Cabin Crew: Hird and Brooks and the pursuit of the perfect holiday house

Cabin Crew looks at the work of Hird & Brooks, a celebrated firm of modernist architects based in South Wales. They designed some of the most covetable houses of the mid-century era, picking up 17 major design awards for their work. Yet the self-proclaimed highlight of their glittering careers was not the impossibly sleek Scandi-styled villas they’re best known for — instead, it was a series of little-known holiday cabin sites, hidden away in rural Wales and the Scottish Highlands. To perfect their cabin designs, Hird & Brooks drew on a deep interest in Denmark’s functionalist architecture, went on several study tours to the country, and borrowed extensively from its summerhouse culture. With a love of craftsmanship and a preoccupation with materials and structure, they agonised over every detail, from the woodland settings, to the colour schemes, to the handmade fitted furniture, to the custom-designed wood burners. The great thing is, 50 years on, many of these cabins are still standing, some are in a near-pristine state, and several are available as holiday lets for anyone to enjoy. This new book, Cabin Crew, retells the story of Hird & Brooks and its influences. Written in a lively and engaging style, it examines the people who ran the firm, the ethos behind their work, and how they became attracted to — then obsessed by — the pursuit of the perfect holiday house. It dips, for the first time, into the original Hird & Brooks archive of correspondence, photographs, brochures, and newspaper clippings. It draws on insights and recollections from people who were close to the original projects. And it takes you on a guided photo tour of some of the current-day cabins in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, and Argyll — providing details of Hird & Brooks cabins where you can stay to this day. Part architectural appreciation, part social history, part quirky travel guide, the book is a real delight. Ranged across 200 pages, it includes a mix of original pictures and drawings, publicity shots and brochures from the 1970s, luscious photographs of present-day Hird & Brooks cabins, and details of other holiday cabins designed by some of the giants of modernist architecture — like Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Arne Jacobsen, Basil Spence, and Alison and Peter Smithson.  The team behind Cabin Crew are Peter Halliday, a writer and photographer with a deep interest in modernist architecture, Bethan Dalton, an archaeologist and teacher who owns two Hird & Brooks cabins, Lizzie Biggs, a graphic designer living on the Welsh Borders, and Jessica Halliday, an art history graduate and exhibitions assistant at a leading London gallery.