Langley Vale Wood Visitor Hub

The winners have been announced. We didn't get shortlisted! No doubt there is more behind the shortlisted entries than first meets the eye but first impressions do suggest they are all rather predictable and lacking in poetic sophistication. Not that we are bitter of course!

Below is our entry. The competition was for a new visitor hub, forming the entry to a new centenary memorial woodland commemorating World War 1. We sought to bring visitors into an encounter with the contradictions of war. Armies are ordered and disciplined while war is violent and chaotic. Home is why they fought, symbolised by the familiar pitched roof forms of the English landscape. The proposal juxtaposes the dynamism of a round pole tensegrity structure with the familiar forms of 'home'. The experience for visitors is to inhabit familiar spaces under the changing shadows of wars more violent and chaotic imagery.