In a move to recover an abandoned corner of Dartford Central Park (Kent, UK), architects from Studio Weave created a timber-clad hut to act as “an outdoor classroom, dyeing workshop, art studio, bird-watching hide, tree house and park shelter all rolled into one”.

The two-story building has a gabled timber structure with walls and windows that hinge open on three different sides.

The corner of the park is called Ecology Island so the designers named their structure “Ecology of Color” and the surrounding meadow has been replanted with flowers and vegetables that produce natural dyes.

The building will host workshops to teach about natural dyeing and nature so it’s appropriate the first workshops brought local residents together to paint the wooden exterior in natural pigments. The highly-colorful design is called Joy and was designed by London design studio Nous Vous.

“The funny thing is in architecture in this country and probably everywhere else in the world, buildings used to be a lot more colorful and we wanted to have that in this building,” explains Studio Weave’s Je Ahn.