Jeremy Till y Sarah Wigglesworth intentan construir una casa con sacos de arena y paja en Islington.
Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth tries to build a house out of sandbags and straw in Islington.
#architecture #art #desing
Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth tries to build a house out of sandbags and straw in Islington.
#architecture #art #desing
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TVTranscripción
00:00Throughout this series, we've seen that building your own house is something of a leap in the dark.
00:06And this week's couple are facing more unknowns than anyone else,
00:10because they're intending to build their house out of straw.
00:14But where else except here, in the trendy London borough of Islington?
00:20This might seem a very built-up and fashionable place to be building a brand new house,
00:25let alone a straw house.
00:27But this week's couple were lucky enough to find a site in one of London's most sought-after areas.
00:37The site faces a busy intercity railway line and is next to a conservation area.
00:43It's a brownfield site with some old buildings on it which were used for light industry.
00:49After scouring auction catalogues for years,
00:52Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth bought this for £75,000.
00:56They're both architects, but this is the first private house they'll have built from scratch.
01:02So tell me about this place, what was it?
01:04It's an old forge which made leaf springs.
01:06So it was a big leaf springs that were used on Land Rovers and military vehicles.
01:12Yeah, that's right.
01:13Oh, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, big old leaf springs.
01:15Yeah, so it was a big oven in the centre here.
01:18Okay.
01:19Burned them up and went out the chimney there.
01:21Right, I mean, it's blackened, isn't it?
01:23I mean, it's a filthy place.
01:24Yeah, and this is how we found it.
01:26It's a year since the tenants moved out of here.
01:30Oh, so you bought it with tenants here?
01:32Yes, it was a fully operational forge when we bought it.
01:35So how long have you been industrialists?
01:37How long have you owned your fort?
01:39I've actually owned it for about four years now.
01:42Oh, right, so you had sitting tenants for three years?
01:44We did.
01:45It was also just slightly our naivety because we bought it at auction and we didn't kind
01:49of do our homework properly.
01:50So you didn't realise?
01:51Well, we did.
01:52We realised there were people on it, but we hadn't kind of followed through the implications.
01:57And we did it really quickly.
01:58I think we saw it about a week before the auction.
02:00We did really sort of cursory examinations.
02:03We just didn't think we had a hope of getting it.
02:06We think that many people didn't spot its potential.
02:09I mean, most of these buildings, I mean, the rain's coming in, the buddley is growing
02:14out of the ceiling, there are holes everywhere.
02:16And so we just took the view that we were going to get rid of the whole lot and start all
02:20over again.
02:21There's a kind of common reaction when we bring people down here.
02:24They say, how could you possibly see a new house on here?
02:28The new building is designed in three sections.
02:31There'll be a raised office block at one end.
02:34Sloping down from this is a living area with a great glass wall.
02:38And at the bottom end is the bedroom wing.
02:40Jeremy and Sarah plan to use unconventional materials everywhere.
02:45The walls of the bedroom wing will be made of straw bales.
02:48These will also run along the back wall of the living area up towards the office.
02:53The waterproof covering for the straw will be transparent, so you'll see the bales from
02:57the outside.
02:58On the sloping roof, they plan to grow strawberries.
03:01And there'll be a five-storey library tower with a room at the top for train spotting.
03:07The office block will be raised off the ground and sit on ten-foot-high gabian walls.
03:12The wall facing the railway will be clad using blue sandbags.
03:16There are no plans for the interior, but by the spring they hope to have the exterior shell completed,
03:22so we'll be able to see if this avant-garde building can actually be made.
03:27Are these sample building materials or are these chairs?
03:30They're both.
03:31They have a number of different uses.
03:34They're rather comfortable as chairs.
03:37But I have to say, you know, on the way here I was thinking about straw.
03:41And it's not the obvious choice for a building, is it?
03:46Particularly an urban building.
03:48So what are its...
03:49Well, it isn't obvious because it hasn't really been used before as a building material very much in this country.
03:54Yeah, but, um, things like, as you know, insects and rat invasions and, you know, all those things that, you know, what things could go wrong with it.
04:03Like living with other animals.
04:05There's something very obvious about them. They're kind of very direct.
04:10Because you kind of just...
04:11No.
04:12That's that. You pick it up.
04:13Big bricks.
04:14And it's like kind of big bricks.
04:15It can't take very long to build a house.
04:17No, you can build a wall very far.
04:18It's so wide.
04:19And you can sort of stack, stack, stack.
04:21It's like building, you know, like stacking them in a, you know, in a granary or a barn.
04:26Yeah, exactly.
04:27You can quickly build structures.
04:28That's the other thing we actually quite like about them is that, um, because they haven't really been used before,
04:31there isn't really a well-developed technological solution to building in bales.
04:36So it's an incredibly inventive way of building a wall.
04:40Can you put that into England, please?
04:42Does that mean that nobody knows how to do it?
04:44Nobody knows quite how to do it, in other words.
04:46Yeah.
04:47And everyone's still inventing different processes.
04:49So it's, um, you know, a vehicle for lots of invention.
04:52Very exciting.
04:53Very exciting.
04:54It is.
04:55Jeremy and Sarah live in Islington, near their site, in a house they bought 12 years ago and refurbished,
05:02putting in a loft conversion for their office.
05:04They're selling this house and will also be getting a mortgage to raise a total of 400,000 pounds to spend on their build.
05:12Jeremy is head of architecture at Sheffield University.
