Design studios Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays have created the Water Tower, a timber-framed installation for Houghton Festival in Norfolk, England.
The 5.5-metre-tall structure provided a shaded seating area between the festival’s food zone and one of its stages. Meanwhile, its walls were wrapped in layers of thatch sourced from sustainably managed reedbeds.
The installation drew on a historic water tower built for nearby Houghton Hall in 1772. Consequently, its form connects contemporary festival architecture with Norfolk’s local building traditions.
Timber structure combined with traditional thatching
The Water Tower consists of a timber frame with four openings separated by angled walls. These walls are covered in layered thatch, while a thatched ring crowns the structure.
Inside, wooden seating extends along the perimeter of the walls. Above, a circular opening in the roof allows visitors to look upward while remaining sheltered from the surrounding festival activity.
“I want people to experience something that looks like it has grown out of the ground – to feel cooled by its shady interior, to feel a connection to it when checking out its handmade flavour,” Mitre & Mondays co-founder Josef Shanley-Jackson.
Cella Collective wraps Houghton Festival’s Water Tower in sustainably sourced thatch, blending contemporary design with Norfolk’s rich architectural and natural heritage. 
Cella Collective wraps Houghton Festival’s Water Tower in sustainably sourced thatch, blending contemporary design with Norfolk’s rich architectural and natural heritage. 
Cella Collective wraps Houghton Festival’s Water Tower in sustainably sourced thatch, blending contemporary design with Norfolk’s rich architectural and natural heritage.
“Thatched structures, inside and out, can feel both contemporary and old-feeling all at the same time,” added Cella Collective member Alys Hargreaves.
“It makes sense that we should be revisiting it as a building material which offers a great solution for climate cooling, both in the growing of the material and the built structure.”
The studios developed the Water Tower around regenerative design principles. In particular, they selected reed thatch produced as a by-product of conservation work.
The material came from reedbeds managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Therefore, its use supports both habitat management and local wildlife while giving a building material a second role within the festival environment.
Craft and material ecosystems shape the installation
“We centred the whole design around a material ecosystem – reedbed landscapes and the craft of thatching – which aims to support our environment and local building cultures, both of which are under threat or in decline in their own ways,” said Hargreaves.
“It has also been an exercise in opposing a culture of convenience where you can only easily buy off-the-shelf items that are part of global supply chains,” she continued. “We wanted to learn how we might challenge this and embrace a new material in all its entirety.”
For the construction, Cella Collective and Mitre & Mondays worked with Cheshire-based master thatchers Wayne Halfpenny and Steve Kelly.
“We adopted their intuitive process of crafting with thatch, adapting the design to accommodate the reed,” said Cella Collective member Ella Caldicott. “That intuition became part of the build process, with decisions often made through testing and adapting to what was in front of us.”
“You can’t learn that from reading books; you learn it through your hands and eyes – that’s why collaborating with craftsmen and craftswomen is so valuable.”
The Water Tower was designed for reuse and will be dismantled before being reinstalled at future editions of Houghton Festival. As a result, the temporary structure combines festival architecture with a circular approach to materials and construction.
The project also forms part of a wider renewed interest in thatch within contemporary architecture. Other Houghton Festival installations have included a glowing canopy suspended among trees, while recent projects worldwide have explored thatched roofs through modern architectural forms.
