‘Defence Before Beauty’? : Infrastructure and the operational landscape of Fylingdales early warning station

Brook, Richard and Csepely-Knorr, Luca (2025) ‘Defence Before Beauty’? : Infrastructure and the operational landscape of Fylingdales early warning station. In: Beyond Infrastructure?, 2025-09-22 - 2025-09-24, University of Vienna. (Unpublished)

Abstract

Landscape architecture is frequently the unwitting camouflage in the visual amelioration of infrastructure. Large-scale designed landscapes became commonplace in post-war Britain as society modernised – motorways, power stations, reservoirs, gas and oil terminals, all had landscape architects employed by the state in attempts to mitigate against the disruption of development. Moreover, landscape architecture was used to project an image of responsible landowners. Desirably invisible, RAF Fylingdales, is a British Cold War listening station in a National Park in northern England. The site raises debates around perceived ‘natural’ landscapes, tensions between legislation for beauty and ecology versus demands for militarised security, and the actions of campaign bodies. Fylingdales is one visible, albeit deliberately obscured, cursor of an invisible global network of defence systems. These spaces occupied discrete, remote locations, often in sensitive and iconic landscapes, often assuming similarly iconic forms. The original complex of 1962 was composed of three 40m diameter geodesic domes. It was rebuilt 1989-92 in its current tetrahedron structure. Using archival research concerning the planned landscape at Fylingdales, and wider context of the National Park, this paper explores the ‘operational landscape’ as a ‘technical land’ with entanglements within, and well beyond, its physical borders. Considering the landscape architecture as a real and metaphorical ‘cloaking device’ that attempted to mitigate the protests of various campaign groups, we examine the relationships between the visible and the invisible human and non-human actors in a series of complex networks and question a perceived role of beauty in the context of defence infrastructure.