Rethinking Folkestone Harbourside

Rethinking Folkestone Harbourside

At Urban Room Folkestone, Tram Road Car Park
Open 12-2 Wed-Sun until 11th October
Or by appointment – please email [email protected]

As part of our work to stimulate interest in the regeneration of this area from as wide a range of view points as possible, Urban Room Folkestone is very happy to host this exhibition of work by students from Kent School of Architecture.

It is interesting to see how people from all over the world have thought about and imagined how this area of town might look.

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The design study was focussed on the regeneration of the Folkestone Harbourside area. It was intended to engage with a range of issues concerning the relationship between landscape and architecture, and to identify opportunities for ‘place-making’ through an in-depth understanding of the urban context.

As part of the study, the students were asked to produce a concept masterplan that would transform the area between the Harbour and the Creative Quarter.

The masterplan was to incorporate a variety of new buildings in order to generate funding for the redevelopment of this area, as well as to provide a means by which public streets and spaces can be enclosed and sheltered from the elements. The students were encouraged to suggest practical new uses for existing buildings, features or structures, rethink the existing (income-generating) parking facility and its possible reprovision elsewhere, reorder the current traffic movement system, as well as speculate upon the architecture of the new buildings and their uses. They were given the freedom to remove or add buildings as they saw fit. Apologies are therefore due to any existing building owners and businesses that may have been sacrificed in these entirely theoretical proposals!

The students were also encouraged to imagine and describe a new part of town that is seamlessly connected to the existing urban context, and to take into account the uniqueness of the place where it is to be installed, such that it only has relevance in that place and no other.

John Letherland / Acting Module Convenor & Design Tutor

Kent School of Architecture & Planning 
Programme
MA in Architecture and Urban Design
Autumn Term Design Module, Academic Year 2019-20