It didn’t win the Stirling Prize, but cleans up on all the sustainability awards.
I have called cork the perfect building material: completely natural, insulating, renewable, healthy, antibacterial, biophilic, durable and recyclable.
© David Grandorge via RIBANow Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton have designed the ultimate cork house out of the stuff. It didn’t get the Stirling Prize, but did deservedly win a pile of RIBA sustainability awards. From the brief:
© Ricky Jones via RIBA
We have noted before how cork panels are made from the cork left after punching out wine bottle corks, then consolidated with steam in presses with just the natural Suberin resin holding it together, then cut into blocks with saws; see my tour of an Amorim cork factory in Portugal, the source company of the cork used here. The Cork House builds out of these blocks in an ingenious fashion:
© Alex de Rijke via RIBA
Cork shingles and siding are water resistant, but I love the way they have added the wood to the roof for extra protection. Everything about this is beautiful.
© Magnus Dennis via RIBA
The warmth of the interior is so seductive. No need to worry about that wood stove either, cork doesn’t burn, it just chars a bit. If only cork wasn’t so expensive, this would be such a fabulous place to live.
I was pretty sure that this project was going to win the Stirling Prize this year, and do believe that the jury made the right choice. One could even argue about whether this is truly sustainable, given the amount of cork it took to build it; it’s not a model that could be replicated often without a massive increase in cork planting and a nine-year wait. But it is a thing of beauty and a great demonstration of the wonder of cork. Last words from the project brief:
UPDATE: A reader points to this great video about its construction.
