HelloWood 2018:

By Lesley Chung

Surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of fields dotted with round hale bales is Csóromfölde, a two and a half hour coach journey from Budapest - and this is where I found myself in the second week of July, with nothing but a weeks worth of clothes, a sleeping bag and no idea what to expect for the next 10 days to come. Hellowood was one of those things for me that I just applied to on a whim, not really caring if I got onto it or not and just thinking that “it would be a really nice thing to do, plus I could put it on my CV/ portfolio”. But looking back at it now, I realise that I was completely unable to foresee the incredible experience it would be.

Hellowood describes itself as an “International Summer School & Festival for Architecture” with an obvious focus on timber construction. To make each year different from the last, there is always an overarching theme - with this year’s being “Cabin Fever”

“One nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd” - Georg Simmel, philosopher, 1950

So what is “cabin fever”?

Cabin Fever is described as the restlessness and irritability one feels following a long period of confinement and isolation within an indoor environment - a feeling that may also be felt in the urban environment of the metropolitan city. Hence, Hellwood aimed to provide a remedy for this, by encouraging interaction with nature; and they definitely delivered as I don’t think we were ever ‘indoors’ throughout our time at the camp - that, and the fact that takes a LOT for me to become completely desensitised to wasps and earwigs.

Once we arrived and got over the inevitable mix of initial awkwardness and mingling during