Wild Hut 21

Location:

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh
Wild Shelter Building Day - 16th June 2013

 

 

“This summer we are welcoming back internationally acclaimed artist Alec Finlay, who is working with the Bothy Project Architect to make a new bothy, Bothan Shuibhne, on a Scottish island. To celebrate this, Jupiter Artland and Alec have invited architect Kevin Langan to build a wild shelter, one of 100 he is making. Kevin's design is inspired by Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Temple of Apollo; the shelter will be constructed from fallen wood and natural materials. Please come and watch Kevin work and have a chat.”

Earlier this year I received a call at work to collaborate with internationally acclaimed Scottish Artist Alec Finlay (son of the late Sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay). I jumped at the chance to push the huts project in this new direction and after a few emails over many months found myself gathering wood late at night in the surreal landscape of Jupiter Artland near Edinburgh.

“Jupiter Artland: Works by many of today's leading artists, sculptors and land artists have been commissioned and then constructed in situ. The relationship of each artwork with its specific topographical location is a crucial feature of the artland, that is, art within the landscape. Jupiter Artland has charitable status and is committed to providing an educational resource for schools in the region.”



I was once again hut building with my good friends Arran Brown and Richard Paterson. We gathered wood until dark then slept out under a wooden canopy in the park’s education garden. I provided Arran with some welcome ear plugs as Richards snoring was like clockwork in both rhythm and predictability. Alec Finlay had selected a great site for the hut-build close to his father’s Temple of Apollo deep in the woods.

The hut design made reference to the temple’s structure and would be ironically situated in the Artland’s dumping ground. The wild huts project had always been a peripheral experiment in exploring forgotten spaces and so this nettle strewn corner, slightly off the trail seemed perfect. That night the park was alive with wildlife. Squirrels raced through the treetops and small roe deer stood frozen in the woods like statues (it wouldn't surprise me if they were actual sculptures).  

The Build:
By 10am the following morning we had gathered enough dead-wood for the build and decided to make a start on the structural frame (as the whole build would take a full day to complete). No sooner had we started arranging the first few wobbly timbers upright when the park opened its visitor gates and we attracted a crowd of intrigued onlookers. I was hoping to complete the frame fairly quickly as the build always looks fragile and embarrassingly unstable through the early stages. Over time - thousands of thin binds can form a more unified structure, but at the start it’s a bit like building a shed with shoe laces.

Alec arrived with his team who have been working towards building an artist resident bothy on the Isle of Eigg. The biting midges also arrived in force and so everyone painted themselves in liquid repellent as if war-paint, ready for the forthcoming invertebrate micro-battle.(‘Smidge’ insect repellent seemed to work ok for around 1.5 hours until most of it had ran off with my sweat). Alec lit a fire (with permission from the head gardener!) which really helped keep the midges to a minimum.

The first sleeping platform was cross-braced with a second platform below. Alec cleverly noted that the structure had transformed from a –minus sign into a +plus sign. That signified a lift in spirits and we progressed with the wall panels and roof. It was a very ambitious build and I knew we would be tight for time.

Bobby from ‘The Bothy Project’ lent a hand with the build as it progressed late into the afternoon. After the first sandwich panel was fitted in place the park was closed and it's woods descended into quiet once again. We joined Alec’s studio manager Luke for a quick pie at the local pub and returned to complete the build in darkness. We had a few panels still to construct (and I had a full day of work in Glasgow 40 miles away the following morning), so we were keen to complete the structure and get some sleep.

Roughing it:
By midnight, Luke had returned home to Edinburgh on the last bus (after bravely rescuing a baby lamb with its head stuck through a fence en-route), and we had completed the last of the wall panels. Arran agreed to sleep on the top bunk, Richard on the lower and myself on the soft ground below. It wasn’t until I wriggled into my sleeping bag that I realised the precariousness of the situation.

If anything collapsed (as it often did with rotten wood) I would be badly crushed below tones of broken timber and heavy bodies. I smiled at the impending risk, popped my ear plugs back in and drifted off to sleep in what was a warm and comfortable shelter. Without a single creak or crack through the night – we woke around 8am and headed back through the sculpture park for home.

A nice chap Gavin came to video the hut build for Jupiter Artland and noticed a large badger that morning not far from the hut. It never fails to impress me that large wild mammals can still live freely so close to human habitation. I’m just glad it didn’t choose to investigate our particular hut dwelling that night as badger wrestling is not a strong part of my skill-set.

