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 19

Location:

Dawsholm Park, Glasgow

Some weeks previously I had arranged to collaborate with a Glasgow-based design consultancy called Giraffe Architecture. Raymond from Giraffe shares my passion for sustainable design and is also quite partial to an outdoor-adventure on occasion which was more than handy. After various emails we had decided to build something that would really test our design skills and explore a more ‘engineered’ solution. So in order to push ourselves we decided to build a mathematically complex geodesic dome…from wobbly twigs.

Having in the past made various shelters that were either too narrow or too short, I was worried that this more precise geometric puzzle would be impossible to achieve on a cold, dark evening with some rickety branches. It didn’t help that some of the worst snow storms this year had hit Glasgow on the very day of the build. It doesn’t surprise me.

Travelling through the west end of Glasgow we arrived at the gates of Dawsholm Waste Transfer and Recycling Facility (or ‘the dump’ for short) in the early evening. The recycling plant has a surreal high-rise metal shed on the fringe of a small woodland park. This hilltop forest offers great views south over Glasgow’s west-end but is fairly exposed to the bitter east-wind and blustery snow showers which now fell.

The Build:

We gathered some sticks and walked along the long approach path leading to the woods. Dog-walkers were out in force utilising what was left of the diminishing daylight. From a distance we may have looked like park rangers clearing up the fallen branches from the path. This was hopeful at best. It was more likely they noticed the serious conviction written across our faces suggesting that we were working towards something bigger, more epic, but ultimately less useful than path-clearing. We walked past with our heads down, avoiding awkward questions and eye contact.

Tall trees had been knocked down by the wind in an elemental game of woodland dominos. Tipped trunks were precariously resting against adjacent trees, interlocked at high level. Many trees lay motionless on the forest floor, revealing a tiny pond below their upturned roods. We stashed our rucksacks deep in the branches of a fallen conifer tree and proceeded to find yet more sticks.

Eventually, we had gathered enough sticks for the main pentagonal components and decided to take a quick break for a cold dinner. Ray lifted his sandwich to find a mouse had nibbled a hole in the corner of the packet. Slightly concerned I hung our main food bag from a branch but was ultimately pleased to find these tiny creatures harbouring in the security of this fallen forest giant.

We got back to work arranging the pentagons which would form the basis for the hut. We required 5 large identical pentagons for this build. The pentagons were made from an inner and outer frame, inside which we trapped some fir branches from the adjacent fallen tree. They took around 45 mins each to assemble and we had the feeling that this adventure might be a late one.

I nipped back over to the food bag when a little golden mouse (possibly a wood or harvest mouse) sprung out the bag and disappeared along the branches. I almost jumped out of my freezing skin and was of the opinion I could probably outrun Raymond if the mouse decided to attack. It was actually great to see a little woodland creature so close-up, right in the heart of the city. They are also slightly cuter than the usual fat rats I encounter on the pavements outside shops.

A fox danced through the woods like a drugged gypsy, darting in various directions as the snowfall became more concentrated. It didn’t stay for long and headed towards the recycling centre for supper, or indeed to recycle. We completed the 5 pentagon sandwiches and had them arranged upright by midnight. It was freezing cold so we could never stop for very long without our fingers becoming increasingly numb.

A couple of hours later we had arranged the roof and tiled it with the conifer branches from the adjacent deadwood tree. The hut looked surprisingly like a geodesic dome. I was surprised at how neat and structurally capable the form became. The rigid dome flexed and compressed to hold each of its components in place. The snowfall now seemed fairly heavy and I was sure that the hut would soon resemble an igloo rather than a finely panelised dome.

Roughing it:

We passed our gear through the small triangular door and rolled out our sleeping mats. Things weren’t much warmer in our sleeping bags as temperatures on the hill plummeted to around -7. Not ideal, although I learnt a good trick that by placing my hands deep into my pockets I was able to sleep without shivering. I wrapped a scarf around my face as tiny flakes of snow drifted through similarly tiny gaps in the structure. The hut became a great wind-break and we were more than pleased with this minor sheltering victory.

We chatted until late and fell asleep to the sounds of agitated trees moaning in the wind with old limbs creaking. A dog barking right outside the hut signalled morning and was a great natural alarm (reminiscent of clockwork, much like their toilet habits). We packed quickly as the morning air was much colder than the previous night, partnered by a fierce wind.

We skipped breakfast and made our way through the arterial maze of forest trails until we aligned once again with the main dump access road. The snow was still falling heavily and after a short commute I was back home and beginning to warm up slightly.

