four trees and their branches are arranged to form a place of shelter and repose. Our proposal aims to challenge the users' comprehension of place and their understanding of the architectural elements which comprise the primitive hut. This is achieved through the artifice of wrapping a domed shell around an existing plane tree, located near the bandstand at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in view of the Soane Museum.
The tree itself becomes the axis mundi rising through an oculus. The interior is lined in lacewood (plane tree) veneer juxtaposing a worked finish with the organic form and rough bark surface of the trunk. Externally the dome is dressed in loose layers of bituminous felt and supported by a falsework of scaffolding that plays on the contrast between history (Laugier’s propped branches) and our constructed reality.
Project images
