ESA Architects were commissioned by Pikes Peak Property Limited to investigate the potential for the land to the south of Buckmore Park, Petersfield to accommodate a bespoke facility to store and display a private car collection of world class significance. The building’s design, performance and aesthetic seeks to complement and reflect the beauty and technology of the collection, as well as respecting the natural setting of the site and its surroundings. The material palette was carefully considered to reflect the local vernacular, reinterpreting local flint walls to knapped flint framed in black steel and tarred agricultural buildings reimagined with crisp charred timber cladding. With the further introduction of a strongly defined black steel structure and large planes of glass, the building attempts to blur the boundaries between the interior and carefully considered external landscape, allowing the steel to frame the exterior circulation before penetrating the façade and becoming expressed internal beams. Stepping stones across a reflecting pool, poetically define the entrance into the first gallery, which contrasts in its openness and visual permeability to the flint clad gallery to west which only alludes to what is contained within.

The building uses are combined in three interconnected volumes, capped with dramatic cantilevered roofs to create a striking contemporary building embracing the clients love of mid-century modernist architecture and passion for detail in the new home for a unique set of cars.