Topiary Elephants Troop into Wales

OK so it is a flight of fantasy rather than a folly but what a flight!

Inspired by a visit to the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya, Brecon resident Gavin Hogg has sculpted the overgrown hedge around his garden into a herd of topiary elephants.

Mr Hogg spent two days crafting the seven adults and three babies with a trimmer, shears – and a pair of scissors for the fiddly bits.

The result is a striking 100ft-long trail of green elephants that stretches around the corner of his family home outside Brecon in Mid Wales

Mr Hogg said: ‘It was just a normal, fairly boring box hedge when I started. I found a picture of a group of elephants and set about shaping it. Time seemed to disappear while I was working on it.

‘I was able to create the appearance of folds in the skin and shadow lines for shoulder blades and hips.

‘I also clipped an eye in some of the adult elephants to give it greater authenticity. It was a lot of work and the ears and trunks were a bit tricky but I am pleased with the end result.’

Father-of-two Mr Hogg and his wife Vina, who visited the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya, farm organic vegetables at their 17th century home.

He added: ‘It’s great to see our own herd of elephants every time we look out of the window, even if they are green. They will need a haircut twice a year to smarten them up. But they will be a permanent feature.’

The topiary elephants are cut out of a hedge of common box (Buxus sempervirens) which was planted about 200 years ago.

(This story first appeared in the Daily Mail on 2 July 2009)

Life in the Tree Tops of Chile

Technorati Tags: treehouse,folly,hotel

 

The Baobab Hotel, Huilo Huilo, Chile

Hotels in tree houses are not a new concept.

But the latest addition to the genre certainly takes the form to new heights. Parque Huilo Huilo is  a sprawling private nature reserve, midway between Neltume and Puerto Fuy, on the east side of Volcán Choshuenco (Choshuenco Volcano).  The hotels, the Magic Mountain Hotel and the Baobab Hotel, were built by the same owners.  The Baobab is the newer of the two.

There is a separate entry here for the Magic Mountain Hotel, perhaps the more spectacular of the two hotels, built by the same owners.

Lobby with fountain

 Hotel Baobab Huilo Huilo Chile 3*

This beautiful Lodge is nestled in the National Reserve of Huilo Huilo, in the Region of The Rivers, a park of 12.000  about 56 km / 35 miles from Panguipulli, just next to the Lodge Montaña Mágica. It was opened in December 2007 and belongs to the same owners as the Montaña Mágica and its name has the same conceptual character. The hotel resembles a baobab (monkey bread tree), which is quite high and their trunk is slender and gets broader the more you get up. The 55 modern rooms with magnificent views of the Mocho-Choschuenco Volcano are ordered spirally around an atrium, in which a huge tree is growing. The surrounding trees weren’t cut for this construction, but included into the architecture.

All the styling and decor is inspired by the natural surroundings and crafted by indigenous artists designing in wood from the area. Windows, walls, doors and stairs are all carved out of the local rustic woods. All rooms have private bathrooms and central heating as standard and penthouse suites offer the added luxury of hydro massage bath. An impressive panoramic elevator offers a magnificent view when visiting the nine floors of Baobab lodge. There are two restaurants offering gastronomic menus, and there is an international bar. exquisite gastronomical delights and an important international bar. Baobab is an ideal place to relax in a quiet natural setting.

View from a bedroom window

01.04.2008-30.04.2009 Standard single 132 USD double 187 USD Triple 265 USD extra bed 52 USD booking service at Inns of Chile

Footnote: I have no connection with the owners of the Baobab and Magic Mountain hotels, but if they ever wished to invite me to make a more detailed report on site for you, I could be ready to travel at 24 hours notice!

