The Barrington Recovery Site, a former Cambridgeshire Clunch quarry and cement works within the ancient Parish of Barrington, is currently being infilled and developed with 220 new suburban homes.This essay examines the instances and practices of simultaneous re-placements, uncovering what new compositions are constituted through periods of transformation.
The Barrington Recovery Site, a former Cambridgeshire Clunch quarry and cement works within the ancient Parish of Barrington, is currently being developed into a country park and 220 homes. Material from HS2 excavation is arriving between the half-finished houses and is levelling the quarry, blurring the lines of the rural and the urban, the geological and infrastructural and the natural and artificial. This process of extraction, infilling and redevelopment can be seen as a series of displacements and re-placements, abstracting the landscape from its previous identities. This case study raises questions about how lives are influenced by processes of displacement and, therefore, how architects and developers should view the relationship between people and territory for the future development of sites of dis/re-placement. This essay uses these ideas to investigate instances and practices of displacement, historically, during the extraction of minerals at the quarry (1920-2008), and recently, during the infilling of the quarry (2008-present). This essay will go on to examine the instances and practices of simultaneous re-placement for both timeframes, uncovering what new compositions are constituted through periods of transformation. Finally, this essay will argue for an architecture which examines practices of territorialisation from its conception. It will argue that in scenarios where either the material or immaterial status of a place has shifted fundamentally, restoration of one without the other, is meaningless. Instead, in designing with an awareness of territory, and the opportunities and challenges it presents, one can avoid attempts at re-constituting landscape that are superficial.
The Barrington Recovery Site, a former Cambridgeshire Clunch quarry and cement works within the ancient Parish of Barrington, is currently being developed into a country park and 220 homes. Material from HS2 excavation is arriving between the half-finished houses and is levelling the quarry, blurring the lines of the rural and the urban, the geological and infrastructural and the natural and artificial. This process of extraction, infilling and redevelopment can be seen as a series of displacements and re-placements, abstracting the landscape from its previous identities. This case study raises questions about how lives are influenced by processes of displacement and, therefore, how architects and developers should view the relationship between people and territory for the future development of sites of dis/re-placement. This essay uses these ideas to investigate instances and practices of displacement, historically, during the extraction of minerals at the quarry (1920-2008), and recently, during the infilling of the quarry (2008-present). This essay will go on to examine the instances and practices of simultaneous re-placement for both timeframes, uncovering what new compositions are constituted through periods of transformation. Finally, this essay will argue for an architecture which examines practices of territorialisation from its conception. It will argue that in scenarios where either the material or immaterial status of a place has shifted fundamentally, restoration of one without the other, is meaningless. Instead, in designing with an awareness of territory, and the opportunities and challenges it presents, one can avoid attempts at re-constituting landscape that are superficial.
1. The Barrington Recovery Site
2. Redrow Development (220 Suburban Homes)
3. Barrington Parish and Village Green
2. Redrow Development (220 Suburban Homes)
3. Barrington Parish and Village Green