05:15Sarah teaches part-time and runs their architectural practice.
05:19For some time, they've been telling audiences around the world about their avant-garde project,
05:26like this lecture at London's contemporary arts venue, the ICA.
05:30The first visit to the site kicks in on the adrenaline.
05:37At 1,000 pounds a day, it's an expensive habit.
05:40But what other drug can deliver such a heady mixture of fear and exhilaration?
05:45They've caused quite a stir in architecture circles already.
05:49People pay to hear them talk about their project, which has already been described as an icon of our time,
05:55before it's even built.
05:57But talking is one thing, doing is another.
06:00Actually, it's the first new building I have ever built, um, mainly up till now.
06:06It's been, you know, refurbishments, renovations, working with existing buildings.
06:10It's like a kind of first novel or something.
06:12The first novel is normally about the person's, you know, life.
06:15It's kind of semi-autobiographical.
06:17And they put in almost everything they know into the first novel.
06:19And it's, it's a kind of thing like that with the first building often.
06:23And that is seen as a sort of closet criticism, whereas I think it's fantastic, you know.
06:28I mean, I, I have no shame that it's got so much going on in it.
06:31It's an exciting beginning for Jeremy and Sarah.
06:36For others, it's the end of an era.
06:39Chris took over from his father, who started the forge back in 1947.
06:50The land was leased from British Rail for a nominal amount.
06:54But the business couldn't afford to buy it when it came up for sale.
06:58Chris is coming to say goodbye to a lifetime of memories.
07:02This whole yard from the turn of the century has been a working yard.
07:11London's lost too many little working yards like this.
07:14It was a glass blowing factory before us that got burnt down between the wars.
07:18It was a stables before that.
07:21Carriage people used to bring their carriages in here and park them up for the gentry.
07:26Heavy horses for the meat market were kept here.
07:29This was a working yard.
07:31I see desolation.
07:32All the happy times, even as a boy when my dad brought me here.
07:37Walking down this yard, all the men I knew.
07:40There's still no two of them.
07:42It was a very happy yard.
07:45Snail, desolate, overgrown.
07:48To just be where two people might live doesn't really mean much.
07:53You might as well be in centre point.
07:55Demolition gets underway in October.
08:01It's taken three months to get started.
08:04Part of the time has been spent agreeing safety measures with rail track.
08:08But putting a price on the job has been the main cause for delay.
08:12The budget that we set ourselves in the first instance was £400,000.
08:18When it was initially costed, it came in at twice that.
08:24So that was a scary moment.
08:29And then we made a whole series of cuts.
08:31We rationalised the building.
08:33We cut stuff out.
08:34There's no front door.
08:36You know, things like that.
08:37But we kind of got it down to where we thought it could be.
08:40It should be.
08:41That has gone up by about 10 to 15%.
08:48With figures veering alarmingly in the regions around half a million pounds,
08:53it's still impossible to price this job.
08:56But Jeremy and Sarah are now committed to the project.
09:00There's no turning back.
09:03My nightmare is steelwork sticking out of the ground, you know, rusting and decaying without any cladding or anything.
09:09It's just standing there as this beacon of failed hope for the next, you know, 20 years or something.
09:17Whilst we struggle, you know, to live in an incomplete house next door.
09:21It's classic.
09:23There are houses all around dotted around England of these kind of failed dreams.
09:29And to finance it, we have to sell this place so that equally we wouldn't have anywhere to live.
09:35So that's the kind of nightmare.
09:36I mean, I think I just feel you only live once.
09:40And, you know, to hell with it.
09:42We've got some money.
09:43We've lived with this thing now for, well, three years, I suppose, since it was designed.
09:49Nurturing it through a whole series of processes.
09:52You know, during that time, it's like you get to know this thing really, really well.
09:57You've walked through its spaces time and again.
10:01You've imagined your life living in there.
10:04And it just becomes a part of you.
10:07In a way, I don't really care what the outcome is.
10:10I just want to build it.
10:16It's Jeremy's first look at his cleared site.
10:27It's amazing because it's...
10:36You can never quite imagine what the site's going to be like when it's empty.
10:40I mean, you can.
10:41You can't project your imagination, but you can.
10:43But it also shows how much money we can make out of it.
10:48Rather than kind of going into Jetta's bank,
10:51you could just fill this whole thing up with nasty little naughty houses.
10:54Eventually, the house will be going right down to the end.
10:59And it's when I stand here and see that that I see how big the house is.
11:05Jeremy and Sarah's site is right on the edge of a conservation area.
11:09Amazingly, their design sailed right through planning.
11:12This is partly because none of the neighbours raised any objection.
11:15I guess they were delighted to have anything on their site
11:19instead of that dirty old forge.
11:21But just as importantly, the planning department,
11:24who are composed of civil servants,
11:26use their delegated powers to pass the design
11:29without referring it to the planning committee,
11:31who are all elected councillors.
11:33It strikes me that delegated powers short-circuit the democratic process,
11:39but they also hand back the decision-making
11:41to dedicated professional planners.
11:44So what's their policy in a case like this?
11:50You've got a great number of ancient buildings in this borough.
11:53I mean, how do you...
11:54What's your approach to the siting and the building
11:57of very contemporary buildings against conservation?
12:00Well, about half the borough is a conservation area.
12:04So we are in a privileged position in the historic sense.
12:08And when we do engage in conservation,
12:11we engage in real conservation.
