200 years ago, 90 percent of the Swedish population lived in the countryside, today nearly 90 percent lives in cities instead. This has left thousands of houses in the countryside to derelict, especially farm buildings like barns and storage buildings that normally have less value and often don’t need any building permit than more equipped houses. Driving through the countryside it’s easy to spot these farm buildings that stand in different states of collapse.
On the farm where we make our Farm Art, there is a small abandoned house where a family of twelve used to live.

The roof has collapsed here and there and in one of the two rooms there is even fungi growing on the floor just next to burrows made by rabbits or perhaps large farm rats. A colony of stray cats lives there during winter and sometimes the farmer puts fresh milk outside the door that has stuck under the weight of the crooked wall.
Investigating the derelict house from the outside, the only thing that seems to be in decent condition is a rather small area next to one of the gables.

Since the existing door is stuck and its interior is intersected by dangling rafters that could fall at any time, we decided to turn the existing window in the gable into an opening so you could have access to the small part of the house that still could function as some kind of shelter.

To celebrate the new potential life in the house we made a new façade that also offers a slightly better insulation than the wooden cabin for both mice and men.Since the cabin is both crooked and stands on sloping ground we made the wooden frame directly on the cabin, sort of tracing its feature with studs, then we laid the wooden frame down on the ground, putting metal net on the backside and filled everything with ryegrass hay, sourced from a nearby field, until we closed the new walls with another layer of net.

Next to the gable facade we made a pile of hay so it could be used as an outdoor sofa.
The interior function is still under consideration. Probably there will be another wall of hay that separates the space from the rest of the collapsed house, but the dangling rafters and the chaotic look also makes it look quite interesting.
For now there is a chair, a lamp and a shelf with some books, sprouting new life to the cabin.