The Bothy Project: Micro Artist Retreats in Scotland

The definition of a bothy: a modest hut, found in the wilderness and left unlocked for anyone’s use. These bothies, however, are more specialized—filled with comfortable furnishings and reserved for artists’ use.

They’re under the charge of The Bothy Project, a network of tiny, off-the-grid studios for artists in residence. Each of the three built so far is sited in a uniquely beautiful Scottish locale, where the project aims to connect artists with the culture, landscape, mythology, and people of a new place.

According to the project, its huts are part of a new, contemporary “hutopian” movement, and its artist-enlivened spaces are models for future ecological, technological, architectural, and social ways of living.

Sweeney’s Bothy

Above: Sweeney’s Bothy sits on the Isle of Eigg in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It was designed in 2013 by architect Iain MacLeod and artists Bobby Niven and Alec Finlay.

Above: Sweeney’s Bothy was named after a legendary seventh-century Gaelic king named Sweeney, or Shuibhne. The cursed king wandered alone in the woods for a decade, and his poetry from that time extols the beauty of the wilderness.

Above: Though the legendary Sweeney was “a visionary hermit rejecting ‘feather beds and painted rooms,'” according to the Bothy Project, his namesake hut sports a fireplace, a desk, and two bunk beds.

Inshriach Bothy

Above: Inshriach Bothy was the first in the network, partially built in 2011 during an Edinburgh artist residency and later moved to the grounds of a shooting lodge called Inshriach Estate on the river Spey near Aviemore in Cairngorms National Park.

Above: Inshriach Bothy has a desk, stocked bookcase, double bed on a mezzanine, and small kitchen. It is insulated with wool and heated by a woodstove (with oven).

Above: In total, the cabin has floor space of three square meters (about 32 square feet). The network describes its as ideal for “painting, drawing, reading, thinking, and small-scale sculptural work.”

Pig Rock Bothy

Above: Pig Rock Bothy was commissioned in 2014 to sit on the grounds of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. It was later moved to Assynt, in the northwest corner of the Scottish Highlands, to serve in the artist residency program.

Above: Pig Rock Bothy was designed by MacLeod and Niven in collaboration with Douglas Flett Architects. In-kind sponsors include stove manufacturer Esse and timber producer Russwood.

Above: The bothy at night in Edinburgh, where it served for one year as a museum programming venue. It was always destined for Assynt, so its design was “based on the idea of taking a bold and simple vernacular form and applying a playful twist in reference to…the windswept landscape of Pig Rock’s future home in Assynt.”

For more, browse Remodelista’s catalog of Cottages & Cabins, with projects in Connecticut, Norway, and Alberta, Canada.