Royal Academy for Nature Conservation

An abandoned quarry serves as catalyst for an imaginative intervention providing educational programmes and visitor facilities.

The project for an Academy was originally proposed to be on a site inside a nature conservancy reserve, but the architect convinced the client to use an adjacent abandoned quarry which is outside the reserve. The basic philosophy was that the building would use the parts of nature which have been injured in the past, instead of adding a new intervention on virgin land. Encompassing an academy that provides educational programmes on environment and features a high-end restaurant and craft, the Academy follows a quarry cliff cut-line, creating a linear addition of constructed stone to the bedrock. Arrival is via a stone bridge spanning 30 metres and the longest in Jordan to the mid-point between the restaurant and the Academy. The massive southern facade consists of very small windows with giant vertical blade-like stone cracks shearing into zero width. Corridors are defined by a crack in the ceiling that lets natural sunlight in. On the opposite side, the Academy touches the forest. The project illustrates how to use abandoned quarries that are found in the surrounding mountains in large numbers of 100 or more.