Cabin Crew

This book is currently on pre-sale. Please note presale orders will be shipped after the publication date of 10th March.

Cabin Crew

If you like your holiday cabins, there’s no shortage of books to choose from. Cabin Porn, Cabin Fever, and Cabinology are just a few of the umpteen titles available. But the new book from the modernist is different. Very different.

It 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.

200mm x 200mm

196 pages

colour & black and white

ISBN: 978-1-7394927-5-5

Please note images are pre-publication mock ups, actual books may be slightly different.