Another great short film from the treasure that is the National Film Board of Canada.
From 1949, this ten minute film directed by Douglas Wilkinson shows how two Inuit men build a shelter in an hour and a half. I’ve expressed my admiration for the Inuit’s ability to harness what’s around them and use it in a harmonious way. And it also shows how magical the spiral is.
I’ve always harboured a dream about wanting to build an igloo and spend some time in one. But I’ve never lived anywhere that had the type of snow this requires.
Showing posts with label shelter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shelter. Show all posts
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Log Cabins
I was in a grocery store yesterday and the cashier comments on the log home magazine the woman in front of me was buying.
“My fiancee has 25 acres in Lanark county and he’s going to build a log cabin from the trees on it, and we’re going to live there.”
Being the kind of guy I am, I felt no compunctions about offering up my opinion when she was ringing up my order.
“Sorry to be a party pooper, but I very seriously doubt that you can build a log cabin with the trees to be found on 25 acres in Lanark. In a hundred to one hundred and fifty years maybe.”
Having lived in Lanark for several years, and having covered large areas of the county mainly on foot, and having helped clear out a bunch of sugar bushes after the 1998 ice storm, I knew that the place had been too extensively logged of prime trees to make that a very realistic dream. Save for maple trees due to their economic value, any tree of any real worth had likely been taken down at some point. Oh sure there were pine and oak and beech and all sorts of other nice trees, but they were either the crooked ones or very young trees that required several decades to mature before they would be good for anything other than firewood.
Depending on the land and what kind of logging had been done there, the availability of suitable trees is a consideration. And most of what I encountered in Lanark not given over to maple syrup production, had been logged over several times in the last century. To people with no sense of perspective, any area with a lot of trees looks like forest. But if you’re ever lucky enough to go into some of the few areas in North America that for whatever miraculous reason wasn’t logged, that has trees that are hundreds of years old, not a few decades old, you grasp that what we see now is a pale imitation of a “forest.”
It’s always seemed to me that the appeal of log homes is largely about nostalgia. Not so much that they’re an inherently better home, just that it has that whole rich history of the early settlement of this continent tied up in it. They probably made a lot of sense to the early pioneers, who utilized their environment to sustain them. When they had a chunk of land with great old forest trees on it, and an immediate need to shelter their family, a log cabin undoubtedly made a great deal of sense. Now, those old growth trees are gone, and all that remains in most places are far inferior trees. When you need to ship suitable trees from halfway across the continent, it just starts to seem more like the privilege of the very wealthy who harbour romantic ideals of life on the frontier.
“My fiancee has 25 acres in Lanark county and he’s going to build a log cabin from the trees on it, and we’re going to live there.”
Being the kind of guy I am, I felt no compunctions about offering up my opinion when she was ringing up my order.
“Sorry to be a party pooper, but I very seriously doubt that you can build a log cabin with the trees to be found on 25 acres in Lanark. In a hundred to one hundred and fifty years maybe.”
Having lived in Lanark for several years, and having covered large areas of the county mainly on foot, and having helped clear out a bunch of sugar bushes after the 1998 ice storm, I knew that the place had been too extensively logged of prime trees to make that a very realistic dream. Save for maple trees due to their economic value, any tree of any real worth had likely been taken down at some point. Oh sure there were pine and oak and beech and all sorts of other nice trees, but they were either the crooked ones or very young trees that required several decades to mature before they would be good for anything other than firewood.
Depending on the land and what kind of logging had been done there, the availability of suitable trees is a consideration. And most of what I encountered in Lanark not given over to maple syrup production, had been logged over several times in the last century. To people with no sense of perspective, any area with a lot of trees looks like forest. But if you’re ever lucky enough to go into some of the few areas in North America that for whatever miraculous reason wasn’t logged, that has trees that are hundreds of years old, not a few decades old, you grasp that what we see now is a pale imitation of a “forest.”
It’s always seemed to me that the appeal of log homes is largely about nostalgia. Not so much that they’re an inherently better home, just that it has that whole rich history of the early settlement of this continent tied up in it. They probably made a lot of sense to the early pioneers, who utilized their environment to sustain them. When they had a chunk of land with great old forest trees on it, and an immediate need to shelter their family, a log cabin undoubtedly made a great deal of sense. Now, those old growth trees are gone, and all that remains in most places are far inferior trees. When you need to ship suitable trees from halfway across the continent, it just starts to seem more like the privilege of the very wealthy who harbour romantic ideals of life on the frontier.
