UNEARTH: Rediscovering Whitehaven’s Lost Industrial Memory
Maxwell Kemplen’s Palimpsest Approach to Place and Memory
Maxwell Kemplen, an emerging talent in British architecture, bridges past and present with his award-winning thesis project, UNEARTH. Having recently graduated from the Manchester School of Architecture with Distinction, Kemplen is already accumulating notable accolades: shortlisted for the RIBA Silver Medal school nomination, a First Class Degree from the University of Lincoln, and recipient of the 2022 RIBA East Midlands Student Award for ‘The Pedagogical Facilitator’. His résumé, further enriched by a Part 1 placement at Maber Architects in Nottingham across a variety of sectors, cements his place as a designer to watch.
A Journey Triggered by Forgotten Stones
UNEARTH began not with a blank page, but with a dialogue between landscape and literature. Inspired by Marc Augé’s influential text, Non-Places, and Kevin Lynch’s classic, The Image of the City, Kemplen set out to interrogate how we experience, remember, and assign meaning to our built environment. A field trip to Whitehaven’s storied Cumbrian coast catalysed his inquiry: among the rock-strewn bluffs, he discovered fragments of neglected stone structures—ghosts of the area’s vivid industrial history. These objects, once vibrant centres of working and communal life, had slumped into disuse and cultural amnesia.
Such discoveries triggered fundamental questions central to Kemplen’s process: How does a community’s memory become severed from its physical anchors? Can architecture bridge that divide without erasing the delicate traces of the past? And, crucially, how much intervention is too much—where does restoration shade into overwriting?
Site-Specific Installations Along Whitehaven’s Cliffside
UNEARTH responds to these questions not with a single monumental project, but through a sequence of ten carefully calibrated installations. Threading along the descent from Whitehaven’s rugged clifftop to Saltom Pit—the ruins of Britain’s pioneering undersea coal mine—each installation marks a step deeper into the intertwined strata of industry, natural process, and human memory.
The design strategy is one of minimalism and tactility. Recycled stone, meticulously sourced from the site itself, gives each structure an immediate—even haunting—material legitimacy. Rather than dominating, structures “float” gently, hovering over their context and leaving the ancient substrate of the coastline legible and respected. The effect is immersive and evocative: visitors progress along a gravel path that winds with the topography, each new perspective gently revealing another dimension of Whitehaven’s narrative.
Kemplen’s interventions oscillate between the open and the intimate. Some installations—dark, angular, and enclosed—recall the oppressive realities of mining life beneath the sea, prompting moments of visceral empathy. Others open to the horizon, connecting past toil with the sweep of land and ocean and the possibility of renewal. The installations are not mere lookouts or pavilions: they are memory machines, designed to activate both personal reflection and collective memory.
The Palimpsest as Process: Layering Memory and Design
Central to UNEARTH’s conceptual rigour is the idea of the palimpsest: a surface accreted with inscriptions, where earlier marks remain always partially visible beneath newer ones. Kemplen’s approach recognises the impossibility—and the danger—of pure restoration. Instead, his thesis layers new interventions with unapologetic contemporary sensibility over the found fragments, inviting visitors to experience Whitehaven’s history as an evolving text, not a closed chapter.
The installations intentionally resist completion. Stones are left rough-hewn, gaps remain, and the ambiguity between ruin and renewal is preserved; this “incompleteness” encourages the visitor’s imagination to do its own reconstructive work. In this way, Kemplen sidesteps the traps of nostalgia or over-didacticism. Instead, UNEARTH becomes a template for how designers might engage sensitively with sites saturated in memory yet still open to change.
Recognition, Rigor, and Looking Forward
Industry recognition of Kemplen’s talent is no accident. The project’s synthesis of theory, careful site research, and poetic spatial design aligns with current critical debates about heritage, sustainability, and place-making. The fact that UNEARTH achieved Distinction and Silver Medal nomination at Manchester, as well as earlier acclaim for his undergraduate work at Lincoln, speaks to Kemplen’s consistency and depth as a designer.
At Maber Architects, Kemplen honed his technical skills across sectors as diverse as residential, healthcare, leisure, and defence. This breadth shows in UNEARTH’s careful mix of robust materiality and strategic subtlety.
Connect with Maxwell Kemplen
As Kemplen embarks on the next stage of his professional journey—seeking opportunities to further refine his skills and vision—industry attention is sure to intensify. For those wishing to connect, collaborate, or simply keep an eye on his developing career, Kemplen is active on LinkedIn, shares visual diaries and work-in-progress on Instagram, or can be reached directly via email at maxkemplen@gmail.com.
UNEARTH exemplifies a thoughtful, critically aware practice founded on empathy, materiality, and narrative depth. As architectural discourse continues to grapple with questions of memory, identity, and the ethics of intervention, Kemplen’s work signals a timely and sensitive path forward for the next generation.
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