Great Fen

A response to a RIBA competition to design the visitor centre for the Great Fen – an ongoing project to create a huge wetland nature reserve in Cambridgeshire. Russian For Fish developed a scheme in collaboration with Pierre d’Avoine Architects (Pereen’s father’s practice), submitted under the name Studio DA. The design envisaged a two-level centre at the heart of a network of raised walkways above the reed bed, where reeds could be harvested to supply thatch to create partitions for a garden space on the open-air upper deck. The enclosed ground floor is designed as a research and educational area, opening onto a new stretch of canal that would allow visitors to arrive by boat.