Handmade Houses
Ingrid Crawford
[Illustrations coming soon]
Ingrid Crawford’s show consists of slides of hand made houses from various parts of the world; a collection that has been growing now for ten years.
Ingrid had grown up in London; while travelling in Asia and South America, she was stunned to find white people living in little round huts. In the USA she shared a simple eco-house which she found ‘incredibly beautiful’. The use of ethically sourced, inexpensive materials, and the attractiveness of such a low-impact way of life, increased her fascination. With easy access to many examples, she started to photograph them for her own interest, and eventually for friends too.
This is the ‘shaggy house’. The size of a tiny bungalow, it has long hair and a fringe that comes to the ground.
It is made from local reeds, traditionally used in the area for thatch. It sits low in marshy land, surrounded by lots of trees. So well does it match the colours and textures of the landscape, it’s not difficult to imagine such places having been constructed there for hundreds of years. The shaggy house is situated on community property at Hanta Yo in Brittany, France. The family it belongs to live in a tipi, and this is their extra living space.
At Brithdir Mawr in Wales is a beautifully crafted house lived in by the community gardener. It is quirky and pretty with pentagonal windows of dissimilar design. The windows go all around so, unusually for such a small building, it is very light inside. A curtained-off entrance used for coats and wellies helps to keep it very warm. The walls are of oiled wood, there are sleeping and study areas, and the branch of a tree makes a banister to a sleeping platform. This one-person house is exquisite, Ingrid says, but because it was architect-designed, would have cost more than most of the houses she has photographed.
Matavenero, in Northern Spain, is home to a group of Germans and other Europeans attracted to living in a mountainous area on the pilgrimage route to Santiago del Costello. Community members built on the walls of an old village, and continued building with local stone. The central part of the old village is used for communal areas, including a hostel dorm for visitors, and a small school. Individual houses of many types constructed a little further out and are visually interesting. Sharp edges and pointed roofs echo the mountain peaks and ridges; some are really simple, others are stunning works of art.
Many people, says Ingrid, are inspired by seeing these pictures. Often they had dreams of building their own place in a way that reaffirms their connection to nature. Often, the alternative for those on low incomes is being shunted through a system with limited rights (no pets, no children, no smoking, and moving on after six months). Even the idea of making their own home fosters creativity and a sense of empowerment. For people willing to do the work, the use of natural and found materials are colours in the artist’s palette.
More of Ingrid’s photographs of handmade homes feature in the following books: Treehouses by David Pearson, Tipis and Benders , and Freewheeling Homes .