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 11

Location :

Old Partick Central Station, Glasgow

I had the good fortune to meet up with a chap Toby Clark from the John Muir Trust Awards who was interested in the wild huts concept and was keen to give it a try. The accessibility of the project initially grabbed his attention and how people could engage with wild spaces in urban areas as well as rural. We agreed to build a '2 person shelter' one month prior but had failed to anticipate the onslaught of freezing weather conditions. It felt like madness but we gave it a bash.

It was on a dark cold winter’s evening after work when we met in a west-end bar to discuss our build and where we might go. The ruined remains of Partick Central Station are sited just behind the bar and this seemed as good a place as any! Toby heartily agreed but suggested that after experiencing the freezing temperatures that day he was ‘anticipating’ the experience rather than looking forward to it.

The station was built in the 1890s by the Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire Railway Company, it sat on a line that ran along the north bank of the River Clyde from Stobcross to Dumbarton. The station was renamed Kelvin Hall in 1959.

Passenger and goods services to the station ceased in 1964 when it closed as part of the Beeching cuts to rail services across the UK. The station building was later used as a workshop and an auction house before lying empty for a number of years. The remains of the platforms and track-bed, which were underneath the station building, have been removed but the railway's route is fairly discernible. The station's goods yard served as a site for travelling people and as a scrap merchants.

The site had been empty and awaiting redevelopment when in 2004 it emerged that the supermarket chain Tesco wished to develop a 24-hour operation there, in the face of local opposition STOP. Tesco had the station building demolished on 28 January 2007, before planning permission had been given for the development from Glasgow City Council.

We ventured out into the frozen air and passed through an open gap in the fence which led along the old railway tracks. We spend a short while exploring this forgotten landscape and regaining our bearings. It was like an island: marooned on 4 sides by high walls, roads, bridges and the River Kelvin. It was strange to find such a pocket of overgrown wildness so close to the busy west end and Glasgow’s bustling Byres Road.

The Build:
The hut concept was two free-standing mono-pitched structures which were mirrored and could be bound together for increased rigidity if needed. As the freezing rain steadily fell we gathered the fallen branches which lay strewn throughout the dense thickets. Due to limited tools - Toby accumulated the better structural timbers as I wrestled with bundles of tangled branches. We stacked our materials under the sheltering road bridge and assembled a series of A-frames which we used as the primary structural components.
This was a fairly time consuming process but we had the basic structures complete and in place by around 11pm. After the rain had passed, the stars and moon burst through the shifting clouds and the temperature began to plummet much like our energy levels.

We decided to take a break and stop for a well earned beer. To my infinite joy I had somehow managed to burst open a can in my rucksack which drenched all my spare clothes with freezing cold Stella Artois. It was probably a better smell than mud and sweat, but would increase the chance of hypothermia if worn! I offered some soggy spare socks to Toby but he gracefully declined in favour of his life.

The hardest part of the build was yet to come as this involved gathering bails of cut material to use as roofing tiles. I knew from experience that this would be time consuming and Toby wasn’t entirely looking forward to the process. It was around 2 hours later where he confessed that bailing wasn’t for him. Gathering grass for hours on end on a freezing cold winter’s night is numbingly monotonous and requires a steely mindset.

I hadn’t seen Toby in a while and decided to take that opportunity to stretch my legs and see how he was doing. Through the mist I noticed Toby had a new friend in the form of an inquisitive fox! It seemed to take an interest in what we were doing and was happy to come close in search for scraps. It darted around playfully and watched our progress for the next hour.

A cormorant flew overhead, heading upstream. It occurred to me that these spaces have a role in providing sanctuary for life of all kinds. It would be good to recognise the importance of these informal spaces: they seem to have a more exceptional capacity to harbour wildlife than our manicured parks.

Roughing it:

Around 3am we were ready to try out the structures and unfurled our sleeping bags over the frosty branches. Passers-by glanced down from the adjacent bridge on occasion but we remained undisturbed. Toby noticed that the frozen forest glistened like the stars and it was difficult to differentiate between them. We slept until around 7:30am where we both woke with cold feet. I looked down to see my sleeping bag had a glaze of frost which covered my projecting feet.

