Harewood Sitooterie

Hemp corrugated sheet and 9mm flat panels, softwood fame, aluminium sheet.

Harewood House, Walled Garden, May 2022

As part of the Harewood Bienniel exhibition Radical Acts curated by Hugo Macdonald, we were invited to design and make a structure for the Estate which would showcase Margent Farm’s groundbreaking hemp sheet panel products. The first is the corrugated sheet that Margent founder Steve Barron developed to clad his own house at the farm where he grows fields of hemp plants. The second is a newly developed flat panel that sandwiches chipped hemp shiv (the woody core of the plant) between two layers of bio resin impregnated hemp fibre matting, pressed and heat cured to a create a strong flat sheet material. Both have a wonderful deep baked brown smooth surface, with the fibrous hemp visible beneath. As alternative to timber or cement based equivalent products, Margent’s panels are extremely low carbon by comparison, and the farming of the hemp can be used to revitalise the health of soils on account of its deep and penetrating roots.

After being caught in the rain on several occasions during visits to Harewood's walled kitchen garden, we proposed a simple Sitooterie (covered bench seat), that would nestle amongst the herbs and plants in the perimeter border of the garden and look out over the expansive vegetable beds. Against the backdrop of the South facing wall of hop vines, the bench flank walls splay outwards, and the soffit upwards, to catch the warmth of the afternoon sun. The dark surface of the hemp panels soak up the rays making for a cozy and sheltered place to sit and take a break.

The structure is a timber stud framework lined internally with the smooth 9mm panels that are abutted and pinned with lost head nails to create smooth seemless rich surfaces for the bench and flanking walls. Externally the corrugated sheet is carefully detailed around corners and along fascias to fit the waves of the corrugations, and is protected from ground moisture by an aluminium upstand, and from rain by a folded aluminium sheet roof tray (both made from a new 90% recycled aluminium product used throughout our design for the Radical Acts exhibition furniture and way finding). The structure was prefabricated in our London workshop to high tolerances and shipped to Harewood in parts for reassembly in-situ.