This is not a giant hedgehog. It’s a building. Designed as an experiment in surface texture for a sculpture garden not far from London, it’s called a sitooterie, and it has a central area just 2.4 metres square, a door, a seat and a window.
“It’s not terribly big inside,” admitsRon Packman, a structural engineer with London-based Heatherwick Studio, the design company that built it. But the sitooterie’s surface area is vast, with more than 4000 hollow aluminium tubes, each sealed with a plastic cap. “The spines all point to the centre of the box,” explains Packman. “We wanted them to work like optical fibres. At night, just one 100-watt light bulb at the centre can light up every spine.” If someone moves in front of the light, their shadow will appear on the spines, greatly magnified. Building the structure proved challenging, particularly since each spine has to enter the cube at a specific angle, requiring 4000 holes, each of a different shape and size.
The name “sitooterie” originally puzzled Packman, but turns out to be Scottish. “I asked a Scottish lady what it meant. She laughed, and said that a sitooterie was simply a place to ‘sit oot’. ” The seat is formed by some of the spines projecting into the box.
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The design is based on an earlier, temporary building by the team. “That structure wobbled on oak spines, rather like a curled-up hedgehog,” Packman says. Because the sitooterie will be permanent, health and safety rules and building regulations require a solid foundation so that, among other things, a disabled access ramp can be fitted.
The sitooterie is at Barnard’s Farm, near Thurrock, Essex, and is featured in XS Green: big ideas, small buildings by Phyllis Richardson (Thames and Hudson, £14.95, 9780500342305).
Sitting out doesn’t come cheap. If you want one of these in your back garden, be prepared to shell out up to £80,000.