Skye Shelter : Isle of Skye : 2013 : Student Build Project
Glasgow School of Art Students’ Association and the Mackintosh School of Architecture offered a small amount of funding to a group of twelve students to design and build a ‘bothy’ on the Isle of Skye in one week.
The week was documented at:
http://skyeshelter.wordpress.com
Glasgow School of Art Students’ Association and the Mackintosh School of Architecture offered a small amount of funding to a group of twelve students to design and build a ‘bothy’ on the Isle of Skye in one week.
The week was documented at:
http://skyeshelter.wordpress.com
The site is a rocky clearing beneath a small lochan with views south-west to the Cuillin. Design began in earnest; with the limited materials making us work hard to design small space solutions. The nature of a bothy was hotly debated. We decided that the concept of shelter would mean that the sleeping area would be wind and water tight, whilst the rest of the bothy would embrace outdoor living.
Like the Water Temple the stud walls were assembled on site and lifted into place by hand onto the base of the bothy. Breather paper was fixed to the external side of the panels and left loose to lap over the roof. Battens were then attached to receive the corrugated aluminium cladding.
Whilst work continued to construct the roof and stabilise the bothy several of us got to grips with the tricky art of dry stone walling in order to create a fire pit. Stones were gathered from the nearby fields and transported by tractor. We then sorted them by size and shape before beginning to build.
The three decks were designed and the posts inserted in the ground to bridge the bothy and the fire pit. Due to time and material constraints it was decided that after the basic frame the decks would be built in situ. This also helped solve the problem of the inaccurate placement of the posts caused by uneven and very rocky ground which we didn’t have the machine tools to deal with adequately.
The bothy was finished for a party and a sleep on the Saturday night.