Can a hotel be a folly? Yes when it is the Magic Mountain Hotel in Chile

Magic Mountain hotel, Huilo-Huilo, Chile

OK so hotels aren’t strictly speaking follies, but when the owners have allowed themselves licence to indulge their imaginations to construct buildings which serve as hotels while at the same time indulging their wildest fantasies in design and construction, we let them in. Hotels like this are almost always found in the third world (or owned by rich and whimsical men and women) largely we assume because it is here they can be free of the worst excesses of centralised European planning.

Two such hotels have recently caught my attention in the nature reserve of Huilo-Huilo in southern Chile.  Parque Huilo Huilo is  a sprawling private nature reserve, midway between Neltume and Puerto Fuy, on the east side of Volcán Choshuenco (Choshuenco Volcano).  The hotels,the Magic Mountain Hotel and the Baobab Hotel, were built by the same owners.  The Baobab is the newer of the two. I have made that into a separate entry.

Dining area in the Magic Mountain hotel, Huilo Huilo, Chile

The Magic Mountain hotel is perhaps the most astonishing. The hotel resembles from the outside, a cone built inside a waterfall. It is approached via an aerial walk way and the entrance is at the top of the hotel. Not for anyone suffering vertigo. Inside the style is best described as rustic. I have left the rather endearing colloquial text descriptions as I found them as they convey something of the whimsical magic of this extraordinary constructions in the rain forest.

Lodge La Montaña Mágica, Parque Huilo-Huilo ***

The Lodge Montaña Mágica (Magic Mountain) in Chile is located within the Natural Reserve Huilo Huilo about 56 km / 35 miles from Panguipulli. The Lodge was built using exclusively local wood and has a very unique architectural style similar to a volcano.

The guests of this peculiar hotel are completely surrounded by nature, and can enjoy activities such as hunting, fishing or even hiking in the neighbouring natural reserve of Hulio Hulio. One can also watch and observe the eagles or the pumas, amongst other animals, which are often seen near the hotel.

This hotel owes its name to an ancient legend which talked about a magic mountain which granted wishes and sometimes even performed miracles, and truth be told, this hotel is a rather magical place. The waterfall gives one peace and quiet with a distinctive touch and the union with nature.

This hotel has thirteen available rooms, each one with its own private bathroom. Furthermore, across the hotel’s territory there are eleven cabins which can fit in around four or six people each one. A rather curious aspect is that each room has a different and rather peculiar name, and their meanings tend to be names of magical plants or animals that live in the area.

In the hotel one can savour an exquisite meal in a restaurant called the “Mesón del Bosque”, where all the local gourmet specialties can be found. One of the most famous chilean meals, the pastel de papas, or potato pie, is made there.

The general facilities include a  bar, natural tree trunk hot tub, sauna, mini-golf court and internet access. Activities at and near Montaña Mágica Lodge include: hiking, trekking, horseback riding, canopy, rafting and mountain biking among others.

01.11.2008-31.03.2009 Standard single 151 USD and double 215 USD

Chile Hotel booking site

Good Heavens – a chapel in the garden

 

Jon and Muriel Richards outside the tiny chapel “Chapel of the Crosses” in their back garden

A couple fulfilled a two-and-a-half year “labour of love” by building a fully functional miniature chapel in their back garden.

Jon and Muriel Richards spent around £25,000 assembling the sanctuary next to their house in Mappleborough Green, Worcestershire, from pieces they collected from reclamation yards across the country.

The altar and pews had to be chiselled down to size, the stained-glass windows specially cut and the building, named The Chapel of the Crosses by the local vicar, can only accommodate 12 people but Mr Richards, a retired watch-importer, said the result was “wonderful”.

He said: “It is about 8 feet by 12 feet – about the size of a garden shed.

“It is very private – it’s part of our home. It’s a home chapel.

“But it is certainly a wonderful place inside; it’s a very emotional place.”

Everything including the chapel’s centrepiece, a bronze crucifixion figure about three-and-a-half feet tall, has “in its previous life” been in a church or a chapel and was collected over a period of around two-and-a-half years, Mr Richards said.

The building has not been consecrated but the local vicar has given services there, he added.