12:13But that in turn enables us to draw the line
12:16between the past and the future, if you like,
12:18and encourage modern design.
12:20It's quite nice to be reminded occasionally
12:22that we no longer live in Dickensian London.
12:25And it is important to be reminded
12:28that we live in the 20th century.
12:33Rail track have insisted on a scaffold fence
12:36that's 10 meters high and fully clad
12:39to protect passing trains during the build.
12:42The whole building has also had to be redesigned
12:45a safe distance from the tracks.
12:47With the foundations, there are the usual problems
12:57with a brownfield site.
12:59Old pipelines under the ground need filling up
13:01with extra concrete,
13:03which means extra time and money.
13:17The first experiment is the Gabian walls.
13:20And it's the first place that theory doesn't match reality.
13:23Gabians are made up of recycled rubble
13:26held in wire mesh cages.
13:28The cages come pre-cut in flat packs,
13:30which just need clipping together.
13:32Gabians are normally used on motorway cuttings.
13:36Jeremy and Sarah want them to act like stilts
13:39that the office block will sit on top of.
13:41They can easily take the weight of the building by themselves,
13:44but engineers have pointed out a flaw in the idea.
13:47If there's a fire, the thin wires will quickly melt,
13:51so the walls will collapse.
13:53It's a bit of a cheat,
13:54but reinforced concrete pillars
13:56now have to be hidden in the middle of each Gabian.
13:59Still, the Gabian should look nice,
14:02but it's only 120 quid for a lorry load of rubble.
14:09All the colours in the...
14:11Jesus, this is crazy.
14:12And this is literally just bits of building crushed up.
14:19Johnny, hi.
14:20Hey!
14:21So this is a different colour, this early lot.
14:23This has got more of the...
14:24So shy, isn't it?
14:25The lapisleto.
14:27We're gonna have to handpick those.
14:28Why's that?
14:31Because we're still aesthetic enough that we don't want it.
14:34It's meant to be crude, but we still have our kind of bottom line.
14:41Well, why don't they?
14:42They make a blue Gabian,
14:45and a red one,
14:46and a yellow one,
14:47and a grey one.
14:48Yeah, we should.
14:49Yeah.
14:51This one's yellow, isn't it?
14:53There's a good deal of yellow over there.
14:55Or rather like...
14:56No, rather like those sand sculptures, you know, that you buy at the beach.
15:00You could layer them.
15:01You could layer them.
15:02Your strata.
15:04Quite nice, too.
15:06I don't charge much.
15:08I wonder.
15:12Original ideas are all very well,
15:14but I wondered how Jeremy and Sarah, as practicing architects,
15:18explained their vision to others.
15:21How do you explain this to me as a client?
15:23I...
15:24You point to something really tangible like that,
15:27and you say, see that?
15:28That's where your toilet's gonna go.
15:30And then you start talking about what type of toilet you want.
15:33And you kind of ignore all the mess.
15:35Having said that, it is very difficult to tell at this stage
15:37what it is you're looking at with these piles of mud.
15:40Are you confident the toilet's going there?
15:41What?
15:42Are you confident the toilet is going there?
15:44It has to.
15:45That's one of the really funny things about houses,
15:46is that you have to get...
15:48Well, it's not funny, but you have...
15:50The drainage goes in first,
15:51and the drainage setting out is absolutely critical.
15:54Determines where everything else goes.
15:55Determines where everything goes.
15:56Jeremy, I have to tell you, that's not the toilet.
15:57That's the sink.
15:59Oh, my God.
16:01No, because we're having a composting toilet,
16:02so, yeah.
16:03Well, I was just using it as an example.
16:05Yeah, the composting toilet goes there.
16:08Fine.
16:09And how are you getting on with the trains?
16:11Well, we like them.
16:12They've become your friends.
16:13We think they're lovely.
16:14Yeah.
16:15I think they're going to look fantastic when the building's up,
16:17and you get this sort of thing with the gabions going like that.
16:20Yes.
16:21And the trains going past sort of framed.
16:23Yes.
16:24Maybe that's a strange aesthetic.
16:25No, I think it's like a picture frame.
16:27This site has quite a lot of vibration, but obviously it's worse at the railway line side,
16:31and it gets better as you go back across the length of the site.
16:36So the solution to that is to put the building on, basically on springs,
16:41to isolate it from the surrounding ground.
16:44Well, we haven't seen them, but they look, in the catalogue,
16:46they literally just look like springs.
16:48Tractor springs.
16:49Yeah, they're large.
16:50So what we're going to see is you're going to see these great gabions
16:52with these concrete plinths at the top, and then these collection of...
16:55Yeah.
16:56That's right.
16:57They're only where these springs.
16:58They're about that big.
16:59Is it between two metal plates?
17:00Or is the building literally just going to bounce off?
17:01I mean, is it...
17:02Is there a danger of that?
17:03No, it's...
17:04Well, the building's so heavy, they can't go anywhere.
17:07In a way, we're not being as sort of experimental as we'd like to be,
17:11because we're held up by money.
17:12It would actually be quite nice to say,
17:14OK, well, we've got a rough idea of how the house is going to be,
17:16and to begin to invent more on the site.
17:19But the trouble with that is that you're kind of always constrained by money.
17:23You don't quite know in your invention whether you're going to go
17:25miles and miles over budget.
17:29When I first met Jeremy and Sarah, I thought to myself,
17:32here is a pair of real architects' architects.
