Castle Acre Water Tower
CASTLE ACRE WATER TOWER
Tonkin Liu
STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Rodrigues Associates
PHOTOGRAPHS
Dennis Pedersen, Taran Wilkhu
AREA
160 m²
YEAR
2016
LOCATION
United Kingdom
CATEGORY
Houses, Restoration
Text description provided by architect.
By the ruins of a Castle, a Priory, a city gate, rises one modern anomaly, steadfast against all elements, a relic from the industrial age.
A found object, a disused landmark, towering out of shielding trees, loved and unloved by the village of Castle Acre.
Restored and reused on a shoe-string budget, Rusty tank a panelled Tudor hall, Hung timber rooms a timber spiral stair.
Minimal intervention, purity of structure, Ivy growing, wind blowing a field of barley, Nature returns for the romantic industrial ruin.
The water tower, a light and delicate frame that supports the heavy mass of a steel water tank above, acts as a landmark that marks the end of the historic village it previously served.
The project aims to celebrate and continue the life of the structure by converting it to a home that benefits from its unique form and panoramic views of the surrounding barley fields.
The restoration of the tower will also ensure its existing values are retained by giving life back to its structural system and exposing its robustness and materiality.
The tank itself will be reused as a living and dining space, and suspended below it will be two bedrooms and a ground floor garden room that allows the structure to integrate with the surrounding wilderness. A separate stair tower to the South will be added for access.
