Spent a fantastic morning in the company of several members of the NT Architectural Panel and our very own Liz Green looking at the woodland workbase and the views across the Menai Strait from the Vaynol estate. The purpose was to ensure that the visual impact of the pump-house structure required as part of the Plas Newydd Marine Source Heat Pump project is kept to a minimum.
The pumphouse is required as an interface point in order to reduce the pumping energy required to carry the heat harvested from the sea to the heating plant room located in the Stables building.It is therefore necessary to build a pump house at low level. Along the base of the cliff on the foreshore marine causeway which is currently in a state of disrepair.
Behind a collapsed section of the walkway there is an indent in the cliff. It is proposed that the pump house will be located here, set back against the cliff. This location will have the added advantage of reducing the visual impact of the pump house structure from the sea.
The internal floor level will be equivalent to the causeway level which will be awash at high water springs and so the structure will need to be water and wave proof to a higher level.
We have commissioned a series of photomontages offering visual representations of the location of the pump-house from both the immediate foreshore area, and also across the Menai Strait from the Vaynol estate.
We know that the building will be visible from some angles, and more so at certain times of the year (leaf fall), but we are working to mitigate the visual impact as much as is possible with screening of Ivy, and also working up photomontage representations of the building in black as well as green to assess which blends best into the background.