17:35You know, all that ICA stuff and all those academic treatises
17:39meant that here was a house that was going to be built out of ideas
17:43rather than out of passion.
17:45But now, I think, you know, not only are, in fact,
17:48they remarkably good communicators, but they're not detached from this project.
17:53They're remarkably committed to it.
17:55And they're taking all the risks.
17:56I mean, you know, personally, financially, academically, professionally,
18:01they are putting everything on the line.
18:10Experiments in architecture are a noble idea, but the stakes are high.
18:15Jeremy and Sarah have sold their house to pay for all of this,
18:19and they've moved into temporary accommodation.
18:21But this building is going at a snail's pace.
18:24Making it up as you go along is all very well in the ivory towers of academia.
18:30But on a building site like this, you've actually got to make it.
18:33And with some reference to the schedule.
18:36It's early February, and not a lot has changed since Christmas.
18:42The steel, which was due here in November to construct the main framework of the building,
18:47is still being designed.
18:49Only a tiny team keeps the project from stopping completely.
18:53Jeremy and Sarah are using their straw bales as part of an extremely complicated design.
19:06But I always thought the whole point about straw bales is that they're quick,
19:10they're easy, they're cheap, and they're also environmentally friendly.
19:14So, while they're battling with their avant-garde designs, trying to put them in practice,
19:19I thought I might have a go myself at trying to build a straw bales structure here at home in Somerset.
19:26Only this time, it's going to be a little bit more modest.
19:33I've got a small manufacturing business here in Somerset, designing and making lighting.
19:39Our workshops and offices fit nicely in the outbuildings around the farmhouse.
19:50But I have to work in a corridor.
19:55The plan is to make a small extension to our old piggeries, next to a stream,
20:00and with views across the fields to the west.
20:03It'll have two stone walls, and two straw bale walls, and a bridge across the stream.
20:09On the field side, the roof will be turfed, with tiles behind as a continuation of the piggeries roof.
20:15So I send my application to the local planners, and wait to see if I get permission.
20:23Back in Islington, Jeremy and Sarah have decided to put up the bedroom wing as a separate building.
20:28The foundations are in, so who knows, something might actually go up on this site.
20:33It's going to be a detached house from the rest of the job.
20:37And they're going to be living in here as we're building the rest of the job.
20:41So, the client will be close at hand. You know what I mean?
20:45If we've got any problems, we'll go and knock on Jeremy's door, and say,
20:49Oi, what's this bit here?
20:51This part of the building will be timber-framed, and the size of a small townhouse.
20:56But as its walls will be made of straw, it's not simple to design, or to build.
21:02We're being caught out by the fact that it hasn't all been designed before we start.
21:10I think at the moment, I'd say that I'm finding the lack of structure actually quite difficult to deal with.
21:15We're putting down concrete blocks on the foundations to support the timber-stud walls.
21:21We started the job yesterday, and it was going to be done in shuttering and concrete, like the rest of the foundation.
21:28But I got a message this morning at 7 o'clock saying, you know, that this has got to be done in the blocks now.
21:34So I've got to rectify the work I did yesterday.
21:37I mean, it's very, very much a series of sort of shifting targets right now.
21:42And although that sounds all sort of lovely and experimental at the beginning, when you get there, it's a bit of a nightmare, really.
21:52After the odd false start, the structure goes up quite quickly.
21:59It's the only part of the building that doesn't have any steel work, which still hasn't even been ordered yet.
22:09The wooden trusses and the foundations that support them are both designed according to the dimensions of the straw bales.
22:15Jeremy and Sarah are now in the thick of putting their ideas into practice.
22:28Making it up as they go along means they have to race to solve problems to avoid holding the build up.
22:34With a design like theirs, that's an uphill struggle.
22:38We are really, really up against it.
22:43We've already desperately behind.
22:45We're so behind on so many items, we can't possibly make it up.
22:54A lot of the problems we're having at the moment are due to the fact that it is nothing square and, you know, everything's an odd dimension and curved and, you know, on the slope and God knows what else.
23:06There are bits in here, which I've got no regrets, I'm really happy they're there, but they are desperately over complicated.
23:13And a bit of simplification along the way might have been easier on our health and wallets.
23:24The bedroom wing is designed to have two bedrooms, a dressing room, utility room and bathroom.
23:31It'll be adapted to house Jeremy and Sarah until the rest is built.
23:36That's if it's built this century.
23:40So, um, is it all on schedule? Have you got it all mapped out, everything on your little list of things to tick off?
23:46Um, I haven't actually got a schedule at all.
23:49I haven't got a programme or anything at the moment. I'm just doing everything as quick as I can.
23:52You must have a deadline in your own mind about when it's due to be finished.
23:59Millennium. We'll be finished millennium time.
24:03So, if you were building a conventionally designed house for a client, right?
24:07Yeah, if I've priced it, I'm on a schedule with it, my own schedule.
24:10And you've got, it's a different thing altogether.
24:12It is slightly different, yeah.
24:13So, if you're building a house in a sort of costed...
24:15That's right.
24:16...amount per square.
24:17I could give a price for the whole job.
24:18Yeah.
24:19But this, I couldn't. No.
24:20That's right.
24:21And that must mean, surely, because of that, and because of the fact that it is a much more relaxed, as it were, in terms of the sort of the timing and everything.
24:29Mm.
