What are we if not sheep?
From human exceptionalism to complex interspecies relations, this proposal imagines a shared pavilion for sheep and humans. The changing landscape of Loch Arkaig acts as an alien backdrop, eerily quiet and barren. Ancient pine forests on site have spurred a regeneration of the Scottish native, and the felling of the anthesis. Sheep are the enemy of such efforts, with soil erosion from overgrazing by modern mass farming prevalent. Despite Loch Arkaig’s history of sheep farming, archaeological remains of sheilings strung uphill, sheep are now isolated from the landscape.
These pavilions sit within a revitalised system of low-density transhumance: highland pastures in summer, lowland pastures in winter, recalling a historic ritual. The shared use of the pavilions provokes the question: What is our relationship with sheep through time? Undesirable in regeneration, their wool is economically obsolete, and co-dependency is no longer required.
So, where does this leave sheep? Through a post-human lens, how might we evolve past the present: mutually, exclusively? The spiked posts are not for us, but the sheep, a shock to the system. Our needs in this design are no more dominant than theirs. As the landscape evolves, new paths emerge through sensitive interdependent relationships between all species.
