Skallingen Hide

Skallingen is a long, sandy peninsula, and nearly all of it is flat. The wind comes off the North Sea and does not stop. A hide here must be low, stiff and anchored.

The brief gave two tests: it must survive 40 metres a second, and a team of volunteers must be able to raise it in a week.

A single room, 7 metres by 4.2, with a porch at one end. The walls are pine boards 220 millimetres wide, left to weather. The roof is a single shallow slope, and all of it is anchored to six galvanised ground screws.

Visitors see out through one slot, 4.4 metres long and 25 centimetres high, at the height of a seated eye. The slot is the only opening on the water side and it is the whole design.

Every part of the frame is cut from a 4.8 metre length of pine that one person can carry. A kit of 112 pieces arrives on one pallet, with a drawing of the sequence. We built a test frame with five volunteers on a Saturday, and the walls were up before lunch.

The jury meets in December. Whatever it decides, the drawings and the build sequence are published with the association, so that any group of volunteers can use them.