Ericaceae — from the Greek Ereike, meaning heather — names a plant, a landscape, and a material culture, quietly forgotten. Once central to Scottish rural life, heather was harvested for thatching, woven into household objects, and intrinsically bound to the rhythms of the croft. That relationship has weakened, yet the material itself remains — waterproof, resilient, and ecologically indispensable.

Scotland’s peatlands are among the most significant natural carbon sinks in the world, yet they remain under threat. Heather is central to their health; its cyclical harvesting is not extractive but regenerative — opening the land to rewilding, enabling new forests to take root, and actively protecting the carbon stored beneath. This project places the peatland at its centre, proposing an intervention that collaborates with both land and people to restore and sustain these vital ecosystems.

Rooted in Scottish material craft traditions, this work engages critically with the ecological preservation of native carbon sinks through the cyclical harvesting of heather. It seeks not merely to observe vernacular techniques, but to interconnect with them — bridging the lost relationship between craft and croft, and asking what architecture might look like when it is shaped by the land it exists to protect.