Moving away from the idea of creating a fantastical story against which to design, continuing research into the Cumbrian Hinterlands this week began to highlight the history of the nuclear industry in the area.
At the present Sellafield nuclear site, the UK's military uranium enrichment program began in the 1950s with the Windscale stacks...
Following this, the world's first nuclear power station was constructed adjacent...
The video on their homepage explains the process better than could be done in words here...
West Cumbria MRWS Consultation from West Cumbria MRWS on Vimeo.
As this appeared to be a forgone conclusion almost, the decision was made to pursue this line in our project.
What was unanticipated was that our route, although it felt intuitive would turn out to be a distraction...
Embracing the Nuclear Legacy
Embracing the Nuclear Legacy
As an isolated area, trapped between the mountains of the Lake District and the coast, West Cumbria has played host to the industrial for centuries.
Fishing towns became ports, farmers miners, exporting the rich material wealth the landscape held - coal, metals, stone - but also building with these raw materials a strong manufacturing and industrial base.
During the Second World War, the isolation and vast resources of the region precipitated a boom in industry through the relocation of strategic enterprises from more exposed regions, leaving a legacy of defence spending along the coastline.
The pay off became an overdependence on government for jobs and investment, excluded from the new Lake District National Park from the outset, the area became host to a greater project, the rush to a nuclear future.
At Sellafield, a former munitions and TNT factory, both nuclear weapons and the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall, were developed.
Now, with no long term plans in place for the detritus created in the headlong surge towards nuclear technology, the area is again under the microscope, in the search for a site for the UK’s higher activity radioactive waste repository.
In an area plagued by a declining, aging, and under-skilled population, a lack of jobs and opportunity has created a market where any outside investment will be welcomed with open arms.
Two councils have declared a willingness to be considered to house the scheme, Allerdale and Copeland, and with this area of Cumbria likely to be accepted as first choice for such a facility (with a high level of acceptance from an already ‘nuclear community’), we propose a masterplanning of one area based on the assumption of ‘winning’ the right to host such a scheme.
The chosen area receives not just jobs and infrastructure improvements, but a complete ‘community benefits package’. Copeland Council, home of Sellafield and the former fishing and colliery town of Whitehaven, hopes to use the package to revitalise and re-skill the economy, in a drive towards a more touristic future.
We intend to examine what this could mean for Whitehaven, for creating a new identity, and also the role of tourism in a community, whether the traditional mediated tourist experience should be re-evaluated for a different age.
Aim
Our aim is to provide a place which re-examines the tourist, their relationship with a place and themselves. The response should not be a passive ‘place to sleep’, but a physical re-imagining of the role the tourist plays, their interaction with the landscape and community and not just what it has to offer them, but what they can offer too.
To provide a model which could be repeatedly realised through the region, bringing in people and investment, recognising the history of extraction from under the ground, and the future of storing the nations waste below.
A re-examination of the hotel typology for a new region. A place for an ethical traveller; someone as interested in experience and a sense of place more so than the standard mediated view often realised in the neighbouring Lake District.
Locale
The coastline we have termed the Hinterlands consists of the narrow strip of land cut off from the rest of the country by the Lake District mountains and valleys. An introspective area, looking out to sea but no longer with any real connection to it.
The Hinterlands are an area of industrial decline, small mining, quarrying towns dot the relatively flat landscape up into the foothills, sweeping down to the port towns of the coast. An area historically more accessible to invaders, but latterly forgotten in the rush to the Picturesque of the central Lakes.
Initially, the project will follow the range of considerations of a masterplan for whole Copeland region outside of the National Park – including the repository itself, Sellafield’s future and the myriad trades which could be associated with such a project.
Pertinently we propose breaking down the man-made non-barrier which is the boundary of the Lake District National Park. This will allow a more holistic view of an entire region, rather than the together but alone, two distinct places adjacent to one another, which is the present situation.
This will precipitate a new tourism based on the industrial legacy and future of the coastal, ‘hinterlands’ region; a New Romanticism of industry rather than the classical Romanticism of the Lakes.
Our scheme will focus on what this means for Whitehaven, on the most northern edge of Copeland district, the largest town in the area. With reference to the rich heritage and history of the area, but embracing the vigour there today, showing a pride in local achievements.
The chosen site links the port of Whitehaven with the Kells on the promontory above, with its Haig Colliery, limbs stretching out downwards, under the sea for four miles, fourteen people still buried within. Linking inland along the route of the Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway.
Project
The hotel – a place to stay?
What can this typography do for the locale in which it is set and for the visitor?
The idea was taken so far as to choose a site within Whitehaven for the scheme which was thought to offer interesting ideas, both historically and topographically...
What has instead occurred was a return to the idea of nuclear heritage, and what that can directly do for the area, rather than looking at what the cash benefits would bring further down the line.
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