Archinect - News

Damien Hirst cancels his Ilfracombe eco-town plans

2017-01-06T13:44:00-05:00

Isn’t Ilfracombe already a town? Yes, but Hirst was deeply involved in the application process for an eco-friendly, 750-home development known as the Southern Extension. That’s a terrible name for a town. Which is probably why the scheme was known as Hirst-on-Sea until recently. Until recently? Hirst, who lives nearby, has now withdrawn from the project. His company, Resign, says it could not find a developer to build houses “in keeping with our vision”.

Looks like Damien Hirst's plan to build 750 eco-friendly homes in the English seaside town of Ilfracombe isn't going to happen after all.

When we first reported about the artist's town-development ambitions back in 2012, the announcement was greeted with skepticism from Archinect readers. Two years later, everything still seemed jolly fine with the North Devon Council approving the plans.

The endeavor even inspired the studio project "Visionary Cities Project" at the University of Illinois at Chicago with students applying urbanist archetypes to Ilfracombe's blank development site.

The Guardian reader Patrick Ryan praises Hirst as a sensible businessman in the comment section and blames "Brexit dark clouds" over the UK's property market as a legitimate reason to pull the plug.

What's your take? Chime in below.

"Visionary Cities Project" applies urbanist archetypes to Damien Hirst's blank development site

2015-04-10T14:58:00-04:00

Students in UIC’s “Visionary Cities Project” have pitted a selection of urbanist theories against one another, to see how historical visions of urbanism compare on a common ground. The studio, run by Alexander Eisenschmidt at the University of Illinois at Chicago, takes urbanist models and schemes from the likes of Piranesis, Le Corbusier, and Hilberseimer, and reinterprets them on the blank slate of an upcoming development for the city of Ilfracombe, on the UK’s southern coast. In reality, Ilfracombe’s new district is being developed by the artist Damien Hirst, with a plan for suburban subdivisions. But the UIC studio is interpreting the expansion as a “cultural instigator”; producing a collection of drawings that Eisenschmidt calls “HiDef Cities of Architectural Urbanism.”

Eisenschmidt provided the following "Historical Context" for the studio:

Architectural urbanism has a long history, which only by the mid-20th century was questioned as the urbanisms of modernism were unable to re...

Plans approved for Damien Hirst's village on the British coast

2014-08-01T14:07:00-04:00

Outline plans for the project were approved by the North Devon Council this week. The village will officially be known by the surprisingly prosaic name Southern Extension, and will include shops, a primary school, a sports pitch and woodlands. [...] The project will include 75 affordable homes, and will be built over the next 10 to 15 years. Renderings show an extremely typical suburban town filled with identical houses and strolling pedestrians.

Hirst is collaborating with the Architects Rundell Associates, who have yet to complete such a large scale project. Related news from the world's richest living artist:

Artist Damien Hirst's eco-homes vision to regenerate town is unveiled

2012-02-18T19:45:00-05:00

ARTIST Damien Hirst has unveiled plans to build more than 500 landmark eco-homes in Ilfracombe, which he hopes will regenerate the town and provide a national blueprint for environmental housing. Architects working for Hirst, said to be the richest living artist in the world, hope to submit a planning application for the development at Winsham Farm in six months.