Building A New Rural

2020

‘Guided by the principle of making the best of what is here, the project creates productive partnerships between our many different local cultures: These include farming, crafts, horticulture, education, outdoor education, heritage, collections, libraries, health care, commerce, transport, tourism, belief, sport, architecture, land management and the arts. We are guided by the principle of making the best of what is here. We will generate and support innovation, invention, creative ambition, economic systems and exports and use the project to demonstrate the value of collaborative, intersectional thinking and action.‘

Extract from Grizedale Arts ‘The Valley Project’

As part of The Valley project's new residential schools series initiated by Grizedale Arts, this week long workshop - led by Paloma Gormley and Summer Islam of Material Cultures, and Takeshi Hayatsu of Hayatsu Architects - explored the use of local, natural materials and vernacular building techniques to collaboratively build a contemporary construction in the shadows of Coniston's Old Man mountain.

Moving A Mountain

Sourcing a palette of materials drawn directly from the landscape around the Crake Valley (the area surrounding Coniston Water), the school was an opportunity to experiment and get one’s hands dirty as we fabricated different elements of a collaborative building and developed a new language of construction with materials that have been used for centuries.

Returning to a primary relationship of what architecture is - the movement and configuration of material from one place to another - we have explored an understanding of how historic technologies can still be relevant as we respond to some of the greatest challenges we face today.

During the intense 7 days workshop and construction programme, we conducted a series of practical workshops with the local makers and historian. The oak swill basket weaver Owen Jones run a workshop to teach us how to work with oak from the log, to follow the natural grain of wood in order to produce an entrance gate for the classroom. The master stone waller and the farmer John Atkinson conducted the drystone walling workshop which we learnt not only about how to select the appropriate shape of stones for the walls but also about the ecosystem living in the wall and how it responds to the climatic and seasonal changes. The local historian Richard Greer gave a lecture about the history of drystone walling. The Grizedale resident artist and maker Tom Philipson lead a clay workshop and Raku firing on site.

The workshop was an immersive experience, from working outside with the colleagues, eating healthy locally produced food and interacting with local residents and animals.

The structure utilises the traditional drystone walling as a foundation for the larch timber posts to sit on, and encased in the rubble infill middle section of the wall where the temperature is stable and remains dry throughout the year. The large triangular roof is anchored using the slate boulders quarried from the nearby stone quarry.

The boulders are placed on the sloping earth bank so that the gravity naturally tethered the roof firmly onto the ground. The roof was made from the transparent corrugated roofing sheets, synonymous to contemporary farm buildings. The top of the roofing sheets is covered with smaller stones, as if a museum display shelf, in order to soften the appearance of plastic to naturally blend in with the surrounding landscape and diffuse the light filtering inside.

The final structure became part of The Valley project's new outdoor classroom in the old farmhouse garden at Nibthwaite Grange Farm: A new place of learning that facilitates close contact with the landscape and land. Guided by the principle of making the best of what is already here, The Valley project actively generates productive partnerships between the Crake Valley's many different local cultures. The project collaborates with (and takes inspiration from) communities in other parts of the world where people share a drive to find innovative ways to live in predominantly rural places, whilst retaining the value of disappearing ways of life.