Caught between trees and tarmac, Escapade takes a two-faced approach

Escapade is a new, high-end hospitality offer that sits on the eastern fringe of the Silverstone F1 racetrack in Northamptonshire. 

Designed by Twelve Architects for client Escapade Living, the concrete and steel-frame chalets are designed to give direct views of the racing action – not least the British Grand Prix – via trackside terraces, as well as enabling more relaxed enjoyment of bucolic woodland nearby.

Part of a bigger outline permission for this vast, flat site, Escapade's serviced chalets not only offer parking for up to four cars; trackside units were required to be able to be subdivided, optimising flexibility and revenue potential for big-ticket events. As Twelve director Lorraine Stoutt Griffith explains, these demands had to be accommodated within its highly specific context. 

‘There was a lot to think about, given we were straddling ancient woodland on one side and an F1 race track on the other,’ she says. ‘The flatness also meant there are long views and a lot of sky, and while the taller part of the site is where the grandstand and new hotel are, this end is more remote, leading to discussions with planners about reducing impacts on the woods.’

This resulted in Twelve’s masterplan of 15 two-storey blocks up against the tracks, set into a bund, with 10 similar blocks behind and between them, to allow for perforate views on to the track. To their east are 21 single-storey units, sited in a designed context of swales to engage with rural landscape to the north.

Stoutt Griffith explains that the unusual trackside/woodland disparity was a driving factor in the form and cladding choices for the chalets. ‘It’s true that motor racing associations might be with shiny metal and bright colours,' she says. 'But because of protected woodland nearby, we also wanted something modern and crisply detailed but softer.’  

Pressure-treated Nordic pine cladding

Twelve opted for ‘twisted’ monolithic stacked blocks for trackside chalets, to reflect the site’s ‘dynamism’, and used a dual approach to envelope design – emphasising expanses of glass and metalwork by the track, with a more natural palette on ‘rural’ faces.

The practice homed in on vertical timber in two layouts. Charred yakisugi was considered, but dismissed as ‘dark – even oppressive’. Grey Siberian larch was the preferred option, but was ruled out on cost grounds, Twelve deciding on Finnish Lunawood pressure-treated Nordic pine. 

It overcame aesthetic and durability concerns by specifying the silicon-based SiOO:X protection coating in mid-grey, giving the desired ‘weathered’ look while limiting moisture ingress to the softwood. ‘Pine is more knotty and characterful than larch, but the coating tones that down – and makes it more robust,’ says Stoutt Griffith.

On these elevations, the interstitial 120mm steel frame system (SFS) is wrapped in two forms of pine rainscreen cladding: 150mm-wide, vertical tongue and groove boards and 43mm ‘hit and miss’ battens spaced at 150mm centres, interfacing along a diagonal line in elevation. 

The SFS build-up it sits in front of is packed with infill Rockwool and a 150mm Knauf Rocksilk RainScreen slab. Stoutt Griffith adds that the elevational treatment ‘works in the same way as the plan “twist”, breaking down the units’ scale’.  

With bedrooms on plan to the side and rear, diagonal orientation of adjacent units avoids one bedroom window overlooking another. This is helped by Twelve’s idea of creating the units’ monolithic look by running battens in front of recessed full-height glazing, increasing privacy.  

The formal dynamism goes back to the form of the SFS, where 11.3m rearside and 10.4m trackside overhangs on both sides of the ground floor garages’ concrete box are achieved by using steel sections supporting the composite steel floor slab of the lower stacked unit. These steel UC 203 x 203mm props are only apparent on the development’s ‘quiet’ side, with the bund used to conceal the garages and the props on the track side.

For Twelve, this meant running the timber cladding along the composite slab soffits on both sides. ‘Being exposed to the elements, the soffits are visible back to the concrete base,’ Stoutt Griffith adds. To that end, 100mm of rigid insulation and a breather membrane are fixed beneath the composite deck, with a continuous light-gauge steel angle supporting at the soffit edge.

Creating the effect that walls are sitting on the bund required good detailing at their interface. Avoiding moisture ingress meant not sitting the bottom face of timber battens in the grass, so Twelve bolted a steel angle to the top of the concrete box to hold the grass back from the cladding’s edge, gravel-filled to create a form of French drain right above the concrete’s spray-applied waterproof membrane. At the top, timber battens are cut at an angle to avoid rain sitting on exposed faces.

Escapade Silverstone's trackside face

Twelve wanted a clear distinction between the development’s front and rear faces, to reflect their radically different contexts. On the western, track side, a complex geometry of anodised aluminium framing forms a canopy that adds extra movement to this facade – and act as a privacy screen between units. 

But wanting to keep the screen perforate, the firm ran with a Soltis Horizon 86 mesh by Serge Ferrari. 'It all adds drama and shadow, emphasising the twisting and hanging,’ notes Stoutt Griffith.

Here too, it was obvious glass walls were needed to give views of terraces and racetrack beyond. The same thinking drove the desire for the thinnest frame sections possible, though this was tempered by cost. 

Sub-contractor Arkay Windows went with an AluK SV156 aluminium sliding door sytem, specified with a thicker central strut enabling that all-important partitioning of the units by an internal, folding wall. Sections were sprayed in an anodised bronze finish in RAL7013, a soft brown/grey Twelve felt worked with the landscape. 

Project acoustician RBA recommended double-glazed laminated glass with an acoustic interlayer of 47dBA reduction, but Stoutt Griffith conceded its effect might only be felt on the sides and rear: ‘The fact is that no glazing could deal with the noise coming from the track – but we figured guests would be there to experience that.’ For those seeking the quiet life in the single storey units at far east of the site, ‘the earth bund does a lot of work to dampen the sound of the engines.'

On the rear elevation of Escapade, the drama of the plan shift and overhang was augmented by creating a large, recessed picture window to main bedrooms. 

‘We had a lot of space in section, around 450mm, beneath the composite slab once we had included the soffit insulation, and thought we could play with that,’ recalls Stout-Griffith. ‘We wanted the facade to feel less flat, so we used a chamfered pressed aluminium fascia to create more depth.’ 

This resulted in less insulation at the glass line where it interfaces with the intumescent-sprayed floor beam. But units still met an overall U-value of 0.18.

Procured in the metalwork package, the sub-contractor came up with the idea of workshop bonding the four corner mitres to avoid the usual unsightly site interface, so that here simple horizontal or vertical junctions occur on side runs, where they can be better lined up. The architect concurred: ‘They didn’t want a junction on the mitre, and it’s ended up creating a much neater detail.’

The development and its clubhouse, also by Twelve, are ready for July’s Grand Prix. Given the units’ crisp detailing and repetitive nature, I ask if the architect considered offsite prefabrication. Stoutt Griffith says Twelve looked into it and liked the quality, but felt shoehorned into designing ‘truck-sized modules’. This, and the overhangs’ engineering complexity, led the practice to stick with a traditional build approach.  

There were other concerns, too. ‘It’s a tricky one for a client,’ Stoutt Griffith says. ‘Done that way, it would require a lot more money up front to make and finish them before being ‘plugged in’ on site; traditional procurement, like the design and build adopted here, enables more measured release of project funds.’ 

It certainly does not seem to have affected quality, yielding a high-tech finish both client and architect are happy with.