Niall McLaughlin Hut

Congratulations to our great friend Niall McLaughlin for his RIBA 2015 Stephen Lawrence Prize for his Fishing Hut on a lake in Hampshire, England. The prize was initiated in memory of teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in 1993, who was aspiring to become an architect.

The primitive hut has a long anthropological pedigree as well as an architectural one. This is a sophisticated primitive hut, worthy of Murcutt or Leplastrier, but set not on the edge of the Bush but on a Hampshire lake, close by chalk-filtered streams providing watercress beds and fishing.

The timber-framed and clad construction on galvanised supports hovers over the lake, intended as a retreat for fishermen and a place for the owner’s family to unwind. 

But it is as much about time passing as it is about fishing: crafted slatted timber panels which allow the building to ‘hunker-down’ in the winter, open up in the spring to become delicate brises soleils. Timber framed glass screens slide away. Within a few moments in time a solid building is transparent.

RIBA Citation

Niall McLaughlin was a speaker at the Architecture Foundation Australia Deerubbin Conference on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney in 2014 along with Richard Leplastrier and tutors from the Glenn Murcutt Master Class. The Fishing Hut was designed before this but, according to Niall, was affirmed by viewing boathouses on the river and in adjoining Pittwater, where Leplastrier resides in his sophisticated  'primitive hut' at Lovett Bay.

See - 

http://www.ozetecture.org/2012/dummy-richard-leplastrier-project/