24:30Does that mean you end up working less efficiently, less, you know, there's less kind of drive there?
24:33It might appear to be relaxed to you, but you can come in here any hour of the day and everyone's busy.
24:39They're always busy.
24:40I'm back this afternoon.
24:41Well, we've finished work now, haven't we?
24:44It's only one o'clock.
24:46Get lost, it's ready for a clock.
24:48Oh, it is.
24:51It's March, and after three months, they're still making the Gabion walls.
24:56Experimental building takes time.
24:58And after all this time, Jeremy still hasn't shown the builders what they're making.
25:04Steve, have you guys seen this?
25:07Seen the model?
25:09Do you want to see it?
25:11It's quite different.
25:12You've seen it, Steve.
25:14No, no.
25:16I see.
25:17Is that the front gate?
25:19Well, that's all gone.
25:22I thought it was the other way over here.
25:24Oh, doesn't it?
25:26Come on.
25:27We'll take this.
25:29Is that what we're doing?
25:30Huh?
25:31That's what we're building now.
25:33That's the Gabion.
25:34This sits on the Gabions.
25:36So that's the railway.
25:37That's the house.
25:39These are Gabions.
25:40Thin Gabions.
25:42This is a sandbag wall.
25:44Sandbags?
25:45Yeah, sandbags.
25:47And then this is all clad in fabric.
25:51Kind of padded fabric.
25:53Have you heard about that one?
25:54No.
25:55In sections?
25:56Like coloured sections?
25:57No.
25:58It comes like a bandage.
26:00I see.
26:01So it will wrap around the whole building.
26:02There's going to be a wick.
26:03I want the idea of the sandbags.
26:05Take out some of the noise.
26:07Yeah.
26:08Right.
26:09Right.
26:10Right.
26:11So I think that one of the problems is when the neighbours see how tall it is.
26:13Yeah, it's all right.
26:14Money lock and let that out.
26:15Do you want to see it?
26:16You carry on.
26:17Do you want to come and see the model?
26:18We'll see it all when it's done anyway.
26:19We saw it before this all started.
26:21Yeah.
26:22Yeah.
26:23Yeah.
26:24You know, it was a real mess though.
26:25It looks nice.
26:26Yeah.
26:27Yeah.
26:28Yeah.
26:29It'd be lovely.
26:30As long as nobody comes in and pinches the strawberries.
26:32Well, vows or the strawberries?
26:35Strawberries.
26:36Strawberries.
26:37No, because we are, we've got strawberries on the roof as well.
26:39Yeah.
26:40Everybody knows more than we do.
26:41And when it's all done, I'll come in and have a look at it there.
26:44Yeah, yeah.
26:45I'll go home.
26:46Bye.
26:47See you.
26:48Bye-bye.
26:49Okay.
26:50Yeah.
26:51In Somerset, things are moving on with my straw bale project.
26:56It's my first moment of truth.
26:58It's been about six weeks since I put my planning application in, and the head of planning is coming
27:05to see me this morning because he's got a couple of queries.
27:08Now, I'm a bit apprehensive because the only house I've ever designed and built is this
27:13one, which is on something of a different scale.
27:16However, I think I've put in a reasonable application.
27:20I've already discussed possible different sites with the planners and learnt that the
27:25plans are more likely to get approval if I extend into the farmyard than into the
27:29field.
27:30But what about the materials?
27:33Do you have a problem with the use of straw bales to build two of the walls out of?
27:39Not at all.
27:40Some people might think it's a sort of weird and wacky kind of material, but we've got
27:44no problem with it.
27:45It's a perfectly traditional kind of material, and indeed it fits in with the ideas of sustainable
27:49development.
27:50It's locally sourced material, and it's useful to get people thinking about how they can
27:54actually take advantage of local materials we're building.
28:00A few weeks later, we get started on the foundations and the stone wall.
28:04We've dug the stones up from the field, and we're using a traditional lime mortar.
28:13The foundation pads will support a timber frame.
28:18It's done in two weeks, with a concrete lintel in place.
28:23Good news from Islington.
28:25It's late March, and Jeremy and Sarah's steel frame is finally being fabricated.
28:30With Jeremy away teaching in Sheffield, another member of the practice, Jillian Horne, is brought
28:37in as the job architect.
28:39She'll share the workload, and allow Jeremy and Sarah to take more of a client's role.
28:44A complicated and large steel frame poses enough problems at the best of times.
28:50This one has to sit on springs.
28:54It's no wonder there's been such a delay.
28:56It caused a problem for me in the actual buildability of the structure.
29:00The springs supporting the office will go on top of the Gabion walls.
29:05The rest of the springs will be on the ground, with steel columns balanced on top of them.
29:11Well, that's a theory, anyway.
29:16I really want to see them.
29:18I mean, I'm expecting them to look like car springs, or like tractor springs.
29:21At a certain point, the office springs, which is actually this big lump here,
29:25which doesn't look like a spring at all, at a certain stage it was going to be exposed,
29:31and inside there is a big, massive foil of metal spring.
29:35Don't try and lift it, you'll not get anywhere.
29:37Goodness, they are heavy.
29:38So these ones, these are for the office.
29:40Right.
29:41And there's eight of these, one on each main Gabion piece.
29:43Right.
29:44I can understand that.
29:45And these are for where?
29:46We have to keep it upright.
29:47Right.
29:48This is going where?
29:49This one is a tower spring.
29:50Right.
29:51This I can lift.
