Clelia Ntassi - Unit 9: Construction Week - Community Permaculture Shelter for “Friends of Tottenham Marshes

We were asked to design and build an adaptable shelter for a permaculture community located in Tottenham Marshes. Permaculture represents a method of designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems. It is precisely this type of approach, wich is based on the ethics of Earthcare, Peoplecare and Fairshare, that imitates the relationships found in natural ecologies. In fact, these systems interact thanks to synergetic relationships.

Permaculture = permanent + agriculture

The site was at the back of the community’s room, which was a very sloppy, oddly shaped space with a lot of vegetation. The clients asked for a shelter where they could do their meetings and have a sitting area. Steps had to be created because there was no access to that previously mentioned space. More importantly an adaptable canopy had to be built in order to collect water. Since there was no budget, all materials had to be found on site or had to be invented by ourselves. For instance, plastic bags had to be used to create the canopy. Finally, it was not possible to remove much soil because the roots of the trees would have been damaged.

Due to all these restrictions, the best idea was to have a tensile structure that would not require heavy structure and would adapt easily to the awkward site. A decking had to be made with scaffold boards found on site. Under these boards, there were railway slippers that worked as foundations for the columns. In the end, as previously stated, the canopy had to be made to collect the water. In fact, 400 plastic bags had to be ironed together on tarpaulin with an integrated funnel.