The Blackhouse Revisited
Princeton M.Arch Thesis
Advisor: Tei Carpenter
Site: from Sutherland, Scottish Highlands to Barnes & Wallace Ave, the Bronx, NYC
This thesis comes in two parts. First, there is a problem: insufficient housing stock in increasingly dense cities. Secondly, there is a precedent: the ancient typology of the Scottish Blackhouse, an iteration of the longhouse type which preceded the dominating principle of private space today.
The Blackhouse was a dwelling for humans and animals, for working and living, for the sacred and the profane. It had in-built fungicidal, medicinal and food-preserving properties. It was erected and maintained by community co-operation using biodegradable materials worked without the need of specialist construction.
Considered in the context of the city, the Blackhouse Revisited offers a prototype for contemporary urban living. The building, or set of buildings, acts as its own eco-system, that accommodates fluctuating residents (human and non-human) and, like a city within a city, constantly engages bodies in relation to one another.
The blackhouse was built out of stones, peat, earth, thatch, timber. Stones cleared from the terrain to make way for animal fields, stones quarried nearby. The stone walls were built, torn down, rebuilt after a storm. Wells were dug to store livestock feed, or to reach the water table.
The Blackhouse is low, narrow bodied, well insulated - with 5ft thick dry-stone walls infilled with earth. It was erected and maintained by community co-operation using biodegradable materials and worked without the need for specialist tools. Contextualizing these features to a modern context, it is counter to standardization, to copy-and-paste detailing, to revit, etc. It is in opposition to the illegibility of authorship and of materials of modern cities
The Atlas documents some key features of the Blackhouse. For example, stones cantilevered out of the side of the wall create an access for humans to reach the top of the wall and mend the thatch after a storm. The same steps are used by hens to access where they roost. Instead of bedrooms, humans sleep in box-beds, free-standing timber cabinets. This smaller space increases warmth. It works similarly to a chicken coop. Walls are 5ft high, meaning you must bow as you enter through the thick threshold.
The ventilation of the blackhouse works for the health of the animals, the humans and the building itself. Without a chimney, smoke from the fire actually smokes the thatch, making it ideal for fertilizer when it is removed. The smoke also preserves hanging meat, and extinguishes rising sparks from the fire. From the cows urine, ammonia evaporates and rises, following the pitch of the roof, enters into the human space. This ammonia actually protected the humans from tuberculosis. Crucially, the heat from the animals also moves into the human side of the house thanks to the roof pitch. The ill-fitting timber door and hen-hole allow constant ventilation.
In keeping with the long house tradition, I looked at slim vacant lots in NYC, of which there are many as developers don't know what to do with them. Two thin lots in the Bronx create one long site. It is here, in this dense (r5 zoning), low-rise neighborhood that I have proposed a prototype.
Interested in the idea of the box bed – I cut individual sleeping units into thee 5ft thick wall. 4 barns across the long lot have distinct zones: dining/ work from home (with nooks for desk pods in the wall), cooking, food smoking and storing, and relaxing. Each zone is flanked by the beds in the wall, creating the opportunity for a high density of people living together. Based on the area of the site and the averages of the Van Nest neighborhood, 4 households would be typical to fit here, totalling around 11 people. In this scheme, at least 24 people live here, not including the animals in the animal shelter and pets.
Then next key move was to elevate the blackhouse up a story to allow for a vehicle.
Aureli, in his research of longhouses (of which the Blackhouse falls under) noted that the long house complicated the imposition of private property and modern forms of dwelling are a result of the destructions of such modes of dwelling.
The result, as you can see in this section, is a highly urban condition – the set of buildings are like subway cars, connected by platforms and creating courtyards for planting, and animal roaming.
Each bed box and hole in the wall for sitting, a toilet, a sink or a work pod has a window. The bed boxes within each building create mini cities themselves. Protrusions of sheet metal chimneys and roofs makes formally legible the exhaust, HVAC and MEP systems.
