Ocean
marine research facility
One image had to explain what the pavilion was and make someone want to fund it. The client was developing a modular facility that combined marine research with a public experience below the waterline, without the need to dive. Working with Grimshaw, Kiln developed the concept and its visual language, testing how the structure could adapt to different sites, depths and conditions before resolving the final fundraising image.
- Location
- Location undisclosed
- Year
- 2023
- Scale
- Campus
- Role
- Unlock
- Architect
- Grimshaw
Concept
Sketching. There was no design to draw, so the drawing came first: a pair of towers, a walkway between, a ring of pods around them.
Two hulls
The section is the idea: two hulls in one lattice, one above the waterline and one beneath it, so a visitor goes down through the structure to the sea rather than looking at a tank. Because the facility is a product and not a building, it had to be able to sit anywhere, and the diagrams work through how it meets a seabed at different depths and what each answer does to the ring of pods around it.
Form
Modelling. The hull as a lattice: how tight the weave, where it opens, how the two halves meet at the waterline.
First form
The first form was a woven structural lattice, its pods held in the weave, standing in a shallow sea on a ring walkway. The first renders tested light and water as much as the object: from above, at the shore, at dusk. Several came out compelling on their own, which is when the question changed from what the pavilion looked like to where it would be seen.
The redesign
Expressed structure
After the first iteration, the team agreed that the pavilion should express the engineering it would require. The woven hull gave way to a triangulated frame clad in glass and metal facets, robust enough to adapt to different sites and marine conditions. Orange pods and yellow interiors made the life within legible from a distance.
In place
Composition tests
The pavilion was then tested against real coastal conditions: a sheltered bay, a cove, the foot of a cliff and a reef seen from above. Each setting changed the relationship between structure, water and arrival. The exercise demonstrated that the system could retain a recognisable identity while adapting to very different sites.
Mood
Weather
With the form settled, the tests turned to atmosphere and detail: the pavilions in mist, in monochrome, at the edge of a grey shore with one figure for scale, and the skin studied close. None of these was the image. They were how the image was found.
Final
Final adjustments. The aerial that carried the whole vision, and the passes it went through before it did.
One image
The final image had to do two jobs at once: explain the pavilion and make the proposition feel investable. The studies behind it tested structure, siting, atmosphere and scale; the final aerial compressed that work into a single, legible vision.
Outcome
The proposal secured a test location within a masterplan, moving the pavilion from a speculative product towards its first real setting.