I decided to eat the croissant I had bought for our breakfast, but on further inspection the bag was chewed open and the croissant was hollowed out by that stealthy little mouse earlier. It’s lucky the rodent had retired as it may have well found itself on the menu after munching our breakfast!

Wild Hut 17

Location:
Edmiston Drive, Ibrox, Glasgow



Some colleagues showed a mild interest in building an ‘urban hut’ in Glasgow and with some minor preparation we were soon on the subway after work - bound for Glasgow’s south-side. These colleagues, Ewan Proctor Mason & Gordon Anderson are both season-ticket holders at the infamous Rangers Football Club. They were both aware of a small tract of redundant land to the west of the football stadium which could potentially harbour enough materials for a wild night out.



This part of Glasgow has a very unsavoury reputation, not only for match-day hooliganism but also for real-life murders. There is a noticeable breakdown in the urban fabric here with derelict buildings, storage units and high-rise tower blocks. One of Scotland’s most infamous murderers; Christopher Hutcheson, had once lived in a flat nearby and was thought to have tortured and killed some drug addicts for not paying their bills. He apparently garrotted one of them, chopped up the body and buried them in the back court. This psychopath also attacked people in the courtroom when standing trial. At least he was consistent.



It was with this sinister backdrop that we crossed the stadium overflow carpark and entered a tiny patch of dense woodland. A new railway yard had been extended recently which decimated 80% of this forgotten wild space. The last remaining thicket was situated at a lower level beneath the street and was bound by 2 redundant railway lines to the east and west. One of the old tracks was completely flooded and looked like a deep soupy canal with a fringe of green reeds. The other, to our dismay, contained 2 silhouetted figures spray-painting on the tunnel wall.

 

Much to the displeasure of Ewan and Gordon, we almost universally decided to stand our ground in the hope that they would eventually move off. Without much consultation, I nipped down the embankment towards the group, shown my torch at the pair and started gathering some of the branches which lay strewn on the wet forest carpet. I made sure I was overtly noisy and they soon got spooked and climbed up to the road bridge which overlooked the forest. From their perspective, they were suddenly blind-sided by strange cutting noises and flashing lights.

They tried to provoke a reaction from us by throwing something down then shouting and whistling. They couldn’t figure out what they were dealing with as we stayed quiet and were spread out through the forest. An evening of bushcraft didn’t fit within their frame of reference and so they were obviously uneasy and well-spooked with the situation. After a short time, they mounted their bikes and shouted down – “whit yah dain cuttin aw that wood ya beasts?...ya pure beasts!”  This was the last we heard from them as they sped off westwards towards Drumoyne. 

The Build:
Gordon had conceived the hut design to incorporate 3 sleeping platforms beneath a faceted roof and triangular walls. These all tapered back to a single point meaning that this particular concept was incredibly light on materials. I adapted the entrance for ease of access and built a computerised 3D model. It was just the trick for an evenings build!

For such a tiny patch of forest we were not short of building materials. We gathered enough timber for the whole structure in a very short time and piled it on what looked like an access ramp to forgotten railway platforms. There was a strange fenced-off section of dried plants which looked at first glance like the alien invader - Japanese Knotweed.

 

 

Suddenly strange whistling rang out from around the forest perimeter, covering any possible exit routes. 2 or 3 people where whistling to each other from the bridge to the north and carpark to our east. We watched the situation quietly, somehow feeling that we were being surrounded by a group of youths. As quickly as this threat built-up in our minds it dissolved back into the surrounding city streets and the forest returned to quiet.

We quickly pieced together the structural frame and laddered the walls and roof with twigs, ready to hang the outer skin.

We had noticed that the flooded railway tunnel had a healthy fringe of reeds which we could bale together for roofing tiles. We grabbed some food and completed the outer skin by 2am.

Roughing it:
Due to restricted internal space, we entered the bunks one at a time – awkwardly spreading our weight across these springy twig platforms. Much to my amusement Gordon’s bunk was around 1 foot too short. His feet had to rest on a higher beam in the back corner of the hut. He seemed mildly comfortable although was unable to move all night from this single position. We soon forgot the night’s earlier disruptions and fell asleep as the forest returned to a calm silence.

After a reasonable nights sleep, we woke at first light and packed our gear. Although the weather was reasonable through the night, the hut would have provided some decent shelter and indeed kept us high and dry off the wet forest leaf litter. We had found one of the cities many ‘green lungs’, a wilderness island surrounded by urban infrastructure. We were satisfied with what we had managed to achieve in such a tiny oasis and had successfully scared off the sinister locals. We left the security of the forest gully and re-emerged on the busy roadside looking like cheerful tramps.