LONDONFIELDWORKS

photo: Niall Jacobson, 2010

Outlandia is an off-grid, treehouse observatory imagined by artists London Fieldworks and designed by award-winning Malcolm Fraser Architects. Inspired by childhood dens, wildlife hides and bothies, by forest outlaws and Japanese poetry platforms, it is located in a copse of Norwegian Spruce and Larch in Glen Nevis on Forestry Commission land at the foot of Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands, two miles from the town of Fort William. Outlandia is an artist-led project built as a platform for fieldwork and cross-disciplinary research, which during its time of service could provide a multi-purpose platform for the use of diverse community groups as well as selected artists. Outlandia is in line with The Scottish Forestry Strategy that aims to create opportunities for more people to enjoy trees, woods and forests in Scotland, and to help communities benefit from woods and forests.

Robert Macfarlane is Outlandia's Honorary Patron. 

THE ROAD NORTH

The road north is a word-map of Scotland, composed by Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn as they travel through their homeland, guided by the Japanese poet Basho, whose Oku-no-Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Ken and Alec left Edinburgh on 16 May 2010 and are walking around Scotland for a year, aiming to drink 53 types of tea and 53 types of whisky, and to devise 53 collaborative audio and visual poems. Outlandia was one of their destinations in August 2010.
Visit the road north blog

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GREAT GLEN
TO THE LIBRARY OF OUTLANDIA

The Artist Adam Dant was commissioned by The Arts Catalyst as part of The Great Glen Artists Airshow to make an aerial map of the Great Glen, charting the journey from The Highland Institute of Contemporary Arts (HICA) to Outlandia. The interior of Outlandia has been transformed by Adam into a place for the "categorisation of knowledge and observations" in the style of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Link to images

www.outlandia.com