Design

The Horkesley Park design proposals create a sustainable, low carbon, exemplar visitor attraction of local and regional significance. This unique opportunity incorporates a variety of sustainable technologies that have been integrated in a holistic manner to provide a renewable and self sustaining centre of excellence.  

The architectural aesthetic strikes a balance between traditional and modern. The common theme between the buildings is the honest use of natural materials applied with sensitive attention to detail. Architectural continuity is achieved with the Main Building by the extensive use of brick faced and rendered façades with extensive indigenous planting creating green roofs and living walls, which are sympathetic to the surrounding environment. 

The natural materials, traditional external colours and extensive planting will allow the building to blend into the surrounding and wider rural landscape context.

The design of the Main Building refrains from steep roof pitches, which would increase visual impact. The central faceted rotunda has been designed as an elegant pavilion and focus for the Centre with over-hanging roofs and inset glazing “in shadow” to sit well within and be a part of the landscape. With the use of a shallow pitched slate roof, the scale of the central rotunda will not be perceived by the visitor, who will only observe a more limited section of the roof area enhanced by deep shadows at ground level and a foreground of “walled” garden. The mature and indigenous planting will further enhance the sense of landscape and human scale.  From the inside visitors will be able to look out across the landscape and feel part of it.

The ground level footprint of the new buildings will be less than half that of the existing large glasshouses, industrial type buildings and other structures on The Nursery Site.  The visual improvement from the sprawl of the existing dilapidating and unsightly buildings to that of new high quality, well designed buildings in sympathy with the surrounding landscape will greatly improve the appearance, impact and context of the site. 

The Suffolk Punch Breeding Centre is located to the rear and north west of the Main Building and is essentially a traditionally detailed building, with a green oak frame construction, clay roof tiles and timber cladding.  It includes 18 stables, 5 stalls and an isolation box in a practical and attractive “E” shape, all under one roof.

The Farm Barn, near the Suffolk Punch Breeding Centre, and The Warren further to the north west, set underground, are designed to blend into the existing landform and wider landscape with pastures above merging seamlessly into the surrounding slope profiles.

The architectural principles of the proposed buildings within Horkesley Park intend to provide a memorable and beautiful group of sustainable buildings that will enhance the site and respond well to the function and ethos that underlies this exemplar regional centre.