Eight diagrams. The design discipline.
These diagrams set the architectural envelope. The design itself will be developed by the appointed architect, working within this discipline. Pinch and zoom on any diagram to read the detail.
Section through the building. The visitor rooms above pay for the public deck below. The ground floor is fully public; the top is fully private; the middle decks are mixed and time-zoned.
The cross-subsidy is hard-coded into the building's section. Five floors of vertical zoning, with the Public Benefit Meter in the corner atrium reporting the daily balance to anyone who walks in.
Massing principles — three architectural moves: inhabit the wall, step down to context, round the corner.
The building inhabits the Victorian sea wall rather than sitting beside it. The roof line steps down below the residential ridge uphill. The corner is held by a circular atrium that opens to both streets — La Valette and the path to the Bathing Pools.
Three flows that never cross. Public, guest and back-of-house separated by design from the brief, not retrofitted later.
Most projects of this kind fail at servicing — the kitchen-back appears at the front, the bins live where the families want to sit, the guest entrance creates a hotel-lobby atmosphere that kills the public welcome. The brief commits, from day one, to keeping the three flows separate.
Stage 1 reversible interventions on the landward side. Stage 2 is contingent on Stage 1 success and structural sign-off.
The Victorian granite wall along the seaward edge becomes an inhabited civic backbone. Stage 1 is reversible by design — timber benches, brass rails, display niches, planting pockets, lighting. Stage 2 — a chapel-like quiet room carved into the wall's thickness — proceeds only if Stage 1 has demonstrated structural and heritage feasibility.
A lantern, a mast, a social stair. The light shaft from roof to ground floor.
The atrium does three things at once: a lantern on the corner of La Valette; a mast that brings daylight through five floors; a social stair where staff, guests, and the public meet on equal terms. The Public Benefit Meter sits on the L1 gallery.
The civic gift. Daily public hours, event windows, quiet zones — published openly, audited annually.
The roof belongs visibly to the island. Minimum 280 hours per four-week period of free public access; events restricted to a published maximum of 12 hours per week with 7-day public notice; quiet hours preserved on the eastern edge at all times. These commitments are enforceable through the asset lock and the Critical Friends Panel — not goodwill.
Six materials. Each chosen because it earns its place: coastal-durable, repairable, weathering well over a 60-year design life.
Granite, oiled hardwood, brass, weathered bronze, lime render, sail canvas. No materials chosen for fashion. No finishes that look new for two years and tired for fifty. No glass-curtain-wall vocabulary, no chrome, no corporate-international. The reference point is a working harbour building that gets better the longer it is used.
Bathing Pools, Island Exchange, harbour. Three civic anchors along a continuous five-minute promenade walk.
The Bathing Pools (free, States-owned, sauna and café) are the anchor at one end. The harbour and Castle Cornet are the anchor at the other. The Island Exchange is the only point on this walk where premium accommodation funds public infrastructure. It is the deliberate complement, not the competitor, to the Pools.
What these diagrams are and aren't
These diagrams set the architectural envelope and design discipline. They are deliberately diagrammatic — proportions, exact dimensions, structural details and aesthetic resolution are all to be developed by the appointed architect.
The design intent — what the building is for, how the flows separate, what the atrium does, how the roof works through the day, what materials will be used — is what we are committing to.