caspar bhalerao

MONASTIC MOTEL

Located on a landfill site on the outskirts of Cambridge the proposal subverts its landscape to develop an architecture of secular sacrality: the monastic motel. The project speculates on the future of a soon-to-be decommissioned landfill site in Milton, Cambridgeshire, as space of contemplation and reflection. Building upon the examination of spaces of knowledge and the typology of the monastic cell, in Hinc Lucem et Pocula Sacra, a cloistered geometric order is developed. This order is then disrupted by using the gas extraction wells found on the site as nodes, looking to contextualise these within the previously defined grid. These nodes become symbolic reminders of the landscape beneath and central to cloisters formed on the site. In conjunction, the typology of the motel is combined with that of the monastery to propose communal eating and studio spaces and further internalised cloistered living spaces. Expanding further afield the project considers the landfill site as an area to be remediated. This landscape becomes a parkland in which the building is situated; ultimately mediating the thresholds between levels of enclosure, and the landscapes they contain.