Zheng Xu

Education

MA Interior Design, Royal College of Art

BS Interior Design, University of Cincinnati (DAAPworks 2017 Director's Choice)

Experience

Interior Designer, KOKAISTUDIOS, Shanghai 2018-2019

Interior Designer, KARA MANN, Chicago 2017-2018

Interior Design Intern, AvroKO, New York Fall 2016

School of Architecture Prizes 2021 Winner, Image/Drawing Prize

Title: Dungeness Assembly

The transition of Dungeness from a marginal industrial area into a tourist destination challenges the local community’s sense of ownership and raises questions about urban attitudes towards this beautiful place.

How should one approach designing a shared public space for Dungeness, with its remote and romantic landscape which encourages a sense of isolation and meditation?

My project envisages two roles for such a public space: firstly to be a facility for the local community; and secondly a place where visitors can get to know Dungeness in a more meaningful way than through weekend getaways. I conducted my research through reading, interviews and site visits to Dungeness. By staying there, I immersed myself in the landscape and got to know the locals. By gathering information I began to uncover hidden stories that I could use for spatial storytelling.

With my obsession with challenging the boundary between architecture, art, and interior, together with Dungeness's specific context, I aim to propose something based on facts and evidence while bringing it up to a more expressive level that could compliment Dungeness’s inherent poetic yet whimsical nature. I tried to execute conceptual, fantastical ideas into concrete and realistic design through series of structuring, proportionating and detailing.

Dungeness Assembly is a gathering space that unifies and connects people through local culture and heritage. The place is also an assemblage of structures, spaces and interiors that relate to Dungeness, demonstrating contrasts such as enclosed/exposed, heavy/light and safe/risky. By highlighting these contrasts I hope to encourage users to feel and participate actively with their surroundings.

The project is located in Dungeness. Sitting at the most southern point of the Kent coastline, Dungeness is a flat boundary-less, desolated shingle land where everything is scattered and weathered. The moonlike landscape with industrial relics is often described as the ‘end of the world’.

During my trip to Dungeness, I was intrigued by a structure erected on the flat landscape —— A T-shape metal structure clad with timber panels. A local fisherman told me it is called a l’ead mark’ —— an old navigation aid used to guide local fishing boats to get back home safely. There are three lead marks left abandoned in Dungeness.

When two of them line up, it means the boats are on the right axis.

— All kinds of people who come here are attracted by the sea, including artists, students and walkers. However locals and visitors don’t get the chance to meet each other due to lack of public social spaces, which leads to the intention of this project: Dungeness Assembly —— a gathering space around fishing and the sea that aims to unify and connect locals and visitors. Everyone here would feel free to come and go, use the facilities or just be with people as if they were in a living room.

— I found the T shape navigation aid a romantic reminder of the past: a simple and elegant way to guide you in a particular direction across a vast landscape. It reminded me of the painting The Ambassadors by Hollbein —— the skull only reveals itself when the viewer approaches from a particular angle. What if the typical vernacular house could be deconstructed into pieces that were distributed in the boundaryless landscape?

— A familiar domestic symbol is then transformed into a public assembly facing outwards while still being perceived as a whole when seen from a particular direction.

Project location and adjacencies

Scale, Textures and Structures

Dungeness is a small area of 10,172 hectares. The only formal access road splits the hamlet into residential areas and the shingle beach. In the midpoint of the Dungeness coastline there is a new emerging fishing point called ‘The Boats’, with both local fishing boats and charter boats. Local fishermen would use abandoned shipping containers as work sheds. A curving concrete trail leads to The Boats from the main road, with a small office on the right side. The Assembly is placed along the perpendicular axis that directly connects the inland to the sea, echoing the other trails on the beach naturally formed by walking. Old navigation marks are used as a three-stop way-finding system indicating: entrance from the inland, the Assembly and the sea.

I was inspired by the local textures and materials of Dungeness: textures blended into the ground from reclaimed objects to synthetic manmade objects. Dungeness has an almost surreal landscape with objects and structures of varied scales and unique methods of construction. The fishermen’s cottages and industrial relics indicate the machine-based, mobile spirit of Dungeness. Everything is constructed in an additive way, in between machines and buildings which renders Dungeness mysterious and surreal.

Inspired by local structures and materiality, the abstract fragments are therefore opened up even further into machinery installation and embedded with amenities. The intention is to maximize the outdoor experience, create the desired sense of risk and daring, and adapt to different weather conditions and crowds.

