Project Title: Pavilion in a Quarry

Firm: Elliott Architects

Submitted for Consideration in: Architecture, Landscape

Client:

Location: Brooksville, ME

Project-At-a-Glance:
The pavilion perches lightly on the ground; two buildings connected by a carefully balanced roof plane providing shade and cover. The space between the structures sets up the view to the grassy field, and the juxtaposition of soft vegetation against obdurate stone.

Project Narrative:

Set in an abandoned stone quarry, this project afforded the opportunity to design both architecture and landscape in an unparalleled setting.  Last excavated in the 1930’s, the site had grown derelict; a series of forsaken craters filled with loose mounds of stone, rubble, and the detritus from decades of neglect.  But the memory of its initial purpose lay just below the surface, waiting for the echoes of modern machinery to awaken it.  The program was nebulous at first; it would slowly crystallize as the landscape was redefined through radical intervention.

As the site was cleared and stone stacked upon stone in towering piles, depressions in the ledge presented themselves.  This exercise was the juggernaut for the first phase: utilizing these indentations to create a series of naturalized ponds.  The stone topography was cleared of debris and water introduced into three basins.  The surrounding ledges were stripped clean and a series of pathways and gathering spots followed.

Phase two was borne of the desire for contrasting surfaces to the immovable granite band around the ponds along with a place for respite from the sun.  Two large rock piles, placed during the original excavation, provided a natural separation for the introduction of lawn and a pavilion to the otherwise obstinate quarry.  Utilizing weathered stone strewn about the site, the edges of the quarry were healed in with native plantings and carefully placed rock.  The pavilion perches lightly on the ground; two buildings connected by a carefully balanced roof plane providing shade and cover.  The space between the structures sets up the view to the grassy field, and the juxtaposition of soft vegetation against obdurate stone.  The two heaps of stone have a phenomenological effect of indicating that something is beyond them, begging exploration; the same request the quarry made at the start.