Bothy

The project explores the typology of the Scottish bothy— a small utilitarian dwelling used by farmers or wayward hikers— as a model of periodic refuge. A new approach was taken by separating the building from its typically integrated environmental and service systems. Instead, technological services are conceived as an independent, mobile component that can be inserted into pre-existing structures. This creates a modular and transportable biosphere capable of sustaining habitation, while allowing the host building to remain materially simple and functionally passive.

Deliberate inspiration was taken from the design forms of off-world technology, where isolation, super-self-sufficiency and resource management become fundamental exigencies. These forms were combined in a terrestrial context with new interests in biomaterials and traditional construction methods, selected for their site accessibility, malleability, and reduced environmental impact. Together, these approaches inform a new aesthetic and material typology, which is simultaneously science-fictional but grounded in vernacular tectonics.