Feasibility

Concept Design by FDArchitecture; For a new rural home on a sensitive site subject to Paragraph 55 of the National Planning Policy Framework, a great deal was demanded of this design. FDA’s response was to propose a building whose form, scale and material echoed, without directly replicating, the character and tradition of its setting. Instead the proposal sought to be representative of the here and now without losing sight of that tradition and detail.

Tucking into a rolling landscape of Cow Parsley covered hills and using the ground as its dressing, the house is carefully designed to be as inobtrusive as possible within the wider landscape, often virtually disappearing from sight. But where seen from other angles, it rises out of the hillside, inferring the familiar forms of traditional agricultural buildings.
Traditional architectural language has been reinterpreted, with the house comprised of two dipping and interlinking forms which challenge the understanding of what the roof and the landscape might be, allowing it to simultaneously vanish and yet be bold and modern.

Volkswagen Flagship Showroom Concept

Concept Design by FDArchitecture; Volkswagen well understand that the experience of their customer begins well before they ever drive one of their cars and exists well beyond then in the realms of memory and imagination as well as the day to day.

For a car manufacturer, time spent in the showroom can be pivotal in telling their story and providing their customers with the certainty and desire to buy into the brand.

However, Volkswagen Group (UK) considered their existing offer to lack the same potency and strength as their products so, following several successful projects with a focus on ‘customer experience’, FDArchitecture were invited by VWG (UK) to provide concept designs for their flagship West London showroom.

Our concept was to take the customer on a figurative journey which began with the arrival and ended with the hand-over of keys to a new car, and on this journey each customer is gently reminded of the depth and history of the brand, it’s permeation into the popular imagination and universally held, often warm, memories of what the brand represented. FDA sought to subtly underline that vibrancy and vitality the brand then processed and draw this from past, through present and well into the future where customers were invited to enjoy how VW envisaged that future might be.

Queens Medical Centre – Retail Development

Concept Design by FDArchitecture; Following the extension of the Nottingham Express Transit [tram] system, FDArchitecture were approached to provide proposal designs for a new satellite entrance building to the Queens Medical Centre by a third party Client.

The new building was conceived to receive the public arriving and departing from the new NET tram stop being built to the south of the hospital but, crucially for the Hospital Trust, this would also provide both commercial and infrastructure opportunities for them and help them future-proof the site by providing a literal platform for the development of more clinical space at a later date.

The building design is greatly dictated by the limitations of the site conditions; it is set within an existing open court where light into existing wards must be retained, existing servicing must continue and be supplemented at street level and the elevated position of the tram line required the linkage to occur at high-level, in effect forming a sort of inhabited bridge.

Inevitably, commercial opportunities are paramount to the funding of the building and as such, along the link route, the structure principally provides high quality retail and catering offers in line with NHS guidance, but importantly it also allows for new public spaces too and these enjoy prime locations and views afforded from their high position.

FEASIBILITIES

STRONG HOUSE

The existing site was occupied by a small, dark post-war bungalow on a double-width plot which the client wished to demolish the existing building with the view to building a pair of new, contemporary home suitable for the full plot the and modern concept of what a house should be.

While there was good scope in building width the scale of the neighbouring properties is imposing and each has tall, mature trees which overshadow much of the site so the building’s orientation is primarily front to back but off-set to one side to allow client a small swimming pool on the sunniest location within the plot.
By adapting a traditional butterfly roof design and then seperating each pitch to allow the insertion of an atrium the house could easily overcome limited light a traditional roof form would have allowed. The resulting design is a simple, fluid and airy contempory home.