Rolling Hills - nr. Calbourne, Isle of Wight, UK
part of Studio In The Woods - short, intensive celebrations of designing through making
2010 / with Susanne Tutsch and Barbara Kaucky of Erect Architecture
This project tested the 'bendyness' of thinly veneered timber and made use of the waste from milled timber to create a soft, flexible structure held together by tension ropes that could support the weight of several occupants looking out over the valley. The expressionist double-curve perches on the side of the hill, a breaking wave of timber surf, its network of ropes pulling one curve into the other and vice-versa. Its form enables the wary and careful occupant to lie horizontally on the hill facing outwards or to recline in the shade of the curve above.
The project is part of Studio In The Woods - ongoing, annual summer workshops where students and practicing architects test ideas through making at 1:1 and build structures that arise from and respond to the place of their creation. Work begins with the observation of nature and place, before graduating to hypothesis and concept through group deliberation. Each group is given recently felled trees to work with and are responsible for the milling of their timber. We then become builders. You can read more about Studio In The Woods here.