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Artisans of Australia: Timbercraft
I’ve watched this a few times in the last few years and I come away envious each time. Always love seeing craftspeople who really know how to use their tools, and seeing these two gentlemen wield various axes, (as well as a crosscut felling saw, a froe, and a drawknife), they are clearly masters. I’ve felled trees with an axe quite a few times, but hewing a log with a broad axe and an adze is something I’ve never done. These two, Bill Boyd and Mark Garner make it look easy. Plus, Mr. Garner wears a great looking hat while he does it.
Filmed in 1984, this short film shows efforts to restore Coolamine Homestead in the Kosciuszko National Park. I appreciate not only that they made an effort to rebuild these structures, (drop slab alpine ash timber huts to be precise - examples of a building technique in sync with the surrounding environment), but also that they used the tools and techniques that would have been used at the time of its construction, circa the 1880’s.
I have to wonder though, 30 years after this film was made, whether anyone is left in Australia who could do this work. I suspect that misters Boyd and Garner were a rare breed even then.
Filmed in 1984, this short film shows efforts to restore Coolamine Homestead in the Kosciuszko National Park. I appreciate not only that they made an effort to rebuild these structures, (drop slab alpine ash timber huts to be precise - examples of a building technique in sync with the surrounding environment), but also that they used the tools and techniques that would have been used at the time of its construction, circa the 1880’s.
I have to wonder though, 30 years after this film was made, whether anyone is left in Australia who could do this work. I suspect that misters Boyd and Garner were a rare breed even then.
Friday, 5 April 2013
Bibliophilia: Shelter & Tiny Homes
One of my very favourite books ever, is Lloyd Kahn’s 1973 Shelter. A large format book on shelter. It’s an architecture book with no grandiose temples or palaces or mansions. Simply, shelters. Houses. Everything from stone age caves to bronze age huts to nomadic tents to tree-houses to pioneer log cabins to settlers adobe huts to gypsy caravans to late 60’s, early 70’s hippy, back to the land experiments with domes and the like. Some of them have stood the test of time, existing for thousands of years, and some were merely shelter for a time until something sturdier could be erected or explorations of what was possible. But the connecting link for every example is using materials in harmony with the surrounding environment. Hugely inspiring.
I’m currently LOVING his Tiny Homes: Simple Shelters. A beautiful, full colour photographic (over 1300 pictures) book about small houses. Simple homes, under 500 square feet. Mobile homes, shacks, converted garages, re-purposed shipping containers, campers, boat houses, tree houses, yachts, etc. I’m likely an oddball, but I don’t dream about being beholden to a bank for decades, or impressing my neighbours with a 4000 square foot, three bathroom, two car garage, frankly, soulless house. Not only can I (and if a lot of other people out there were honest) not afford it, I’m not sure our planet can afford ludicrous McMansions. I would love to build a simple structure, fine for my needs, and maybe add on to it organically as my budget and time allows and my needs increase. Once again, a hugely inspirational book.
Nice little video about Lloyd. (He’s in his 70s and still longboards!). His publishing company has many other fantastic books about the subject of shelter.
His blog has loads of good stuff too.
http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.ca/
Friday, 24 December 2010
Night in a wikiup
I cobbled this wikiup together a few years back, and it’s still standing. Decided to go and spend a night in it. Spent a lot of hours gathering up bags of leaves to build up the walls. (Not necessarily something that anyone would carry with them, but if anyone ever decides to build one of these for fun, close to home on their property, a leaf rake would be a hugely helpful tool to have. One of those hoops with a handle to hold plastic bags open as well.)
That’s about as far as I got before dark. It would have to do. It really needed two, three times the load of leaves I managed to gather.
I would ordinarily have made a shelter much smaller than this. I opted to work with this framework since it was already standing. It had been a long time since I had built a debris shelter, and I guess I forgot how much work gathering up the leaves required to cover a shelter this size was.
I guess I should have thought to move my stuff out of the way before snapping a photo of the interior. Whoops.
I had good insulation with me, good underpad, layers to wear, but it was still a chilly night. For one person, for sleeping, a shelter this size is probably too big. But if you’re in an area for a length of time, a shelter like this might make sense as a living/working area.
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