Eton
Shortlisted for the 2019 Stirling prize, a house at the vanguard of ‘corkitecture’ is broadening ideas of sustainable construction
Fishing floats, bottle stoppers, platform soles, pinboards, coasters. The uses of cork are many and varied, but it still retains a whiff of 1970s suburbia, like avocado bathroom suites or jumbo corduroy. Yet in its way, cork is a wonder material – strong in compression (those platform soles), water-resistant and a good source of insulation. Cork is also impeccably sustainable. Bark from Quercus suber, the cork oak, is carefully stripped by hand every nine to 12 years, leaving the tree intact, unlike felling for timber. Portugal and Spain are responsible for 80% of cork production, with much of it still going to make corks for wine bottles, despite the rise of the screw top.
As for cork in architecture – or “corkitecture” – the picture is more patchy. Cork has been a minor supporting player, used for flooring and wall tiles, or as an early form of insulation, sandwiched in walls. It has made the odd breakout appearance as cladding for temporary structures, such as Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura’s Portugal pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, and the 2012 Serpentine Gallery pavilion by the Swiss partnership of Herzog & De Meuron in collaboration with artist Ai Weiwei. More recently, the Redshank House, a weekend bolthole on the Essex coast designed by architect Lisa Shell and sculptor Marcus Taylor, came wrapped in a warm, spongiform skin of Portuguese cork.
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