Eyemouth Memorial Centre

The final project of my RIBA Part One was concerned with the alteration of Eyemouth’s built environment to provide a centre commemorating the fishing disaster of 1881 that devastated the town. This became an extended investigation into not just the town itself but the extended context, establishing the dynamics between Eyemouth and its neighbouring towns and relationship with Edinburgh.

The surrounding towns of Berwick, Dunbar, Duns, and Haddington were all examined in comparison and contrast to Eyemouth in respect to a range of topics, including core and periphery, geology, and history. This comprehensive research of the town backed up a proposal for the alteration of the built environment, drawing on both the physical conditions of a chosen site, but also aspects such as social dynamics.

An area on the sea-front was identified as a problem area with little inhabitation year round. Creating a new memorial or cultural space with internal public accommodation spaces addressing each other, the new space was intended to stitch segregated functions of the town, drawing on research conducted in Glasgow on the subject of the ‘urban portal’. Features such as visible and psychological thresholds were introduced, as was a tall visual cue incorporated to help break down the skyline between the two separate building typologies within the historic centre and the residential periphery.

The result employed an existing structure on the site, whilst promoting pedestrian movement in a town that has become dominated by personal transport, setting up a network of intended routes relating to the historic fabric of the town.