Sustainable regeneration | Community Empowerment | Renewable Energy Infrastructure
In the heart of Bedforshire, Stewartby is a model village built around one of the largest brickworks in Europe. However, since the closure of the facility in 2008, the remaining brick-firing kilns have been left abandoned to wither and decay. The former clay pits, once abundant sources of rich Oxford Clay, have been used as landfills, filling up with household waste from London and releasing toxic methane.
This project proposes to transform the Southern Kiln and its surrounding industrial brownfied into an energy-centric community centre, in the context of climate change and emergency. The facility explore the possibility of small-scale energy production by harnessing the landfill biogas to be transformed into electricity, which can be distributed locally to the inhabitants of Stewartby and the wider region.
The inherent theme of the project is 'sustainable transformation', both in terms of industrial heritage and human behaviour. The goal of the facility is to fundamentally change people's understanding of energy production, energy use, and energy waste. This building attempts to challenge and transform our relationship with 'energy' in the built environment, to make people more conscious & aware of their own 'footprint', and realise how small habit changes can have large positive impacts.
Featured in the Bartlett 2020 Summer Show
See more from this project in the full portfolio here.
