SHED CHIC

Today we discovered this amazing book, Shed Chic by Sally Coulthard. Her book has some beautiful photos of sheds that certainly don't portray that neglected building at the bottom of the garden, intstead of just being a place to escape to and potter around, interior designers & architects have created the ultimate sheds of luxury and comfort!

.Anna.

LUXURY MUD-HUTS.

Situated in Siwa, Egypt is the Ecolodge. This holiday home and guest house overlooking the desert has been constructed using mud. Creating a Luxury Mud-hut, this once again shows the ideas of the rural material of mud being used to create something Glamourous. Originally mud-huts were lived in mainly by poorer families, but the definition of the mud-hut is being changed by this Luxury meaning.

~ Helena

NOTTINGHAM ALLOTMENTS.

"The St Anns Allotments, Nottingham, is a very special and unique allotment site. It is the oldest and largest area of Victorian detached town gardens in the world and has recently been listed with a Grade 2* by English Heritage. The site covers 75 acres and sits in the heart of the one of the most deprived inner-city communities in the country."


Anna and I are hoping to visit and take our own photographs of these allotments within the next week, in the meantime, check out some of these images from the website ... Love them! 

~ Helena

REBECCA BEINART

Rebecca is an artist based here in Nottingham, her work is based around inverstigating different places and the people that inhabit those places. (Photos are all by the artist herself)

This a a piece called Adaptation, 2010 that Rebecca created and this is how she decribes the piece and the meaning behind this obscure object:

'The Victorian 'language of flowers' was a way of sending a coded message through the use of certain flowers and floral arrangements. Each flower's meaning could be used to express emotions which could not be spoken aloud. The plants in the case all originate in South Africa, and have been chosen for their names and the meanings to create a living letter. The postcards in the drawer offer a key to help you interpret this letter of loss and longing. In the Victorian era, plant collectors brought back strange and rare plants from around the world. They transported the plants in a 'Wardian case', a glass case that creates its own micro-climate. These plants were displayed as rare treasures, as they slowly adapted to their new environment' -Rebecca

I love this idea of a letter made through plants, it's so simple but such a beautiful thing and the case it is transported and displayed in is lovely.

Photos all by Rebecca Beinart



Here are a few more examples of her work...Field Kitchen, 2009



'Field Kitchen is a mobile kitchen on a bicycle trailer that is equipped to cook food foraged from the urban wilds. Field Kitchen makes physical and social interventions into public spaces, offering an invitation to people to smell and taste their botanical locale. The project examines what we can find in our immediate surroundings for sustenance, pleasure and well being – raising questions about our relationship with plants and food, our reliance on imported goods, and lost fields of knowledge.

Field Kitchen was developed with a research & development grant from the Arts Council England and commissioned by Hinterland arts project' -Rebecca


Tea Potential Mobile Experiment, 2008

'The Tea Potential Mobile Experiment is a self-sufficient Tea Party mounted upon a bicycle. The bicycle makes journeys in search of plants to brew up, fuel for the fire, water, and company. The bicycle is ready to unfurl into a tea party at a moments notice. The project quietly asks about our hot-beverage habits, lines of supply, and the alternatives to be found in unexpected places.

Over the summer of 2008, the Tea Bike explored the Tea Potential of areas of Devon, London and Bristol. An archive of teabags records these journeys, made from foraged plants that have been dried and hand-processed. Each one is unique. Each one has a story' -Rebecca

 

.Anna.

FIRE ESCAPE ECO SYSTEM

GROSS.MAX & Mark Dion have designed a vertical garden that uses a fire escape on a 1890 London tenement planted with native and exotice plants, Mark refers to this creation as "artifciality of contemporary nature".
The fire escape was considered by them both in terms of structure and symbolism, with the structure of the fire escape acting as a scaffoling for the plants to climb organically and also serves as a practical means of maintenance and supports the irrigation system.

.Anna.