29:52Yeah.
29:53They're all designed, you see, for the relative loading.
29:55Right.
29:56They've all been calculated, and so depending on the loading...
29:58Does that bounce up and down?
30:00It does!
30:01It does!
30:02Well, as the load of the building goes on, they gradually go down,
30:05and then they'll reach their optimum level.
30:07Right.
30:08Yeah.
30:09As you can see in this one.
30:10That's tiny.
30:11That's tiny.
30:12I mean, that's so easy for a pillar just to shift and...
30:14Yeah.
30:15What they have, you see, is that they've...
30:16We've had them designed for this particular situation, because...
30:20Right.
30:21The more tricky one is actually the house springs, where you have a column coming down, sitting
30:26just on a spring.
30:27So what we've had done is we've had these plates manufactured with a hole in the top, and
30:32so that you'll have a locating lug in there.
30:34Stonehenge technology, isn't it?
30:36You know, kind of bringing two great lumps together, and this little locating pin just...
30:40Yeah.
30:41Just to keep them in place.
30:42That's quite something, isn't it?
30:43And the engineers are happy with that.
30:48Well, this roof looks reassuringly finished.
30:51It's rather nice.
30:52Trouble is, it's built on sticks which are open underneath, and there is a noticeable absence
30:59of building on the rest of the site.
31:03They keep telling me it's going to be ready for the millennium.
31:06The thing I wonder is whether they mean the whole build, or just the dome.
31:19Well, it's April, and the Stone Gabions are ready to take the building up here, and over
31:24there, the timber frame is finally ready for the next momentous phase of building, because
31:30today, after five years of planning, the straw bales are arriving.
31:35The bales fit tightly between the vertical trusses, and are secured to the timber frame with
31:56metal strips.
31:57This is a method invented by Jeremy and Sarah.
32:01Some of their students have volunteered to help.
32:07One of them sees a problem with the metal strip system.
32:10Well, so you think that you're going to get condensation happening on here?
32:17Yeah.
32:18And then you'll get most of them in the straw.
32:22And what's in the straw?
32:24And what's in the straw?
32:25And what's in the straw?
32:26I mean, I don't know.
32:27This could stop the whole thing, couldn't it?
32:34The metal isn't going to be cold.
32:39It's not really exposed.
32:42The metal's not exposed.
32:43I would be worried about it coming that way.
32:46But it's not exposed.
32:48It should be okay.
32:49I think we're going to keep on.
32:51So, the build presses on.
32:57A quick shave, and a spray with insecticide, and in four days, this house has walls.
33:07Well, it's quite wonderful inside.
33:10Suddenly, it's a building.
33:12This, I think, is the guest bit.
33:14And up there is Sarah and Jeremy's bedroom.
33:17It's actually very, very quiet in here.
33:20The sound deadening property is fantastic.
33:23And the straw is really densely packed.
33:26You can certainly tell that it's a straw bale house, can't you?
33:30One of the things which we have been a bit concerned about is the issue of arson.
33:39Right.
33:40One of the reasons being that we had an arson attack on the site.
33:43Did you?
33:44And you can see the remains of the soot.
33:46Over there.
33:47Which resulted from it over there.
33:48Did they set fire to bales, or what did they try to do?
33:50There were a few bales lying around the site at that time.
33:52Right.
33:53The whole building's basically going to be clad in a sort of corrugated iron.
33:57It's a galvanized steel wriggly tin, we call it.
34:01Like you might imagine a sort of Australian shack to look like.
34:06But originally, I thought the whole building was going to get covered in clear polycarbonate, wasn't it?
34:11Due to a technical problem with being too close to the boundary wall on this side of the site,
34:17we had to change the cladding, and steel is more incombustible than polycarbonate.
34:22So basically, the inspector said you can't put it up because it's too flammable, essentially.
34:26Basically.
34:27Yeah.
34:28Yeah.
34:29Sarah's now living in a caravan on site, with Jeremy joining her when he's down from Sheffield at weekends.
34:34They were due to move into the straw house last month.
34:37But Sarah doubts they'll be in for another six months.
34:41Do you think that you have bitten off more than you could chew?
34:44This danger, you know, you might not put it off.
34:46Absolutely.
34:47No, there's always been that danger.
34:49But I think, you know, bits of it are more dangerous than others, so to speak.
34:54I mean, I personally feel that, you know, there may be problems with the straw bale construction, for instance.
35:00I mean, when we monitor it, we could find that in 10, 15 years' time, we have a bunch of compost there rather than a dry bale wall, you know.
35:09But that's a risk that we're prepared to take.
35:12We've weighed up and, you know, and that's fine.
35:16And if we have to replace that wall, we have to do that.
35:18But, you know, without trying it, you'll never know.
35:21And that's why I think, you know, in a way this project could only happen with us as architects and clients.
35:26Jeremy and Sarah came up with a system of trusses to secure their straw bales.
35:31Back home in Somerset, I'm trying out a different system for my much smaller straw building.
35:38First, we put together a timber frame.
35:41It's bolted together and sits on top of the concrete pads, which means there's no need to dig expensive foundations.
35:51The straw bales sit on this frame.
35:53They're like big bricks, and the walls go up incredibly fast.
35:57I'd say a dozen times faster than a conventional brick wall.
36:03They're £1.50 apiece, and they provide instant insulation.
36:07Plus, they're environmentally friendly because you're recycling an agricultural by-product.
