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Malator, Future Systems, Druidston
Malator — Future Systems, Druidston

Landscape-embedded
architecture

Structures cut into slopes, or built on the land and covered with earth. The landscape continues over them; the open faces are glazed, oriented and deliberate.

A house set into a slope, planted roofs running down to a glazed face

What makes spaces specialis how daylight arrives.

AGlazed face
BSunken courtyard
CLightwell to lower level
DClerestory at the step
A single glazed elevation set into a hillside, seen from across the valley

The cover keeps temperatures steady.It controls water runoff too.

COVER, 600–900 MILLIMETRES STRUCTURAL SHELL RETAINED CUT FACE GLAZED FACE MIDWINTER SUN ANGLE GROUND-COUPLED FLOOR SLAB ORIGINAL GROUND LINE RESTORED SURFACE
ACover depth
INTERIOR, 21°C, ALL YEAR JFMA MJJA SOND AIR TEMPERATURE GROUND AT ONE METRE AT FIVE
BGround temperature
RAINFALL EVENT CONVENTIONAL ROOF PLANTED COVER DISCHARGE TO DRAIN TIME FROM START OF RAINFALL RELATIVE VALUES
CRainfall, attenuated
A planted roof carried over a courtyard house, grasses growing in the cover

Domes and cubes create the space.Tubes carry the light and the circulation.

DEEPER COVER

Domes

Voluminous spaces whose structural form allows much deeper landscape above.

1 M

Cubes

Familiar, rectilinear spaces with around a metre of planted cover.

Tubes

Efficient connecting spaces that carry circulation and bring daylight inside.

A glazed elevation set beneath a planted bank at the edge of a lake

Across contemporary architecture, buildings are already being cut into slopes, covered by landscape and opened to daylight.

A curved planted roof cantilevered over a glazed elevation above water

New ways of building make landscape and structure continuous. Habitat crosses without interruption in a biodiverse environment.

A stone house cut into a grass slope, its planted roof continuous with the meadow above
A weathering-steel entrance cut into a meadow bank, reached by a mown path
A small timber structure set into a wildflower meadow beneath a planted roof

The planning policy is a door.Almost no one is walking through.

CONVENTIONAL DEVELOPMENT VISIBLE ON THE SLOPE PUBLIC RIGHT OF WAY LANDSCAPE-EMBEDDED NO BUILT FORM ON THE SLOPE NO ELEVATION FROM BELOW SAME VIEWPOINT, SAME SLOPE

The policy is not the obstacle. The quality of the submission is.

Planning in sensitive landscapes sets a high bar. The question is not simply whether to build, but whether architecture fits the environment.

National planning policy already provides routes for exceptional development in the countryside, where design quality can justify what would otherwise be refused. Too often that route is used to argue an ordinary building is exceptional, rather than to build something that answers the place differently.

When a building becomes part of the landscape rather than sitting on it, the justification becomes self-evident.

A stone-faced house set into a grass slope, reached by a stepping-stone path

The land already exists.It is the imagination that is missing.

We are looking for sites.

For more information info@hiddeninnature.co.uk