Mr Richards said: “The question everyone asks me is, ‘Why?’

“I’d like to say I experienced some divine intervention but that’s not true. My wife is very involved with the church and is in the choir and … that’s how it started out.

“If you look at the time we spent running up and down the country, going to reclamation yards for all the artefacts, the materials … it is a lot of money but it wasn’t intended. I don’t think we started off with a budget; it just went on. Sometimes when you put prices on it you realise how foolish you were but we fell in love with things.

“It was a labour of love and we knew one day it would be completed.”

This story appeared in the Daily Mail (UK) on 15 April 2009

Chapel of the Crosses

Gotta Lotta Bottle

Monks in Thailand have built a temple complex from over 1 million recycled beer bottles. Above is the temple and a detail from the roof.

 

Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew, also known as Wat Lan Kuad or ‘the Temple of a Million Bottles’, is in Sisaket province near the Cambodian border, 400 miles from the capital Bangkok.

The Buddhist monks began collecting beer bottles in 1984 and they collected so many that they decided to use them as a building material. They encouraged the local authorities to send them more and they have now created a complex of around 20 buildings using the beer bottles, comprising the main temple over a lake, crematorium, prayer rooms, a hall, water tower, tourist bathrooms and several small bungalows raised off the ground which serve as monks quarters.

A concrete core is used to strengthen the building and the green bottles are Heineken and the brown ones are the Thai beer Chang. The bottles do not lose their colour, provide good lighting and are easy to clean, the men say. The monks are so eco-friendly that the mosaics of Buddha are created with recycled beer bottle caps.

Altogether there are about 1.5 million recycled bottles in the temple, and the monks at the temple are intending to reuse even more. Abbot San Kataboonyo said: “The more bottles we get, the more buildings we make.”

The beer bottle temple is now on an approved list of eco-friendly sight-seeing tours in southeast Asia.

For more information go to http /www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/temple-built-from-beer-bottles.php

The House that Books built

 

Case di Libri No 1

Livio De Marchi is a man obsessed with wood. The Italian carver was born in Venezia where, still a child, he worked on ornamental sculpture in the Venetian tradition in the workshop of a joiner and studied art and drawing at the “Accademia di Belle Arti” in Venice.

During his artistic evolution he worked first in marble, then bronze, and eventually in wood. But wood has always been his favourite material because it gives him a vitality which other materials do not. This obsession has enabled him to develop the ability to mould wood with great expertise and sensitivity to create sculptures with fine detail and a feeling for spontaneity and the essence of the material.

In his own words, “After opening his own studio, Livio De Marchi allowed his fantasy to run free, declaring his way of being, his interior world.”

His web site shows a range of wooden carvings, in subjects ranging from women’s underwear to furniture. There is also a video of a wooden car being loaded into the lagoon at Venice and driven across the water with the artist at the wheel.

His latest work is a wooden house built in the shape of books and furnished  at with fittings and furniture also book shaped.

Interior of Casa di Libri No 1

 

More images of the house can be seen at www.liviodemarchi.com/casauk.htm

The artist’s own web site is at http://www.liviodemarchi.com/ukmain3.htm

Life’s a ball in a concrete tree

The Hang Nga Hotel in Vietnam

This offbeat hotel in Dalat in Vietnam goes by various names, among them The Spider Web Chalet, the Hang Nga Tree House and the Crazy House, depending on who you ask.

It is in fact a hotel, designed by Dang Viet Na, a former model and daughter of Truong Chinh, the former resident of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. She designed the hotel so that guests could imagine they were staying in a fantasy world. Being the former president’s daughter clearly helped Dang Viet Na, who studied architecture in Moscow, get permission to build her fantasy hotel.

Its official name is the Hang Nga Tree House, Hang Nga was a moon fairy. Features include an Ant Room, a Honeymoon room reached by a minute bamboo staircase and spiders web made out of string waiting to catch the unwary. 

