The thesis explores how the revival of ‘relics’ – structures once critical to the identity of a site – can lead to the formation of new places with deep roots. Two abandoned acoustic mirrors from the First World War, situated along the White Cliffs, are given new life through the proposal for a woodland park. Steel platforms poised delicately by the mirrors provide outdoor performance spaces; in the woodland above, three further platforms – of stone – form the base for a complex of buildings focused on the idea of congregation. The central platform houses a new public room opening to the sea and a drum-like ‘clearing’ which recalls the internalised logic of the acoustic mirrors and the long tradition of centrally-planned rooms for gathering.
Influenced by W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn, the thesis addresses how one can give new life to relics that store the stories of the places they are situated. The woodlands’ purpose is to aid in Dover district’s new plan to combat emissions from the port, accomplished through carbon capture.
It is through the revival of abandoned relics that once held a critical role in the identity of the places they were once situated within, that the formation of a place with a strong link to its context, history and identity can begin to develop.