The Prototype House, Hooke Park
The Prototype House, designed by the late Richard Burton (1933–2017), was the first building to be constructed on the Hooke Park campus. John Makepeace, who founded the Parnham Trust, had originally approached the German architect and structural engineer Frei Otto for advice on how best to use Hooke Park’s material. Otto suggested Richard Burton as a co-designer, who conceived the project both as a building to accommodate staff and as a prototype for a new kind of low-cost rural housing. Constructed using local materials such as spruce thinnings from Hooke Park, at a cost of £50,000, the roof of the building continues to demonstrate the novel use of timber in tension. Today the Prototype House is used as the Hooke Park Refectory.
The AA Photo Library inherited the Ahrends Burton Koralek photographic archive in 2009 and also holds the Hooke Park photographic archive. These photographs have been digitised, and a selection are shown here with new photographs by Valerie Bennett. More are available on the Photo Library website photolibrary.aaschool.ac.uk.
