Walden – A Class for TU Graz Students about Living in the Forest

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or Life in the Woods, 1854

During the summer semester of 2023, Nayari Castillo-Rutz and Franziska Hederer (Institute of Spatial Design, TU Graz) led an elective course for architecture students about living in the forest.

Henry David Thoreau, an American writer, philosopher, and free spirit, was the main inspiration for the course. He built himself a wood house on the north shore of Walden Lake near Concord, Massachusetts at a cost of no more than twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents. During the years from 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived a Spartan existence that lasted exactly two years, two months, and two days. Alone and far from the influences of a civilization that was even then becoming ever faster and louder, he wanted to live freely and discover what matters in life. During this time, Thoreau wrote Walden, or Life in the Woods, a book about living simply in the great outdoors during all four seasons of the year.

During the class, students learned to understand the territory and to explore the necessities to make a shelter in the wilderness. The students also studied the primitive hut, the very origins of architecture. With this primordial one-room space, called a tugurium, the complexity of the building is reduced to its essential characteristics. The following questions were discussed: What exactly does the primitive hut mean? What are its characteristics? How does one decide on the right place for a primitive hut? What tools are needed to build one? What material?

The task for the students was to build an elemental architecture – a tugurium – in the forest, spend a night in it, read Henry David Thoreau, and record a video of their experience.

The final class exhibition showed the site plan, recordings, drawings, and photographs (see attached selection). The experimental approach is fundamental for Nayari Castillo-Rutz who is engaging in artistic research to construct sensory experiences in the forest.