Clementine Blakemore

Project Lacey Green is concerned with the relationship between design, making and place – examining how the communal act of building can affect architectural processes and forms. It celebrates contingency, and seeks to occupy the fertile space between academia, practice, and industry.

Initiated under the umbrella of the design collective WORKSHOP architecture, co-founded by Clementine in 2012, the project will continue beyond this academic year. The built outcome of the first phase is a new music pavilion for St. John’s, a small state primary school in the Buckinghamshire village of Lacey Green. In this way, there is a parallel between the programmatic brief, a space for performance-based education, and the academic brief, which involves construction as well as design. In both, there is an emphasis on learning by doing, a direct engagement with objects and materials, and interaction with other people; it's about the practice of music, and the practice of making.

The architectural proposal has been developed with input from engineers, teachers, parents, children, and a team of international design students who participated in the AA Lacey Green Visiting School, set up and directed by Clementine. The structure was prototyped and fabricated at a research and fabrication facility in the village called Grysmdyke Farm, using timber donated by Hooke Park, a managed forest owned and run by the Architectural Association. Living and working at the Farm over the course of the year, relationships have been established with regional manufacturers and suppliers who have enabled the project through the provision of in-kind support and expertise.

The clay tile roof of the timber structure will be added over the summer, and the space will be enclosed as an interior classroom during the coming year. Through this process of incremental and collaborative completion, the project suggests ways in which built structure can become an ongoing framework for social and cultural infrastructure.

See wrkshp.org/lacey-green for more details.