Commended entry in the 2003 RIBA run ‘East Lancashire Panopticons’ competition. In tandem with the three original selected sites, entries were also invited for unspecified, future sites. Once we had set upon a competition strategy for the Accrington site, we were happy enough with the discarded ideas to prepare an additional wildcard entry.

This response toyed with the notion of the modern online panoptic machine. As the definition of a panopticon could arguably be applied to any hill site with or without built interventions, we suggested here subverting this relationship so that the viewing world would be more acutely aware of the pavilion visitor’s presence than he or she was of theirs.

The pavilion consists of a demountable galvanised steel skeleton clad internally with ash panelling and externally with inexpensive, low resolution LED screens over a bituminous damp proof membrane. The viewing slots carved into this skin to frame particularly memorable views would also provide apertures for low resolution video cameras mounted on the opposite shelter wall, which would be continuously linked to the LED screens. Thus, when the shelter was unoccupied the cladding would pixelate images of the sky and when occupied by the ‘skin’ of the occupants who are clustered to view out of the linear slots.