36:14To fix them together, we use hazel rods coppiced from the nearby field,
36:18which have their points sharpened and are driven into the bales like big wooden nails.
36:24It takes us one day to put up the frame and the straw walls, plus a little annex for the kids.
36:31I can really now begin to see the appeal of self-build.
36:37It is remarkably satisfying at the end of the day to stand back and look at the fruits of your labour.
36:47I'm pretty taken with straw baled building, but could a real pro be won over?
36:52So what do you think about the straw bales then, Steve?
36:59Oh, I think they're brilliant.
37:01They work, do they? Is it building material?
37:02Yeah, oh yeah, it's been proved.
37:04Have you used them before?
37:05I've never, never have done that.
37:06Have you used them again?
37:07Well, who knows?
37:08I might do, yeah.
37:10If we get more work from it, yeah.
37:11Yeah, and what about the student labour that you had, the architectural students?
37:14Were they any cop?
37:16They were very keen, but they didn't last long.
37:20They only lasted a couple of days.
37:21Oh, right, when you were doing this.
37:22Then we lost them.
37:23Right.
37:24They put out the white flag after a couple of days, so.
37:27So you had to carry it on.
37:29You had to carry it on.
37:30Yeah, and we finished it off for them.
37:32What's the next big step?
37:33There's all the steel work.
37:34The cranes are coming in tomorrow.
37:37How long will that take to put up?
37:39I'm not sure exactly.
37:40Because you've got very, very accurate measurements, haven't you?
37:43Yes, yes.
37:44You've got this great, this line here, which is a...
37:46Yeah, all these lines are done with a laser beam, so they're all spot on.
37:49So it should be absolutely no problem at all.
37:52It should be a breeze.
37:53You'll just stand back?
37:54It should be a breeze, yeah.
37:55Clopatin?
37:56That's right.
37:57Watch it happen, won't you?
37:58That's right, hopefully.
37:59I don't get a lot of time for standing about.
38:01No, I know you don't.
38:02Well, the crane came, but it wasn't a breeze.
38:06Nothing ever is in Islington.
38:08The springs went on, and then incredibly quickly, I mean, we were just sort of out to lunch,
38:12and we came back and the steel was here.
38:14And the steel just sort of slipped on like a stealth bomber and then went away again.
38:19We expected the next day, then we'd see the roof go on.
38:22But for some reason, the steel work contract has, which we're trying to sort out, has somewhat slowed down.
38:29While the build in Islington grinds to a halt, we set about finishing my straw studio.
38:35The weight of the frame has stiffened up the straw walls beautifully.
38:39A lime render is pushed through wire mesh on the outside, and this will protect the straw from the weather, making it waterproof.
38:46When it's plastered on the inside, the straw will be completely hidden from view, but you'll be reminded it's there by the undulating shape of the wall.
38:56Reclaimed tiles go on the roof at the back, and at the front, a leaky hose to water the turf roof.
39:06This isn't grass, but a variety of herbs and sedums held together in compost matting.
39:13Finally, building paper holds the insulation that goes under the floor.
39:17But just as we're finishing, news comes from Islington.
39:21Six months after it was originally due on site, the steel is going up.
39:26This is Jeremy and Sarah's moment of truth.
39:30If it works, they'll finally have a building to play with, instead of just ideas.
39:43...
39:59...
40:05...
40:08From the outset, Jeremy and Sarah have been determined to use a dizzying variety of materials on this build.
40:16Steel, stone, glass, straw, timber, and they've had to invent ways of using them as they've gone along.
40:23Add to that the fact that neither of them have built anything like this before, despite being architects.
40:29And you can see how this build was always going to be somewhat open-ended.
40:34It's now June, almost a year since we first met.
40:37So I'm wondering, have you broken the back of this project?
40:42Or will they still be looking at it from their caravan window next millennium?
40:51It's very big, isn't it?
40:54Yes.
40:56It's kind of...
40:57It's vast.
40:58And this took how long to put up the steel?
41:01Each bit took about two days.
41:03The house was two days, the office was two days, and the tower was two days.
41:07So suddenly, from nothing, you kind of have a building.
41:10Wow.
41:10Can we see these springs?
41:12Yes.
41:13Are they working?
41:14We think so.
41:15We were up on the office, and it damped it out.
41:21But we're slightly right about this one, because the force is coming down at an angle, and you can see it's going a bit squishy over there.
41:27So it doesn't look...
41:29It doesn't ping up.
41:29It actually looks wrong, doesn't it?
41:31And if things look wrong, they often are.
41:33And if you can imagine, if you've got a thing going like that, a thing going like that, and a thing going like, you know, like that, to get a bolt so that it goes straight through is somewhat of a problem.
41:44It's a very, very expensive Meccano, but I almost wept from the sword.
41:49It's heroic.
41:50I love it.
41:51And how much was it, this expensive Meccano?
41:53Well, with a tower.
41:55The tower is the thing we're most proud of, for value, for money.
41:57That, this is 9,000 pounds.
41:59Maybe that sounds a lot of money, but I think it's 9,000 pounds of just, that's just wonderful.
42:05So how do you get to the top of the tower, then?
42:07There's a staircase going up.
42:08There's a staircase, but we haven't got some money to put it in at the moment, so we're going to have a huge chimney instead.
42:14The cladding is going on the bedroom wing, with a mesh guard against rodents at the bottom.
42:20They're leaving one transparent section to reveal the straw.
