An innovative fishing lodge and visitor centre designed by Lathams is being featured in a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) event to celebrate 50 years of great buildings in the East Midlands.
The lodge at Thornton Reservoir, Leicestershire, is one of the buildings featured in the Fifty Buildings, 50 Years exhibition which will feature at venues across the region over the next 12 months.
This major exhibition from the Royal Institute of British Architects showcases innovative and enduring architecture in the East Midlands over the last 50 years, revealing how architectural creativity is shaped by context, place, culture, social and political trends of the time and, in turn, shapes the identity of the region’s places and spaces.
Lathams director Stuart Hodgkinson explained that the award-winning Thornton Lodge design was based on a combined concept of an upturned boat and the section through the curving body of a fish.
He said: “Severn Trent originally commissioned us to create a fisherman’s lodge, visitor centre and WC accommodation on a woodland edge location near to the reservoir.
“Instead of creating a clearing in the woodland, the decision was taken to bring the building forward to the end of the water, using piles driving into the water to carry a stilted timber walkway.
“The exposed aspect informed the creation of a smooth and solid building to resist weathering, with a masonry plinth rising on the waterside to accept doors and windows. The curved ‘hull’ of the roof was covered in cedar shingles – a low embodied-energy product which weathers well, allows a natural colour to develop, but also mimics the scales of a fish.”
The exhibition kicked off at Nottingham Contemporary, The Space, Nottingham during August 2010, and then moved to the Ecocentre, Wirksworth in September; The Hub, Sleaford in October; and Northampton Museum and Art Gallery from November to December. The exhibition now moves on to Nottingham Trent University from 31st January to 11th February 2011; and Derby Quad 4th to 9th April.
For more information on the Fifty Buildings, 50 Years exhibition, visit http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/fifty-buildings-50-years
