Driving down to Piopio this past Saturday I listened to National Radio's Kim Hill interview visiting Australian architect Ric LaPlastrier. You can find and listen to the interview from 19 March here. He spoke about his work, which is inspired by the Australian landscape and focused on simplicity and sitting lightly on the land. He distinguished between the use of "cold" materials like steel and concrete vs. "warm" materials like wood, preferring the latter. At one point Kim asked him about the Australian equivalent of the Kiwi "bach," traditionally a rather rustic but much celebrated retreat.
Ric indicated that the Aussie equivalent is called a "shed," commenting that he liked this word since it means "to get rid of."
I had never connected the dots and made this otherwise obvious connection between the structures we call sheds, their simple style, and their purpose. So when I got to Struan Farm this gave me reason to take some photographs of (just a few) of our many sheds:
We still need to shed more stuff from these sheds, but this interview gave me a fresh perspective.
Comments