Architecture studio Morrow + Lorraine has been given the go ahead to build a set of clifftop holiday homes on the Isle of Portland, England (+ slideshow).
The five holiday lodges, collectively known as the Clifftops Cove Holiday Park, are designed by London-based Morrow + Lorraine for a former caravan park on the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO-protected site on the Dorset island.
This stretch of land is made up of layers of sedimentary rock containing fossils and stones from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods – when dinosaurs walked the earth.
The development will be sandwiched between two heritage-listed castles, and will be constructed from a combination of pre-patinated copper and Portland stone, which is quarried nearby.
Set into a natural step in the terrain and covered in grass, the residences will be hidden from view from the Gothic-Revival Pennsylvania Castle above and a coastal path that passes along the cliff edge in front.
"It is a wild, post-industrial landscape in which the heritage issues are bound up with the natural," said the firm. "On the one hand, the site is associated with the Jurassic Coast and quarrying, but on the other with a tamed and managed polite landscape associated with Pennsylvania Castle."
"Studies of the surrounding context provided inspiration, not just for materiality but more so for this quirky Portland typology, whereby histories, literary connections, quarrying tools and machines could all help to form a very Portland building," it added.
Three split-level residences will be set in the middle of the development and bracketed by a pair of single-storey residences.
Each property will boats a pair of bedrooms, and an open-plan living and dining area that opens onto a patio overlooking the English Channel.
The lodges will be separated by rugged Portland stone walls – a feature stipulated by English Heritage, intended to help the bed the development into its rocky setting.
In a statement, the conservation body called for "something craggy and unobtrusive, subtly and wittily appearing to be a part of the quarry, for instance in the spirit of a wild hermitage as it were designed by an eccentric 18th-century nobleman".
The glazed facades of each structure will be rotated three degrees from the next, helping to reduce reflections that may cause a hindrance for boats.
The project has just received planning permission and is expected to complete in March 2017. It is hoped the £2 million development will help to boost tourism throughout the year.
British architect David Adjaye is also working in Portland, on a memorial to extinct species of the present and future.
Further inland, a portion of Dorset woodland called Hooke Park is the haunt of students from London's Architectural Association. Each year, students design and construct structures in the woodland as part of the school's Design & Make programme.
Project credits:
Architect: Morrow + Lorraine
Client: Colonial Leisure Limited