You can find more images here Travelogues site with photos of The Crazy Hotel in Dalat, Vietnam

Stadium comes to Confucius?

1:20 replica of the Bird’s Nest Stadium in bamboo

Most of you will be familiar with the “Bird’s Nest” stadium where the Olympics were staged in China in summer 2008. The quirky stadium (designed by Herzog and de Meuron)  was certainly an interesting and eclectic structure but it could not really be called a folly.

Now however I have come across a replica of the stadium, which certainly could. It seems that a group of Chinese peasants near Hangzhou in the south east of China, decided that the real thing was just too far away, and so built their own version locally in bamboo. Bamboo is a versatile material which I have long admired, and had the advantage of being a good deal cheaper and more accessible that the concrete and steel original.

Bamboo copy under construction outside Hangzhou.

It seems it took ten bamboo sculptors roughly two weeks to put together the 1:20 scale copy which the villagers claim the plan to use for local sports events. The completed structure is a tribute to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Chinese.

And just to remind you, here is the original.

Seems like a case of Instead of the mountain coming to Mohammed, the stadium has come to Confucius!

Story found at http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/08/chinese_farmers_build_birds_nest_stadium_out_of_bamboo-2.html

Park in a Skip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The young London based artist Oliver Bishop-Young has had the brilliant idea of creating mini landscapes in that most prosaic of urban artefacts, the builder’s skip. Seen here is one of his most popular and successful designs, a park in a skip, featuring a park bench and a tree.

Other of Olly’s designs have included a water garden in a skip, a skateboard park in a skip, a swimming pool in a skip and a sitting room in a skip. You can find out more about Olly and his work at his web site www.oliverbishopyoung.co.uk  email:olly@oliverbishopyoung.co.uk

Dutch folly to rent – in darkest Essex

The Dutch House, Rayleigh, Essex

The thatched octagonal Dutch Cottage in Rayleigh, Essex, is thought to have been built in 1621 by immigrant settlers who helped drain the land. Since 2005 it has stood empty after pensioners Ann and Derek Jolly upped sticks and left after 20 “happy years”.

Despite resembling a doll’s house, the octagonal seventeenth century home – which measures just 20ft across – has all the mod cons, including a fully fitted kitchen and shower room. The listed home, in Crown Hill, Rayleigh, is thought to be one of only a handful of Dutch Cottages left in the UK – and the only one used as a council house.It is also the only house still owned by Rochford Council after it transferred its stock to a housing association.

Tamara Burton, a spokeswoman for Rochford Council, said the house, which has already generated a lot of interest, is not restricted only to people on the housing register or waiting list and can be rented for just £75 a week.

But whoever is lucky enough to get their hands on the listed property will not be in for a quiet life – because a condition of the tenancy means the new dweller will have to show tourists around the historic abode.

Inside it is surprisingly spacious with the open-plan living space set around a central construction of the chimney.The kitchen is at the back of the cottage and there is also a shower room. The bedroom is accessed by a steep stair case and, at a squeeze, it could fit a double bed inside.

Former resident Mrs Jolly, 71, who moved out of the house with husband Derek in 2005, said it was a privilege to live in there.She said: “We loved it because we felt very close to Rayleigh’s history.

“We were talking about it all the time and we were conscious it was a privilege to be looking after one of Rayleigh’s monuments and having something beautiful to look after.” 

The cottage was given to Rayleigh Urban Council in 1964 by its owner and has remained in trust ever since.A plate above the door is inscribed 1621 but surveyors, architects and historians who have studied the cottage say it could have actually been built as late as 1740.

Tours of the cottage would be made by prior arrangement, Mrs Burton said. It is opposite the King Canute Public House. Essex. TQ8090 : The Dutch Cottage, Rayleigh

 

The Dutch House, Canvey Island, Essex 

There is another similar cottage on Canvey Island in Essex. TQ7783 : Dutch Cottage Museum, Canvey Island