Leading Hooke Park

Hooke Park is a unique space blending camping, hi-tech workshops and design studio within a 350 acre working forest. Arriving in 2014 as a postgraduate student, four years into working on the site I was tasked with taking on its management and direction as Warden. In parallel, I would continue on as a lecturer and the primary studio tutor to the MArch/MSc Design + Make program.

Leading a diverse staff including architects, craftspeople, designers, engineers, roboteers, a forester and more, every day in Hooke Park was something new. Working closely with school director Eva Franch i Gilabert, the school’s senior management, and tutors and students across the school, I was responsible for heading the development of Hooke as a unique academic facility, public resource, and site of leading architectural research. We did too much in these years to list, but a few favourites include:

• Launch and leadership of the AA Wood Lab
• Development of the Hooke Park Build Visiting School
• Work with the entire team to see through numerous ambitious student projects
• Advancing 3D scanning work at the scale of the forest as a tool for engagement
• Hosting a day long tree planting party for 300 new students - the school’s largest event by far in the woods!

Press

• Woodland Heritage
• Bridport times
• Financial Times