Skip to main content

Lacuna Place, Hastings:

a mixed use building that repairs the fragmented Havelock Road frontage in Hastings

Type:
Commercial
Client:
Sea Change Sussex
Contract value:
£10 million
Location:
Hastings
Completion date:
Project status:
Completed

Lacuna Place forms part of the broader Priory Quarter masterplan and occupies a pivotal location, midblock between Priory Street and Havelock Road in Hastings.

Lacuna Place is a mixed-use development and provides open plan office spaces on four floors above retail and restaurant areas at street level. It successfully repairs the existing fragmented Victorian street frontage of Havelock Road at the heart of the Central Hastings Conservation Area, to connect the retail heart of the town with the Central Railway Station.

Based on studies of existing facades on Havelock Road in regards to scale, rhythm, modulation and material, an interwoven skin has been developed which consists of projecting and receding planes. The facades successfully engage with the visual dynamics of the complex existing townscape.

The chosen façade materials also refer to the prominent Hastings Castle cliff, where rock, brick and vegetation combine to create a woven filigree of colour and texture forming a unique backdrop to the town.

A new east-west pedestrian link (known locally as ‘twitten’) is threaded between Lacuna Place and Priory Square, becoming the urban ‘armature’ for the projects spatial organisation, public face and entrance sequence.

On emerging into Priory Square the architectural expression of the buildings change dramatically, from the studied contextual response of the Havelock Road facade to the uncompromising colourful expression of the office buildings.