The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About the School of Architecture
Location Reading • Course BSc (Hons) Architecture • Head of school Lorraine Farrelly • Full-time tutors 13 • Part-time tutors 12 • Students 175 • Staff to student ratio 1:12
Undergraduate
Lloyd Jackson
Course BSc (Hons) Architecture
Studio Marlborough, Merlin, Morgan Le Fey
Project Alternative Rurality
Project description Alternative Rurality proposes a better way of integrating into our rural landscape as we cut ties with the EU and move away from single farm payment, causing UK agriculture to go through the biggest transformation since the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. As farmers’ subsidies will no longer equate to the amount of land they farm, but how well they can incorporate ecologically beneficial practices into their activities, this proposal assists animals stranded in pockets of land through the introduction of wildlife bridges, expansion of hedgerows and a new fruit forest. White storks have been resettled in England for the first time in 606 years and, via this project’s support, they can resume their presence in the landscape alongside a strong role in mythology. Taking inspiration from sarsen stones on the site, the approach to materiality encompasses rurality as a process, rather than a matter of aesthetics.
Tutor citation Lloyd’s project establishes and expresses constituent members of a closed-loop system through spatial arrangements which extend from the wider landscape to specific components. Forest, nests, mulch, cellulose, fruit wine and a variety of by-products populate, sustain and are sustained by this loop. Diversity and interdependence permeate both process and manifestation, creating cycles of creation and decay. Michelle Tomlinson
