Cornwall Plaza, A Vision For Modular Housing, Cornwall, UK

Redruth was a mining town and the site was an old brewery. This project is unique because the client wish that the building may be constructed with a modular building system. The project is therefore a pilot study for a fast assembled building system which may provide an alternative for the way we may build in the future. The buildings are assembled like Lego blocks.

We are juxtaposition the old with the new: the modular building system allowed us to be touching the ground softly and lightly. The modular building method and process will allow us to be building economically and quickly. We are also juxtaposing cultures too: we are, perhaps, the first Hong Kong architectural practice to be building on such scale at Cornwall. We were chosen as the architect partly because of our experience with social and humanitarian architecture, but more importantly, the client, who is from Hong Kong, wish to leave a mark in the UK through the hands of a Hong Kong young architectural practice. At the end of the day, how would the modular building system be influencing the development of architecture construction in Asia?

We have used the modular system in the design of hotel. The design of hotel is based on a massing block that is divided into modules. The forms are then pushed and pulled, slightly, to allow for natural light and wind to enhance with the interior spatial quality.

The row houses mimics the existing pitch roofed row house typologies in Redruth. The material choices are copper and tin; these are some common material choices for building material found in Cornwall.

GROUNDWORK TEAM CY Lau, Krystal Lung, Echo Xiang, Vincent Liu, Justin Ip, Dominic Cheung, Manfred Yuen
UK LOCAL PARTNER Anthony Bird
VR/AR EXPERIENCE Cordex Digital Architecture Ltd.
CGI G-Construction (Shenzhen) Ltd.

YEAR 2015

LOCATION Redruth, Cornwall, England, UK

CLIENT Sino Land Ltd

STAGE Planning application submitted