Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays cloak tower with thatched walls at Houghton Festival
Design studios Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays have designed a timber-framed installation for this year's Houghton Festival in Norfolk, England, covering its walls with thatch sourced from sustainable reedbeds.
Named the Water Tower, the installation provided a restful seating space between the food area and one of the stages at the music and arts event Houghton Festival, which took place from 6 to 9 August.
Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays' design for the 5.5-metre-tall installation drew upon a water tower built for the nearby Houghton Hall in 1772.
Made from a timber frame, the installation featured four openings separated by slanted walls that were covered in layers of thatch.
A thatched ring topped the structure and wooden seating extended from the walls inside, where visitors could view the circular roof opening above.
"I want people to experience something that looks like it has grown out of the ground – to feel cooled by its shady interior, to feel a connection to it when checking out its handmade flavour," Mitre & Mondays co-founder Josef Shanley-Jackson told Dezeen.
"Thatched structures, inside and out, can feel both contemporary and old-feeling all at the same time," added Cella Collective member Alys Hargreaves.
"It makes sense that we should be revisiting it as a building material which offers a great solution for climate cooling both in the growing of the material and the built structure."
The studios were motivated by regenerative design principles when creating the Water Tower.
The thatch material used in the installation was sourced from reedbeds managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), utilising a by-product material from RSPB's land cutting, which in turn supports the group's conservation efforts and the local wildlife.
"We centred the whole design around a material ecosystem – reedbed landscapes and the craft of thatching – which aims to support our environment and local building cultures, both of which are under threat or in decline in their own ways," said Hargreaves.
"It has also been an exercise in opposing a culture of convenience where you can only easily buy off-the-shelf items that are part of global supply chains," she continued. "We wanted to learn how we might challenge this and embrace a new material in all its entirety."
Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays consulted with Cheshire-based master thatchers Wayne Halfpenny and Steve Kelly on the thatching.
"We adopted their intuitive process of crafting with thatch, adapting the design to accommodate the reed," said Cella Collective member Ella Caldicott. "That intuition became part of the build process, with decisions often made through testing and adapting to what was in front of us."
"You can't learn that from reading books; you learn it through your hands and eyes – that's why collaborating with craftsmen and craftswomen is so valuable."
The thatching was made from reeds sourced from RSPB-managed reedbeds
The Water Tower will be disassembled and reinstalled for future editions of Houghton Festival. Other installations at the festival included a glowing canopy suspended from the trees, which was designed last year by EBBA Architects founder Benni Allan.
We recently rounded up nine contemporary buildings with thatched roofs from around the world, indicating a revival of the age-old craft.
The photography is by Henry Woide.
The post Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays cloak tower with thatched walls at Houghton Festival appeared first on Dezeen.
