In association with Forbes Massie, designer Giles Miller designed a gigantic monument with a cross-shaped plan and textured brick walls. Miller and Massie’s 14-storey Monument is designed to be completely hollow, allowing visitors to inhabit it.
Working alongside structural engineers from Arup, Miller’s studio took on the conceptual project to “push our creative discipline as composers of materials to a new scale”.
From top, the structure looks as a cross – with the points directing towards the all four directions east, west north and south, of the surrounding landscape. The building’s crossed walls would work together to spread and carry wind load to the foundation, allowing it to remain hollow on the inside.
“Monument manifests purism in its design and realisation,” said Miller. “Simple and enormous intersecting walls give a balanced symmetry but are also the means by which the structure stands at the height of a 14-storey building, with an entirely hollow core. Each wall carries its own weight vertically downwards, but the wall segments also span horizontally onto their neighbouring perpendicular wall, thus wind load descends to the foundation in shear,” he added.