The Blackhouse Revisited
Princeton M.Arch Thesis
Advisor: Tei Carpenter
Site: from Sutherland, Scottish Highlands to Barnes & Wallace Ave, the Bronx, NYC
This thesis comes in two parts. First, there is a problem: insufficient housing stock in increasingly dense cities. Secondly, there is a precedent: the ancient typology of the Scottish Blackhouse, an iteration of the longhouse type which preceded the dominating principle of private space today.
The Blackhouse was a dwelling for humans and animals, for working and living, for the sacred and the profane. It had in-built fungicidal, medicinal and food-preserving properties. It was erected and maintained by community co-operation using biodegradable materials worked without the need of specialist construction.
Considered in the context of the city, the Blackhouse Revisited offers a prototype for contemporary urban living. The building, or set of buildings, acts as its own eco-system, that accommodates fluctuating residents (human and non-human) and, like a city within a city, constantly engages bodies in relation to one another.
The blackhouse was built out of stones, peat, earth, thatch, timber. Stones cleared from the terrain to make way for animal fields, stones quarried nearby. The stone walls were built, torn down, rebuilt after a storm. Wells were dug to store livestock feed, or to reach the water table.
The Blackhouse is low, narrow bodied, well insulated - with 5ft thick dry-stone walls infilled with earth. It was erected and maintained by community co-operation using biodegradable materials and worked without the need for specialist tools. Contextualizing these features to a modern context, it is counter to standardization, to copy-and-paste detailing, to revit, etc. It is in opposition to the illegibility of authorship and of materials of modern cities
The Atlas documents some key features of the Blackhouse. For example, stones cantilevered out of the side of the wall create an access for humans to reach the top of the wall and mend the thatch after a storm. The same steps are used by hens to access where they roost. Instead of bedrooms, humans sleep in box-beds, free-standing timber cabinets. This smaller space increases warmth. It works similarly to a chicken coop. Walls are 5ft high, meaning you must bow as you enter through the thick threshold.
The ventilation of the blackhouse works for the health of the animals, the humans and the building itself. Without a chimney, smoke from the fire actually smokes the thatch, making it ideal for fertilizer when it is removed. The smoke also preserves hanging meat, and extinguishes rising sparks from the fire. From the cows urine, ammonia evaporates and rises, following the pitch of the roof, enters into the human space. This ammonia actually protected the humans from tuberculosis. Crucially, the heat from the animals also moves into the human side of the house thanks to the roof pitch. The ill-fitting timber door and hen-hole allow constant ventilation.
In keeping with the long house tradition, I looked at slim vacant lots in NYC, of which there are many as developers don't know what to do with them. Two thin lots in the Bronx create one long site. It is here, in this dense (r5 zoning), low-rise neighborhood that I have proposed a prototype.
Interested in the idea of the box bed – I cut individual sleeping units into thee 5ft thick wall. 4 barns across the long lot have distinct zones: dining/ work from home (with nooks for desk pods in the wall), cooking, food smoking and storing, and relaxing. Each zone is flanked by the beds in the wall, creating the opportunity for a high density of people living together. Based on the area of the site and the averages of the Van Nest neighborhood, 4 households would be typical to fit here, totalling around 11 people. In this scheme, at least 24 people live here, not including the animals in the animal shelter and pets.
Then next key move was to elevate the blackhouse up a story to allow for a vehicle.
Aureli, in his research of longhouses (of which the Blackhouse falls under) noted that the long house complicated the imposition of private property and modern forms of dwelling are a result of the destructions of such modes of dwelling.
The result, as you can see in this section, is a highly urban condition – the set of buildings are like subway cars, connected by platforms and creating courtyards for planting, and animal roaming.
Each bed box and hole in the wall for sitting, a toilet, a sink or a work pod has a window. The bed boxes within each building create mini cities themselves. Protrusions of sheet metal chimneys and roofs makes formally legible the exhaust, HVAC and MEP systems.
