Danes heading for the coast have a reason to divert: a thatched, reeded ‘houseboat’: a public artwork that revives traditional Jutland skills and references contemporary climate crisis
What: Reeded and thatched public artwork
Where: Ho, Jutland, Denmark
Simon Starling, a Turner-Prize winning artist who now lives in Denmark, was commissioned by the Danish Arts Foundation to create an artwork for the Jutland village of Ho on the Wadden Sea National Park. Residents felt overlooked by tourists heading straight for the sea and were keen for something that would make them linger. As if marooned, Houseboat for Ho at first seemed a shocking proposal, but it picked up on twin resonances for the community: increased flooding due to climate change and a revival of the region’s vernacular thatching techniques.
To create it, Starling looked to the Aymara and Uru lakeside tribes of High Andes’ Lake Titicaca – itself experiencing receding water levels due to global warming. Bringing over the Arratia-Esteban family, reed boatbuilders from Bolivia, he teamed them with local thatcher duo Bjarne Johansen and Jeff Brankley. In the creation of the 11m-long houseboat, horizontal reeds, with their capacity to hold air within the structure and create buoyancy, would be counterpointed by the vertical reeds of the roof thatch, able to repel water and direct it down and away. Starling says that curving it up 2m at each end, the prow and stern, acts as a transition between the two states – in effect a form of ancient reed parametrics.
The timber substructure, constructed first, serves the dual purpose of allowing the builders full access to the hull for rope binding as well acting as formwork for its final shape. The hull itself was made by creating ‘chorizos’ – 15m long, 400mm diameter sausage-shaped bundles of reeds plaited together lengthwise, which were bound at intervals with hemp rope to give them strength. Next, 50 chorizos were brought together – 25 on each side – connected by a barely visible central ‘heart chorizo’. Formed of three chorizos bound in a vertical line, this was forced down between the halves of the hull to help bring them together. The three parts were then bound using figure-of-eight ropework at intervals along the hull. To ensure this was done as tightly as possible the team used a 1:6 ratio pulley to manually tighten ropes with the required force.
Carpenters built the A-frame timber floor and roof structure within a gunnel- bracing perimeter made of two smaller chorizos; this frame was the base for the thatching that would go over it. That also worked for the thatchers, who bent the edge of the first line of reeds over the gunnels’ lips, fixing the body of the reeds back to the frame with wire. This curved form, with its intrinsic strength, was then replicated all the way along and up to the roof’s apex.
The ridge detail used two traditional methods of closing the roof in a belt and braces approach. The ‘wrap-over’ method involves bending protruding, thick-end-up reeds back over the ridge’s other side and wire fixing them. A further layer of reeds was then bound in with thin rope at the apex to create a ‘butt-up’ detail where bristles come together to be cut along the ridge line to give a sharp, flat detail.
Built in public over two months, the 15t reed structure has a minimal carbon footprint and a design life of 40 years. Since opening last autumn, it has proved a draw for curious visitors.