Feb 07 2009
Skara Brae meets hobbit holes
I have this photo on my wall as inspiration for the kind of accommodation I’d like to build for Touchwood, if we build an eco lodge. I’m thinking 6 or so of these, to house 2 – 6 people each.
the £3,000 low impact woodland home
Simon Dale and his wife built this house for £3,000 and 1500 hours of labour in some woodland in Wales a few years ago. Aside from the inviting architecture, the idea of building housing that doesn’t cost a fortune is very appealing.
We’re thinking of first having a testing site here on Orkney to try out different sustainable building materials. Straw bale is what Simon used, and it’s been used here once on a house I hope to visit soon, but another model is the Earthship idea.
This "earthship" house is built from old bottles and tyres
Earthships are built using recycled materials — from what I’ve seen, mainly old tyres, glass and plastic bottes, and aluminum cans. To be honest, I find most of the designs either bland or downright ugly, but the idea of reusing materials that are both durable and would otherwise sit in a landfill is very appealing.
So the plan as it stands now is to look into setting aside some land to try out these different techniques and see which ones could work well in our climate, using local resources. With so few trees, using a lot of wood as they’ve done in the hobbit hole in Wales probably isn’t going to work.
But something more along these lines might:
Using stone as Findhorn has might be a better option
The other part of this project would be looking at Skara Brae, our Stone Age village that’s one of Orkney’s most popular tourist attractions.
Skara Brae is a Stone Age village that's 5,000 years old
For me, Skara Brae only comes alive when I can imagine living there, complete with a fire, a roof, and plenty of warm skins. There’s a replica at the Historic Scotland visitors centre, and I’m thinking if we could build something that takes many of the ideas from Skara Brae — like a central fire, round stone walls, in-ground — and updates them for modern living — toilets, for one — then it’d be all kinds of fun to both build and stay in.
As Simon has done in Wales, I’d have volunteers on holiday do some of the building. We’ve had a lot of people through Five Senses, Malcolm’s responsible tourism and bushcraft business, say how much they’d love to help us build something like this.
We’ll see what kind of response we get from planners, and look at setting up the test site.
Related Posts :
The latest way we've been describing what we're developing with Touchwood is a '21st century, lu ...
Today we caravanned along the road to check out the first straw bale house being built on Orkney ...
Rachel,
I am designing a corbelled roof for an earthship whereby the tyre walls lean inwards to form the ceiling, as per Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn – but I suspect H&S and building regs would have kittens at the thought – despite the fact that Cuween was standing for thousands of years, igloos are mere snow and cathedrals, viaducts, bridges all manage to arch gaps easily.
Does this mean I am creating a tyre vault, a new church buried in the earth? Hmm.
“Don’t fear the reaper” plays downstairs.
I don’t think they’d have kittens. Or maybe if you covered over the tyres with plaster or whatever, so they didn’t show so prominently. But I think it’s a great idea, to build corbelled walls with tyres. Or glass — think how pretty that’d be, though not great for heat loss, huh?
All of those houses are tremendously appealing (even the Earthship, though admittedly, it’s got the least aesthetic interest for me)! The top house is delightful — who wouldn’t want to live like a hobbit?
Something that might interest you (and with which you may already be familiar) is The Rural Studio, which is a project out of Auburn University: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/ruralstudio/
http://www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa/rural-studio/
http://www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa/index.php/special-programs/rural-studio/
[...] and Islands Enterprise), thinks the idea of having a test site where we build a small community building combining sustainable construction with references to Orkney’s Stone Age architecture is a good way to go. Now we find the funding and start making it happen. Related Reading: [...]
Have a look at the dome house that we have just launched
it could solve all your problems and make all your dreams come true
and it’s Eco friendly too.
jay
The website for the dome buildings is http://www.Dingley-dell.com
hope you like it
Here is a link I think you might find interesting as well (he has a picture of Simon Dale’s House on the web-site and say’s that with a few modifications it could be a ‘WOFATI’ house.) Do check it out….
http://www.richsoil.com/wofati
It is a modification of Mike Oeler’s $50 and Up Underground House Book – which is a great book by the way!