ROB RYAN

I have always admired the British artisit Rob Ryan's work in a small way when shown it in A level art. I was reminded of it again when I received some beautiful limited edition plates by him called 'Four Trees, Four Seasons'. His work consists of screen printing and paper cutting, with his inspiration coming from nature in particular trees, fairy tale-like story telling and also exploring themes of love and loneliness.
Here are the plates...

And here are just a few examples of his work inspired by nature...

.Anna.

Stefan Gzyl. Parc Disponsible.

'Parc Disponsible' is a creation Stefan Gzyl has designed in France. It is styled as a place where city dwellers can go and enjoy nature in private. The design would be 15 square meters and filled with vegetation. The urbanites can sign up and reserve a 30 minute slot in the park online. Having your own personal park would be a great escapism for those living in a crowded city.

~ Helena

Nick Weston - Living the 'high' life in The Treehouse Diaries

 

Nick Weston's 6 month experiment was filmed by Channel 4 and he has since turned his experience into a book, which I plan to read very soon!!

'It's a dream many of us have cherished at one time or another - the primitive desire to escape to a simple, idealistic existence, living off the land - where Mother Nature, rather than Tesco, satisfies our stomachs.
Daydreams and adventure novels aside, most of us would never contemplate doing what author Nick Weston, a latter-day Robinson Crusoe, actually did - building and living in a treehouse in the woods of southern England, foraging for food, in a six-month experiment to see if it was possible to live as a 21stcentury hunter-gatherer.
Nick, 28, who appeared in Channel 4's Shipwrecked and is a self-styled survivalist, found himself short of work, thanks to the credit crunch, but chose to turn the situation to his advantage by seeking to fulfil a boyhood dream of living self-sufficiently in a treehouse he'd built himself near Haywards Heath, West Sussex'. (Daily Mail Online, April 2010) 

This simple way of living is very telling of the ways in which we seem to seek purity and nostalgia in an uncertain economic climate. The simplicity of the tree house dwelling is natural and harks back to days when self sufficiency was key.

.Anna.

Swiss Family Robinson

I suddenly thought of this absolute classic film from the 1940's over Christmas, as I remember it used to always be on tv around the festive period. Its the most unrealistic and frankly silly story of a family building the living in a treehouse after they are shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Australia. The story started out as a novel written by Johann David Wyss, a Swiss pastor with the intent to teach his four sons the importance of family values, self-reliance and making use of the natural world around them.
Today there is even an attraction at Disney World, Florida modeled on the trees house depicted in the film!

.Anna.

A house on stilts

A practical living solution that is used all over the world, the stilt house was designed for easing living in high tide areas.
Today, stilt houses are still common in parts of the Mosquito Coast in Northeastern Nicaragua, Northern Brazil, South East Asia, Papua New Guinea and West Africa. In the Alps, similar buildings, known as raccards, are still in use as granaries. Stilted graneries are also a common feature in West Africa, e.g. in the Malinke language regions of Mali and Guinea.
A less romantic and more humble version of the treehouse, but still just as fascinating!

 .Anna.

JULIE HEFFERNAN.

Julie Heffernan born in 1956 currently lives in New York. I came across this artists work and it reminded me of themes which I am exploring within "Fields of Fashion'. The ideas of the Rural and Nature being linked with the idea of Escapism, yet they also contain many political meanings.

~ Helena

HISTORY OF THE TREEHOUSE.

I found this quote I wanted to share from 'Amazon Trees'. I feel it sums up a short history of the tree house and shows the change of what Treehouse's were used for to their meaning in modern day ...

"Tree houses have been with us for many hundreds of years, since they were used as primitive homes. Basic survival was top of the list and there was no safer place to shelter than high up in the treetops. Now that survival is no longer a basic requirement, the Treehouse has become a source of escapism and adventure. It answers our need for peace and tranquillity, and allows us the luxury of being immersed in the wonderful world of nature."

~ Helena