Photographer’s Hide
1993
The project is a tiny building located on an old WW2 reconnaissance air base, which had been converted into a nuclear missile site after the war and then abandoned. The brief was to create a studio for photographing wildlife on the surface of an old bomb pond.
The design is intended to capture the different manifestations of light reflected, refracted and veiled as they enter the building. The form of the building makes many references to reconnaissance aircraft, camouflage and the complex history of the site. Locals call it the dragonfly.
The building was constructed using a steel structure with a ply and fibreglass roof resting on rendered block walls. The external shade canopies are made from perforated, galvanised steel with stainless steel rods bracing them into the water. The building was made without working drawings from a series of 1:10 models placed in the middle of the site and then built around.