Harrison Gardner and Fionn Kidney’s Common Knowledge project in Ennistymon, Co Clare, is teaching people how to build their own homes
Common Knowledge was born. In the beginning, they hosted build schools from the home Gardner built with his wife, Erin McClure, a designer who is, with builder Spider Hickman, one of the four co-founders of the project. But this year, the project moved to the buildings of a former Burren retreat which had been operated by a Dutch woman, Sonja O’Brien. She was delighted to see the buildings repurposed into a community enterprise.
The new Common Knowledge home is not far outside Kilfenora, but you still need an Eircode to find it: it’s on a beaten track at a crossroads off the beaten track. It covers 50 acres. The group has got some funding for a biodiversity scan. “To understand what is living here,” Kidney says, looking out at the expanse of green. “But we have haw and hazel and a lot of beautiful Irish woodland.” Near the stone fire circle is the skeletal frame of a wooden sweat lodge, a remnant of the retreat.
“It is basically Lego what I do, compared to someone who has grown up surrounded by nature and has to figure how to turn that into a house.”He moved through India and South America learning how to build from mud and even discarded garbage. In Colombia, he was part of a building team putting together some dwellings deep in the jungle.
The countryside and Irish towns were littered with unfinished dwellings. “Ghost estates” was the phrase of the era. For Gardner, it felt like a period rich in possibility. “There was a post-recession mood of: we can do anything! Everything was cheap.” He fell in with a crowd of people who were starting flea markets, furniture-making businesses and pop-up eateries. Some succeeded, some failed. It was easy to start again.
“Ah no. It’s amazing. It’s really putting the spark into people to consider. The big thing is that every one of those buildings already has permission to be there. That’s hugely attractive to people terrified of the planning process, which can be just this big monster they don’t know how to navigate,” he says. “People have been renovating these derelict properties for years before the grants ever came in, and they’re devastated.
A student making a stool to take home, as part of the furniture design weekend course. Photograph: Common Knowledge
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