Скачать или смотреть The Flow Country | Re-storying a Fragile Soil

The vast peatlands of the Flow Country, Northern Scotland, lie at the periphery of our collective focus.

This project looks to make this periphery central. To begin to change our perception of wilderness and to begin to act as an agent of change for the acceleration of peatland restoration.

Peatlands are fragile ecosystems that lie upon a delicate equilibrium. They are increasingly under threat from fire, extraction and primarily forestry plantation.

In the 1980s, swathes of the Flow Country were drained, ditches cut and non-native Sitka Spruce trees were planted. These synthetic monocultures puncture the blanket bog, drain the water, degrade the soil and stifle the peatland of its life.

To restore the peatland, we must begin to recalibrate our relationship with afforestation and deforestation. To understand what this landscape once was, what it has become and what it could be.

The architecture is a contemporary peatland vernacular, built from the the very trees that once stood there. The act of restoration is a processional and reverential one. The forest will be cleared, the peatland restored.

A landscape once forgotten, now rediscovered.


This is a digital film I created as a speculation on the future of the peatlands. Produced in Unreal Engine with hand-drawn animation as part of a body of work in my first year studying MA Architecture at the Royal College of Art.


#scotland #peatlands #landscape #shortfilm #architecture #design #animation #unrealengine