‘I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards!’
Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Conceived as a space between reality and fantasy, this project explores multiple thematic narratives of duality and synthesis in a place for the practice and performance of circus arts, resonant within the historical and contemporary urban conditions of Margate itself.

Mostly burrowed into the shoreline chalk cliff-face, the majority of formal teaching and performance spaces are hidden underground, suspended within charged voids of unprogrammed possibility, inviting enchanted inhabitation….

Through this physical and representational interplay of oppositions a poetically pragmatic architecture emerges, creating a venue of immersive experience that becomes a place of multiple social engagement and resource, engendering a diverse community of performers and teachers, Margate residents and day-trippers.