I arrived late that morning for work and sat at my desk slightly dazed and once again stinking of earth. I received some images of school groups who were writing about the hut structure and was led to believe that the Jupiter head gardener also slept in the hut with his kid that night. It is great to see the fruits of our labour being appreciated by kids rather than being just torn down by them!

Alec Finlay:

"on the font of the wood
IHF’s sun temple’s
dedicated to
that wild red youth,
Apollo-Saint-Just, incarnate
forging a revolution
from the whole
framed in the round
by the cupola
that highlights azure
in the changeless
ever-changing sky"

 

'Little Sparks' with the Wild Hut at Jupiter Artland - 25.06.13

 

Click image  to view interactive 360 tour (by http://www.360pix.xo.uk)

 

Wild Hut 16

Location:
Pacific Quay, Glasgow

I noticed blue lights flashing and through the rain I could see an ambulance parked awkwardly in the road and a man being held by the throat against the building opposite. A typical Saturday evening in Glasgow I thought! The rain was fairly heavy and had been pouring all day. I decided this was a perfect night for a wild hut adventure.

I had noticed that building work had begun on my favourite little plot of land on the Clyde-side. 25 years of woods and wildlife had been scraped clean in less than a day, revealing old cobbled roads and retaining walls. The new Masterplan for this area includes strategic routes, hotels and office buildings (View part of the design). The thing that struck me was the maturity of the trees that were being cleared. For an inner-city site it looked like commercial forestry at work, with trailers full of heavy timber ready for the sawmill.



I followed a familiar little trail through the undergrowth until I arrived at the edge of the destruction. I remember following a little fox along this wooded trail with the surrounding branches full of screeching Magpies and Wood Pigeons. The Grey Herons who once stood like concrete statues in the tall reeds will never return. It looked like a tsunami aftermath – just thick mud and a tangle of broken trees.

I don’t like to get sentimental over one patch of scrub-land but I think urban density needs to be tempered with negative space - areas for wild resurgence. On the plus side, there was enough chopped materials here for all 100 huts so I wasn’t complaining for long.

The Build:
I decided to build quite an elegant triangular form. It consisted of two simple A-frame structures, which supported a triangular sleeping platform with roof above. Both the sleeping platform and roof tapered back to a single point. This reduced the material requirement and made it quite a quick and efficient build.

I constructed two free standing A-frames and strung the bed and roof structure together in super-quick time. I was slowed down considerably though as groups of screaming youths passed on the road above every few minutes. I felt really exposed with the lack of ground cover and crouched down behind stacks of timber like an animal shunning human contact.

The rain hadn’t stopped all night and it would be safe to say I was pretty wet. I was knee deep in mud through much of the foraging and could feel my face was caked in it too. It felt a bit like commando camouflage but I knew I would feel stupid walking home. I had the look of someone who had attempted to drink a puddle.

I laddered the roof with straight lengths of wood, using gravity to hold them in place. I then used upturned moss and turf to form a skin over the roof timbers and hold them in place. This ‘wattle and dob’ style roofing was quick and extremely effective. I built a short windbreak with some broken evergreen branches and the full hut was complete in only 3.5 hours.

Roughing it:
The rain hadn’t stopped all night and I pulled off my squelching wellies and wriggled onto the sleeping platform. It was a good test for this little hut as I’m sure even my tent would have packed in during such a heavy and constant downpour.

I put on a hat and snuggled down into the sleeping bag feeling the odd drip find its way through the layers of debris. The wind seemed to change direction from west to north-west, but the windbreak was well positioned around my head. I wondered how I would fall asleep – I was wide awake and there is a row of glowing flats on the road above. Taxi’s sped past every few minutes and people laughed in the rain on their drunken walk home from town.

Before long I was fast asleep and only woke to the sounds of birds chirping the following morning. I opened my eyes to see a black shape darting around the mud below the hut. It was still dark and I was sure it was a rat. It moved again and to my relief it was a blackbird searching for the early worm. It was odd to see bird-life in the darkness. It was almost 7am and the sun had not yet risen.

I watched the blackbird dart around the ground instinctively and wondered if it was following the same route it had done for years through the old forest? I wondered if by studying the bird’s movements you could build up a picture of how the forest was arranged before it was destroyed a few days earlier. I wondered if the residual mental maps of these birds could reveal the historic forest landscape through their confused movements, like a ghost or x-ray. Animals are highly adaptable I thought. Which is lucky as their eviction notice came in the form of a chainsaw.

It was soon light and as I walked home I felt like a travelling mud-wrestler. I passed about 10 people who looked at me with some concern. I checked my reflection in a car window and realised that my head looked like a chocolate truffle with bed-hair. I cleaned my wellies in a puddle and felt a lot better.