42:24That's all that's left of their original idea of a hairy straw building.
42:29The rest is clad with sleek tin.
42:32This is your bedroom.
42:34It is.
42:35Bed goes here.
42:36Uh-huh.
42:37And the view is of?
42:41The deck.
42:42As you're lying in bed.
42:43The model, the model.
42:45The finished house.
42:46It is.
42:47It's just here.
42:48It looks really expectant, doesn't it?
42:51Yes, waiting to be inflated.
42:52Waiting for its dad to arrive.
42:55Waiting for its big daddy to arrive.
42:57Yeah.
42:59When is it going to be done?
43:00It's going to be done by...
43:03Go on, pick it up.
43:04Go on.
43:04March the 1st.
43:07It's all that bonkers.
43:08I mean, okay, it's over budget, but it's probably 5% over budget.
43:13It's a lot of budget.
43:13It's not bonkers over budget.
43:14It's very good.
43:14It's a bunch of budget.
43:15It is late, but not seven weeks late in a year-and-a-bit contract is not impossibly bad.
43:25And it's been stressful, but not suicidal.
43:29How much do you think it's going to be worth on the open market when it's finished, at today's prices?
43:35Because when it's finished, it may not be for some time.
43:37Honestly, I think it's anywhere between a kind of negative equity.
43:39It's probably zero, i.e. completely unsellable.
43:43Or else someone will just walk in the door and say, I'll give you £2 million.
43:47I mean, you just do not know.
43:50Is there a danger that it won't be completed?
43:52There is still a danger that it won't be, yeah.
43:54Not fully, fully.
43:56I think it will keep on unfolding.
43:58Also, in some ways, I'm actually quite glad that we're not entirely finishing this thing,
44:02because I have always seen this house as something of a plaything for us as architects.
44:09We are going to keep having to work on this building and keep thinking about it, keep changing it, building new bits.
44:15You know, like the library stairs, suddenly you're going to come up for grabs again.
44:19And we're going to have to redesign that to make it fit a new budget and blah, blah, blah.
44:24And maybe it'll be done in five years' time and we'll feel completely differently about what it should look like.
44:29And I really like that. I think that'll be great.
44:32An adventure.
44:33Yeah, keep playing around.
44:35As Jeremy and Sarah admit, this is an extremely experimental project.
44:42It's a wacky building, and the route they've chosen to follow isn't fast or cheap or efficient.
44:48In fact, I'd say it has been, and still is, a fairly hair-raising adventure for them.
44:54And a brave one, too, because they're risking their money, they're risking their livelihood, their reputations here.
45:00But that doesn't stop them from playing with ideas.
45:03And why not? They're free to do it here, unfettered by clients.
45:08And it's nice to see a pair of architects not afraid to have a go and make something so different.
45:14It makes me wonder if all architects haven't got something like this inside them.
45:18I only hope Sarah's nightmare of a rusting steel skeleton doesn't come true, and that this isn't one of those architects' fantasies that's only ever finished in their heads.
45:33Jeremy and Sarah's experiment has cost 150,000 pounds so far, and they've another 250,000 to go.
45:43My own little experiment in Somerset has cost me 8,000 pounds, which I think is pretty cheap, and it's taken me five weeks to build it.
45:52It's been much harder work than I expected, but now I do have a straw baled studio.
45:58I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
45:59I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:00I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:01I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:02I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:03I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:04I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:05I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:06I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:07I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:08I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:09I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:10I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:11I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:12I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:13I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:14I'm going to have a straw baled studio.
46:15It's almost finished.
46:37We've got the plaster on, we've painted it.
46:39It's glazed, it's secure, it's very cosy.
46:43We've got really thick walls on this side, which are the straw bales and over there.
46:47We've got a roof which is this deep, full of insulation,
46:50and the floor, which is off the deck, well above the concrete,
46:54is packed with insulation as well.
46:56So it's really going to be warm in winter and cool in summer.
47:00And that's helped by the fact that we've got the grass roof,
47:04which projects a good metre in front of the house,
47:07and that gives us lots of shade in summer.
47:09But in winter, when the sun is lower, you get lots of more direct sunlight heating the room,
47:15giving you solar gain, passive solar heating.
47:18And that's helped by the fact that the glass is Pilkington Cay,
47:21which has this infrared coating which keeps the heat in the room.
47:26So I shall hardly need to use the wood burner, I hope.
47:29Because we're using straw on one side and stone on the other,
47:32that the place has this kind of great sort of massive quality.
47:36It's using local materials, literally dug out of the fields or chopped out of the fields to make it.
47:42And that's further emphasised by these great oak frames.
47:45And these are deliberately large.
47:47I wanted them to be really chunky and not quite agricultural, but certainly rural.
47:53And the oak is also cut into the stone around the frame,
47:57so it sort of contours and fits it like a glove,
48:00so that there's a relationship, if you like, between the stone and the oak.
48:04All in all, it should be really cheap to heat.
48:06It's really cosy, very, very quiet, has fabulous views,
48:12and I can come here and lose myself in my little cocoon.
48:18Straw bale building is still in its infancy.
48:20It's still experimental, but when it's all finished, when it's rendered,
48:24when it's plastered out, it's really solid.
48:28It makes a really good wall.
48:31So I'm sure it does have a future.
48:34One thing I've learnt, though, both here and watching them,
48:39if you're going to experiment with the building, do it on a small scale.