Farmer’s Arms Cold Food Store

Project Info

Situated in a popular historic pub in the Lake District, this small, experimental building blends and reinterprets traditional Japanese and English construction techniques, using local materials.   

Providing space for food storage and preparation, the Farmer’s Arms Cold Food Store is defined by a timber frame covered with traditional Japanese plaster and perched on boulders.

The building was devised and created with participants of an annual seven-day building residency run by Grizedale Arts, an arts organisation that operates the Farmer’s Arms pub. Workshops led by local coppice worker Owen Jones and Japanese plasterer Kiyoshi Fukuda informed the building’s design, which playfully adapts a traditional Japanese storage building typology.

A locally grown larch timber frame sits atop slate boulders, sourced from a nearby quarry, surpassing the need for concrete foundations. Infill wattle-and-daub wall panels are formed from hand-split oak laths and coated with Shikkui plaster, mixed with hemp-fibre and straw. Made from a blend of lime, sand and seaweed, and gently pigmented with red iron oxide, the pinkish plaster provides a protective, breathable coating to the timber construction.

A stable internal temperature is maintained for storing vegetables and fermenting food by the thick wood fibre walls. Externally, the wall panels are finished with decorative motifs. Completing the building, iron slags collected from the nearby river valley anchor down the metal roofing while offering a visual reminder of the landscape’s industrial past.

Additional credits

Oak Lathes: Owen Jones Oak Swill Basket Maker

Shikkui Plaster: Kiyoshi Fukuda