By 8am the blue morning light had saturated the sky as the city streets sprung to life once again. We passed through the fence and looked down at the hut from the adjacent road bridge. It stood like the mystical jungle shelter from a lost tribe. After mild reflection we soon saw sense and headed straight to the nearest café for a fried Scottish breakfast.



Wild Hut 7

Location – Mugdock Woods, North Glasgow.

Group Hut

‘Experience gathering’ defines humankind’s behavioural and evolutionary makeup. Our perception is the process by which we ingest our experiences in unique ways and store them in the library-vaults of our minds. The sum total of these memories help to define who we are; ‘we are…what we experience!’…maybe.

I decided to take some city kids out into the woods for a spot of ‘experience gathering’…but mainly for grass and timber gathering! My daughter Katie is 6 years old and my girlfriend Kirsty’s niece and nephew (Jamie-Lee & Robert) are both 12. We decided to take them to a vast, deciduous woodland just north of Glasgow to build a shelter big enough for 5 people. I grew up building dens in the woods and feel its something a lot of young kids are missing out on. The woods can be an inspirational and immersive place for a child and can supply real wholesome worthwhile experiences that are hard to shake.

 

To keep it simple, we planned to build a traditional cone-shaped teepee. We picked up the kids around 10am and headed for Mugdock woods just beyond Milngavie. It was dry and sunny, although forecast for rain through the night. We backtracked along the West Highland Way trail until we found a delightful clearing with a ready supply of broken branches nearby. Kirsty armed the team with some scissors and knives and went off to collect bales of long grass for roofing tiles.

 

I was collecting wood when a lady suddenly appeared with some yappy dogs. ‘What’s going on here?’ she said in a stern authoritative voice which instantly annoyed me. I asked her why people can’t pick up fallen branches in the woods in today’s society without raising suspicion? I then proceeded to tell her that most of the mess around this area is from dog-poo. She apologised profusely and disappeared down the trail in a blur of furry yaps.

I managed to find around ten 2.5m long fallen branches which I whittled with the axe until tidy and straight. I arranged them in a circular cone-shape (3m diameter) and bound horizontal rails between each tilted upright (like a ring of triangular ladders). The rails would support the roofing tiles and stop them draping inwards (the more ladder-rails you have essentially means that water will run off rather than drain through. It also has a laminating effect and braces the whole structure rigidly).     

 

I quite fancied a shelter which had a hole in the roof for an internal fire chimney, but heavy rain was forecast so I decided the roof should be closed and the fire located outside near the entrance.

    

It took around 5 hours to gather all the timber and build the main structure. By this time we only had enough grass for around a 5^th of the hut’s roof. We stopped for dinner and decided on a change of material. The team’s hands were cut to ribbons collecting the sharp grass and binding them into bales so we decided on softer bracken instead. This was a much quicker process and the whole roof was complete by 9pm.

Kirsty built a smoky fire which duly dispersed the biting midges and we all sat round to toast marshmallows on sticks. I rolled out the sleeping bags (5 deep) and by 10:30pm the kids were suitably knackered and snuggled up in the hut searching for dreamland. (Although we stayed mostly dry - a more substantial porch would have been a welcome addition to keep out driving rain during the night.) The roofing tiles shed the bulk of the rain exceptionally well and it just goes to show what can be achieved with a little time and allot of effort.

 

Around 7am, a group of walkers appeared outside the hut in matching red wellies (there must have been a sale on), extremely surprised to find that the hut was actually occupied! I slept through the whole event though so would have been completely useless had it been a dangerous situation (I had already checked the internet and most violent crime does happen between Thursday and Sunday, but very rarely in the morning…so I slept soundly!).



Jamie-Lee & Robert



I’m not overly sure what the long term effect of hut building and sleeping rough in the forest would be for the kids. They suffer from an experiential-overload much of the time so I’m not sure if these ‘primitive experiences’ can compete with the likes of Harry Potter, the Nintendo-DS and the X-Factor (although you don’t have to pull blood-sucking ticks out your bum watching x-factor!).

Wilderness Shelter - Mugdock woods