Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
‘I don’t want to leave
It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to brand Guy Hollaway ‘the man who built Kent’, given the number of iconic buildings his studio has created across the county, including in Canterbury. Reporter Rhys Griffiths sat down with the architect at his studi
For more than an hour Guy Hollaway sets out his philosophy in precise, carefully-chosen words. This is clearly a man who takes his work seriously, and to talk with him on the subject of architecture is to feel intellectually stimulated.
His design work can be seen across Canterbury, from the Palamon Court student accommodation complex which overlooks the city’s ring-road, to the Hampton by Hilton hotel built on the site of the former Slatters Hotel in St Margaret’s Street.
But it’s at his studio in Hythe that he tells me of his vision for what his work can contribute to the county where he grew up, and where he believes coastal communities in particular are undergoing a transformation unlike anything in a century or more.
“I personally think that we are now going through a coastal renaissance that we haven’t seen since the Victorian and Edwardian era,” he says.
“What we’re now seeing is this amazing time where there is investment that I haven’t seen in the same way, and a post-pandemic society where you can monetise from home, or you’ve got greater flexibility of where you can work, so you can actually live where you want to live.
“And what a great place to live and enjoy everything that this brings in terms of environment and the beach and the sea, and culture, food, sport or recreation.
“Now you can actually have your work here as well because your work is completely mobile, and if you need to go to London you can get on the high-speed train and you can be there in less than an hour.
“That’s an extraordinarily powerful thing.”
After growing up in Herne Bay, Hollaway left Kent to study at un vers y n g on, ore graduating into a time of recession that meant opportunities for young architects were thin on the ground.
A family friend, Nigel Thorpe, ran the firm Cheney and Thorpe Architects at the Tramway Stables in Hythe and – in return for board and lodgings – the newly-qualified youngster was offered a job working for free.
The foot in the door was all he needed, and soon he had risen through the ranks and bought out the business, which was
later renamed Guy Hollaway Architects.
Nowhere is the legacy of the firm more evident than in Folkestone, where a long-standing relationship with billionaire philanthropist Sir Roger De Haan has seen Hollaway produce a series of buildings which have proved central to the town’s ongoing regeneration.
“I feel like I have been very fortunate to be part of his regeneration plan,” he says of De Haan and his charitable trust’s ongoing investment in the community.
“That plan is about creating a fantastic town to live in.
“If we can create a really meaningful place then and we can invest in the town, invest in the people who live in the town, and really have a focus on investing
on young people, then we can create what we call ‘generational regeneration’.
“If young people can see opportunity to create a career in a community that they’re invested in, then they are more likely to stay and they’re more likely to contribute and that’s a really powerful message.”
One of the first major projects the studio worked on in the town was the seafront restaurant perched on the edge of the harbour, which would go on to become Rocksalt.
Its role as a ‘destination’ dining room, alongside the flourishing ar s scene n a ve rter, was pivotal to what could be considered the first wave of De Haan’s overall vision for the transformation of the town.
He said: “When I was designing Rocksalt I consciously designed the best seats in the house outside of the building.
“So when you come up to the entrance you go round the corner and those steps turn into these seats looking out over the inner harbour.
“The idea of that was that you could go and pick up fish and
‘Designing Rocksalt, I consciously designed the best seats for ou ng
‘It’s important to try and make a building feel very accessible and aspirational at the same time’
chips, sit on those steps in the sun, watch the fishermen bring in the fish, and have the best seats in the house, even ifyou couldn’t afford to be in the restaurant at that point.
“So it’s a kind of aspirational, entry level idea. I think it’s important to try and make a building feel very accessible and aspirational at the same time.”
Accessibility and aspiration also appear guiding principles for the new £17 million F51 skate park in Tontine Street.
A stunning building which houses climbing, bouldering and boxing facilities alongside three floors for skating and BMX r ng, gn e was o come up with a venue which could host everyone from children taking their first lessons right through to Olympians preparing to go for gold in elite competition.
He said: “That’s an extraordinary brief to try and achieve, and then if you think it’s complicated enough then we decided to stick the concrete bowl up in the air, so you can go underneath it and hear the skateboards above you.
“Then the whole building cantilevers out. This is a big building and it gets bigger.
“It looks from the outside a lot smaller than it is and it’s not until you venture inside that you start to understand the scale of the building.”
Other projects in Folkestone have included the Three Hills sports park in Cheriton Road, the Primary Academy and the harbour fountains.
But the mark of the Hollamany way studio can be seen in other locations across Kent. In Ashford - on opposite sides of the railway tracks - stand the Elwick Place cinema complex and the Curious Brewery.
w e, n e umasterplandreamland dio worked on the ning of the revived and the restoration of the Sceheadquarmanufacturer nic Railway.
But it is the planned ters for bicycle Brompton that is really firing Hollaway up.
“I’ve been in competition with Manchester and Birmingham,” he said.
“I was up against some really stiff competition and up agains two cities that have cycling a the heart of them.
“But we managed to find a site that was in a hundred acres and in green space in the town centre, which is unheard of, but it happens to be in the flood plain.
“So we’ve had to come up with an amazing design solution to enhance the flood plain, turn that into a benefit, then we put the whole building on stilts. It’s like building in Venice.
“Within 10 years, if everything goes to plan and we complete all the phases, we will have created between 2,500 and 3,000 jobs on that one site, but not only that, we have created architecture that can rewild 100 acres so it’s in parkland.”
And what of his philosophy and, if it’s not too grandiose a concept, his legacy?
“If you understand the w e, n you can n about the individual,” he says.
“So if I understand the whole of Folkestone then I can start to feed in and understand how to react to individual buildings or what the sum of the whole would be.
“I’d far rather be invested in where I live because that comes with a responsibility. I don’t want to leave something behind that I’m not proud of.
“I want to go back and know we made the right decisions at
the right time.”