Architect Guy Hollaway invites us into his studio to talk design, regeneration and his plans for the future

It would not be substantially of an exaggeration to model Dude Hollaway ‘the male who built Kent’ supplied the selection of iconic structures his studio has created throughout the county.

With his very long-awaited multi-storey skate park F51 just opening in Folkestone this thirty day period, we sent reporter Rhys Griffiths to discover out what drives him to continue on to change our towns and towns.

For far more than an hour Person Hollaway sets out his philosophy in precise, diligently-chosen terms.

This is obviously a man who requires his function unbelievably severely in truth, and to talk with him on the subject of architecture is to sense intellectually stimulated.

At his studio in Hythe, he sets out his eyesight for what his work can contribute to the county where he grew up and the place he believes coastal communities in individual are going through a transformation contrary to something in a century or more.

“I individually believe that we are now likely by way of a coastal renaissance that we haven’t found considering the fact that the Victorian and Edwardian era,” he says.

“What we’re now seeing is this astounding time where there is investment that I have not viewed in the very same way, and a post-pandemic society in which you can monetize from dwelling or you’ve got got higher overall flexibility of the place you can do the job, so you can in fact dwell in which you want to are living.

“And what a great position to dwell, and love anything that this provides in conditions of environment and the beach and the sea, and society, food items, activity or recreation.

“Now you can basically have your function listed here as nicely due to the fact your operate is entirely mobile, and if you need to go to London you can get on the high-pace coach and you can be there in significantly less than an hour. Which is an terribly powerful thing.”

Immediately after rising up in Herne Bay, Hollaway left Kent to research at university in Brighton, ahead of graduating into a recession which meant options for young architects were being thin on the floor.

Handily a family members close friend, Nigel Thorpe, ran the company Cheney and Thorpe Architects at the Tramway Stables in Hythe and – in return for board and lodgings – the freshly-capable youngster was available a position performing for free of charge.

The foot in the door was all he desired, and quickly he had risen by way of the ranks and purchased out the business enterprise, which was afterwards renamed Man Hollaway Architects.

“If we make investments in the following technology, then we believe that it will come again in spades…”

Nowhere is the legacy of the firm far more obvious than a handful of miles together the coast in Folkestone, wherever a lengthy-standing marriage with billionaire philanthropist Sir Roger De Haan has observed Hollaway develop a sequence of structures which have proved central to the town’s ongoing regeneration.

“I really feel like I have been extremely fortuitous to be part of his regeneration plan,” he claims of De Haan and his charitable trust’s ongoing expenditure in the group.

“That plan is about making a great town to live in. If we can develop a genuinely significant spot then and we can invest in the city, devote in the people today who live in the city, and genuinely have a concentrate on investing in younger persons, then we can develop what we simply call ‘generational regeneration’.

“If we spend in the upcoming era, then we imagine that it will occur again in spades.

“If young men and women can see prospect to create a profession in a group that they are invested in, then they are more probable to stay and they’re far more most likely to contribute and that is a genuinely strong information.”

A person of the initially key assignments the studio labored on in the town was the seafront restaurant perched on the edge of the harbour which would go on to turn into Rocksalt.

Its function as a ‘destination’ dining home, alongside the flourishing arts scene in the Imaginative Quarter, was pivotal to what could be viewed as the initial wave of De Haan’s general eyesight for the transformation of the town.

I ask Hollaway what he assumed of the criticism, levelled from some quarters of the local community, that a cafe like this did almost nothing for those people locals struggling to make finishes meet up with in just one of the county’s most deprived wards.

“I grew up not getting huge amount of money of money,” he explained, “I recognized that.

“So when I was developing Rocksalt I consciously developed the ideal seats in the dwelling outdoors of the constructing. So when you appear up to the entrance you go spherical the corner and those people actions flip into these seats looking out more than the inner harbour.

“The plan of that was that you could go and decide up fish and chips, sit on those people ways in the sunshine, check out the fishermen convey in the fish, and have the finest seats in the house even if you couldn’t find the money for to be in the restaurant at that level.

“So it can be a form of aspirational, entry degree notion. I believe it’s really significant to try out and make a creating really feel quite obtainable and aspirational at the exact same time.

“Each time when I go down there, if I have bought time, I stroll all-around to look at that somebody’s sitting there and more situations than not you can find any individual sitting there ingesting fish and chips and I assume ‘wow, that’s working’.”

Accessibility and aspiration also seem guiding ideas for the new £17 million F51 skate park in Tontine Street, which he describes as “a reward from Sir Roger to the town”.

A spectacular creating which residences climbing, bouldering and boxing amenities together with a few floors for skating and BMX riding, the layout quick was to come up with a location which could host everybody from small children getting their very first classes right by to Olympians getting ready to go for gold in elite competitiveness.

“It is a present to these youthful folks which he is exceptionally happy of,” he claims.

“This skate park requirements to be obtainable from the rookie correct the way via to the skating pro. It needs to be challenging for everybody.

“That’s an incredible quick to try and realize, and then if you feel it can be difficult sufficient then we made a decision to stick the concrete bowl up in the air, so you can go underneath it and you can hear the skateboards over you.

“Then the entire setting up cantilevers out. This is a major building and it gets even bigger. It seems to be from the outdoors a whole lot scaled-down than it is and it truly is not until finally you enterprise within that you start to comprehend the scale of the creating.”

“Then we set the entire creating on stills. It’s like building in Venice…”

Other projects in Folkestone have bundled the 3 Hills sports park in Cheriton Street, the Most important Academy, the harbour fountains and of class Rocksalt.

But the mark of the Hollaway studio can be witnessed in quite a few other locations across Kent. In Ashford – on reverse sides of the railway tracks – stand the Elwick Place cinema sophisticated and the Curious Brewery.

In the meantime in Canterbury the agency has developed the Hampton by Hilton lodge designed on the web site of the previous Slatters Hotel in St Margaret’s Avenue, and in Margate the studio labored on the masterplanning of the revived Dreamland and the restoration of the Scenic Railway.

But it is the prepared headquarters for bicycle producer Brompton, which will be created in the heart of Ashford, that is genuinely firing Hollaway up.

“I’ve been in level of competition with Manchester and Birmingham,” he mentioned.

“I was up in opposition to some definitely stiff level of competition and up towards two towns which have cycling at the coronary heart of them.

“But we what we did was we managed to obtain site that was in a hundred acres and in eco-friendly place in the town centre, which is unheard of, but it happens to be in the flood basic.

“So we’ve had to appear up with an awesome design answer to enrich the flood simple, turn that into a reward, then we set the entire making on stills. It is really like developing in Venice.

“Inside of 10 many years, if anything goes to approach and we entire all the phases, we will have created among 2,500 and 3,000 work on that one web page, but not only that, we have designed architecture that can rewild 100 acres so it’s in parkland.”

And what of his philosophy and, if it can be not way too grandiose a notion, his legacy?

“If you comprehend the entire, then you can believe about the individual,” he says. “So if I understand the whole of Folkestone then I can commence to feed in and comprehend how to react to individual properties or what the sum of the total would be.

“I would far somewhat be invested in exactly where I are living because that will come with a obligation. I really don’t want to go away some thing at the rear of that I’m not very ple
ased of, that I will not want to go again to in 10, 15, 20 years’ time.

“I want to go back and know we manufactured the suitable decisions at the correct time. There’s a obligation for me to be executing a little something I think in and is anything great for the group and will develop larger prosperity or improved location to stay or will support the town economically or what ever.

“So I come to feel a large responsibility to that.”