September 29 2022

A one-of-a-kind family home clad in recycled television screens is giving people something to look at in Dalmally, Argyll.

Hundred Acre Wood by Denizen Works targets the growing problem of electronic waste, by recycling unwanted screens for a modern aggregate inspired by traditional harling.

The novel material is one of several stand-out features of the Loch Awe retreat, with deep windows punching through heavy walls evoking a broch or tower house - reinforced by the absence of outsize flat screens beyond those already pulverised. Instead, a dramatic feature hall serves as the focal point, its dimensions tailored to ensure ample headroom for an 18ft Christmas tree.

In a press statement, the architect wrote: "The house is designed around a central double-height hall, enclosed by a protective inhabitable wall containing the primary accommodation. Living and dining spaces have prime views while the house stretches across the landscape to the south, making most of the sun in the two-storey bedroom wing. Thick walls with deep window reveals enhance the sense of protection and sculptural quality of the spaces.

"We developed a unique and contemporary take on traditional Scottish harling, inspired by our client’s disdain for television. Using recycled TV screens as an aggregate for the cladding gives the house its unique and changeable character that responds to the elements."

Photography by Gilbert McCarragher 

22 Comments

#1 Posted by classarchitect on 29 Sep 2022 at 12:05 PM

Fantastic headline congrats UR

#2 Posted by Cyril Sneer on 29 Sep 2022 at 16:41 PM

This looks fantastisch and in the style of the 3rd Reich’s ‘Blockhaus d'Eperlecques’! Gut gemacht to everyone involved.

#3 Posted by Smiley Face on 30 Sep 2022 at 08:41 AM

Inspired by my disdain for this lumpen brute of a house, I dream that one day I could crush it up and use it as hardcore : )

#4 Posted by Nairn's Bairn on 30 Sep 2022 at 10:34 AM

Gilbert McCarragher is an excellent photographer who has worked for John Pawson and Alexander McQueen, and even he can't disguise the fact that this thing is one unholy abomination.

A Bond baddie’s bunker. A bleak bastion of bad taste. A chilly, cheerless castle of conceit. A miserable Minecraft monument to money. Built for a financier, will it even bring joy to him? Sadly the answer is yes, it probably will.

For everybody else this is a big single finger raised to the Scottish countryside, and in particular Dalmally.

#5 Posted by David on 30 Sep 2022 at 11:15 AM

This is described as a "one-of-a-kind" building, something we should all be thankful for.

All the recycled virtue-signalling in the world can’t offset the audacity and sheer needlessness of a guy constructing a 650 square metre house (I’m guessing a second home) in the countryside. The negative impact both visually. and in generated CO2, is breath-taking.

As with many publicity-seeking buildings, there’s a strong Emperor’s New Clothes feel here, with expensive photographers and Guardian puff-pieces all present and correct, but I’ll come out and say it: this is an ugly building, tasteless and inappropriate on many levels.

I do admire the designers namechecking CRM in their blurb though – that’s Grade A chutzpah.

#6 Posted by Neil C on 30 Sep 2022 at 11:37 AM

"Great architecture is never appreciated in its own time. The real question is do the right people hate it?" Clearly never truer.

#7 Posted by David on 30 Sep 2022 at 12:33 PM

@#6 Neil C - Can't figure out if you're saying it's great architecture or not - genuinely confused :-)

#8 Posted by DJ on 30 Sep 2022 at 16:17 PM

I'm certainly not seeing much MacKintosh in this. Unless, the experimental render is also going to result in this house needing a big metal box built around it - which might be an improvement. It doesn't give off a homely vibe. It's giving me the chills just looking at those internal shots.

#9 Posted by Jimbob Tanktop on 30 Sep 2022 at 17:15 PM

I admire this but in that last picture it does give off the air of the sort of deserted building the armed forces run through house-to-house battle manoeuvres during training.

#10 Posted by Lovely on 1 Oct 2022 at 19:47 PM

Simply waaaay to cool for school....

#11 Posted by Mary Hill on 2 Oct 2022 at 14:41 PM

Looks like someone's dropped a weird big council house in the middle of nowhere

#12 Posted by outraged individual on 2 Oct 2022 at 17:37 PM

wooohooo! huge house that nobody should need, in the middle of nowhere.

#13 Posted by modernish on 3 Oct 2022 at 11:11 AM

Dear UR, given the comments you can go ahead and change the headline to 'shock and (loch) Awe"
For what it's worth i think people can spend their money how the like and if the client is happy then good stuff. The building itself reminds me of that of the odd building half way down the hill from the Gleniffer Braes on the way into Paisley

#14 Posted by Bemused_Citizen on 3 Oct 2022 at 17:44 PM

@#5 David

Not to mention that it is built with concrete and PIR insulation. All the crushed T.V. glass in the world couldn't offset the embodied carbon of just those two materials used at such scale on display here.

This is green-washing and nothing more. We should expect significantly better in this day and age.

#15 Posted by So passive, I'm horizontal on 3 Oct 2022 at 17:44 PM

Reminds me of Paul Auster's Music of Chance.
Apart from that, do I care about the design or have any emotional response to it? Not one jot. Should just have stuck to the stock market.

#16 Posted by Realist on 4 Oct 2022 at 08:22 AM

I like it, and I'll bet a lot of you snipers like it too.

#17 Posted by David on 4 Oct 2022 at 10:46 AM

Sustainability issues aside, I've just realised why this building has the visual effect it has.

It looks derelict. It's freshly completed but looks abandoned. The gaping dark windows, grey 'concrete' walls, apparent lack of roof and deforested landscape give it a post-apocalyptic feel.

It's Polphail ghost village.

#18 Posted by Neil C on 4 Oct 2022 at 12:45 PM

#16 Judging by all the sniping and the right UR people hating it, it has the potential to be an exemplar project.

#19 Posted by David on 4 Oct 2022 at 13:45 PM

@#18 You may be right. Who knows, in time it could be the St Peters Seminary of Dalmally.

#20 Posted by Glasgow Bob on 4 Oct 2022 at 20:12 PM

#19 it's there already.

#21 Posted by Cateran on 5 Oct 2022 at 20:01 PM

Given the many subtopias Argyll and Bute Council have permitted in every Argyll village over the years, my negativity is countered by the disbelief they have allowed something so futuristic in such a location.

If you want to crow about the extravagance of this house come here and observe our hills permanently suffocated in Sitka Spruce and scarred by the massive number of windfarms and their associated lines of totem-like pylons running over our previous wilderness, all for the economic self-destruction of 'net-zero'.

#22 Posted by Neil C on 6 Oct 2022 at 12:45 PM

#21 Excellent point. Hurtling toward 2030, net zero. At extreme detriment to the wilderness and for absolutely no benefit.

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