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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

1999

  • Work on this object began.

2015

2024

  • You found it!

Belsay Sitooterie

This is a Belsay Sitooterie. It was designed by Heatherwick Studio and Thomas Heatherwick and made for (as the client) English Heritage. It is dated 1999. Its medium is steel, plywood.

Can a building stand up on the architectural equivalent of matchsticks?
This pavilion is one of twelve temporary sitooteries—a Scottish term for a garden structure in which to ‘sit oot’— commissioned by English Heritage, Britain’s historic preservation agency, for the grounds of Belsay Hall. Long fascinated with the idea of making a hairy building, Heatherwick Studio designed a steel-and-plywood box embedded with wooden rods, or "hairs." The rods function as delicate legs that, together, carry the structure’s weight; they also create a texture that dismantles perceptions of the building’s form, making it look almost blurry. The Sitooterie was on view in summer 1999 and dismantled that autumn.

It is credited Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.

  • Pavilion
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.03
  • UK Pavilion
  • acrylic rods, seeds, plywood, aluminum, rubber, fiber optics, artificial turf.
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.39

Our curators have highlighted 2 objects that are related to this one.

  • Paper House
  • steel, wood, brass, glass.
  • Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.
  • HSP.15

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/85006409/ |title=Belsay Sitooterie |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=19 April 2024 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>