The Assembly programme mixes uses for the local community and visitors to create encounters and spontaneous conversation. It consists of a facility rental, a communal dining space, a small caravan site in the middle, a small library-gallery curated by local community, and finally a workshop for fishermen to use.

Structures are positioned within a distance of which they could be read as individual while keeping the spatial dialogue between them. Each individual structure has its own character while relating to the others like a collection of furniture.

— The first structure is a small rental shop offering outdoor gear and fishing equipment for visitors and locals’ use, operated by local fishing tackle business. Inspired by a local abandoned railway, the structure can be slid open in good weather and also be entered from a door behind when it is closed on rainy days. The shop is constructed in an additive way where, the stairs, walkway, and main services can be read as an individual from the outside.

— From the upper-level walkway, you can overlook the dining space as well as the sea. Local railway sleepers will be reclaimed and used for the sliding track. Handrails on both sides are closed with steel tension wires, in order to provide safety without breaking the sense of extension of the railway track.

— The interior is built with marine-grade plywood for extensive outdoor exposure. The display is designed in a simple and flexible way. A concrete platform on the ground level provides informal seating and social area.

— The next one is a dining space inspired by an abandoned boat winch. A modular table can be pulled down to welcome the public and pulled up to be protected underneath the roof in extreme weather. Underneath a smokery is operated by a local restaurant family using local catches from the sea. People can buy food there or bring their own food and simply use the table itself.

— The Assembly is intended to be open all year around. People have the opportunity to experience how the fish are processed and smoked in a local way and to talk to the fishermen's families they encounter.

— The modular table unit has foldable handrails with polycarbonate cladding. The panels are designed to be half wall for standing height and windshield for sitting height. In good weather, the table could be used as a place for communal dining or simply a place to meet up with friends. Tension wires are used again as the closure.

— At the heart of the Assembly is a small caravan park surrounding a sunken firepit. People who come here often don’t want to pay for the existing over-priced cottages, especially fishing people who only need a bed for the night. Echoing Dungeness’s history of mobile, informal living to avoid tax the caravan site will provide the minimum facilities that one would need and can afford. Two sizes are designed for varied groups.

— At night, the fire pit will gather strangers together and provide light, warmth and a place to pause for night fishing. The front side of the caravan could be flipped down to a table height when people are sitting at the sunken pit.

— Each caravan has a small bathroom and seating area below and a ladder leads to the sleeping area above. The central skylight allows natural light to come in during the day and star watching at night. Curtains separate the above and below and provide minimum privacy.

— The next structure is a small library/gallery. It takes the form of a basic bookshelf pivoting around a centre pole. People can enjoy the summer sunset as a backdrop from the south-west when the structure is closed, and the winter sunset from the north-west when it is opened. The weathervane on the top is for fishermen to see the wind direction for fishing.

— The bookshelves are outdoors, with each drawer weather-proofed using a wired glass-front with rubber seals. People can simply flip and slide up to access the collection. Local artists can also use the space to display their work.

— People can take a book about local stories, walk up and read it in the boat where they will enjoy the moment of solitude. A speaker transfers the sound of the sea to the boat. From this height, you can see the sky and the sea blurred into each other on the horizon.

— The one closest to the sea is the workshop: a place for local fishermen to repair boats but also for artists and residents to use to make sculptures and small furniture. The space is divided into a workshop and boat repairing room. The repairing space orients to receive the natural daylight. Clear polycarbonate claddings are stabilized with wind braces.

— The workshop provides a proper working space for fishermen since they often complained about the shipping cargos would get extremely hot in summer and cold in winter. The shutter facade faces towards the sea, tractors would toll boat and directly transport it into the workshop.

— Through the full-height clear panels, visitors would see how the boats are made and repaired. The workshop would also host occasional tours for both visitors and locals who are interested.

— Most of the materials that I have chosen for the Assembly refer to existing Dungeness buildings and structures. They intend to be durable for outdoor use, weathered throughout time, and eventually will blend into the context and add a new layer of curiosity to the Dungeness landscape.

— Visitors will see the Assembly vaguely from standing at the car park once they arrive. They will then experience the principle of the old navigation mark to access its house-like profile.

— As they find the axis and slowly progress towards it, a house silhouette reveals itself. Solid volumes and frameworks create intricate layers and spark their interest.

— Moving closer, the Assembly unfolds itself again into pieces.

— Finally, viewed from the sea, the abandoned navigation marks are once again in use. When the fishermen take people out to fish, I hope they can tell their story proudly as they head safely back home.

Zheng Xu

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Royal College of Art