An eco-builder, sustainability designer, author, TV star and business co-owner, Harrison Gardner is passionate about spreading the message and skills required to give people the confidence to build their own homes.

Leaving Australia at the age of 18, Harrison travelled to Kenya as he wanted to see the world.

“I didn’t have much interest in going directly into university, I didn’t think I was going to go to university at all. I was meant to be there for a couple of months, and I ended up staying for a year,” he says.

After returning home to Australia, it wasn’t long before he ventured off again, this time to India, where he stayed for two years.

“Without meaning to, I ended up doing a huge amount of building work, starting in a more developing context and getting really hooked on it. I had been training in construction in Australia, conventional construction techniques, timber framing, red brick building concrete, and that kind of work,” explains Harrison.

Building from the ground up

The work Harrison was doing in India and Kenya was more interesting to him as there was more variety. Having little access to materials, he had to adapt and be agile with different styles.

“I learned so much about building and how structures work that I really got hooked on this idea of: how many ways can we build a house? Is there actually any recipe for building homes? Or can we really use any materials to create shelter?”

Staying on the road, Harrison never went back to Australia, instead spending the next six years working on projects all around the globe.

“I could learn to work with different materials and different tools in different climates. I ended up working on every continent, bar Antarctica - but I’ll get there one day,” he says.

After finishing a job in Iceland, Harrison had three months to spare before his next job in Malawi. In 2015, a friend suggested he travel to Ireland, that the people were great and he would have a brilliant time.

“I ended up in Dublin and I met some wonderful people,” he recalls of his initial arrival.

After meeting the owners of the Fumbally café, who were renovating a dilapidated building, Harrison offered to work on it for free if he could stay there (and if they fed him out of the restaurant).

At the time, Dublin was coming out of a recession and he recalls a feeling of hope and possibility. “People were seeing that the only way anything was going to change was if they did it themselves and if they started taking these opportunities and making use of these old buildings and these spaces that had fallen to the wayside during the recession,” he says.

Harrison travelled to Malawi, followed by South America and Japan, but kept being drawn back to Ireland in between. In 2017, he bought an old cottage near Lahinch in Co Clare, which he began to renovate.

“You learn so much about a building when you deconstruct it and take time to take it apart piece by piece; to see how they used to do things and put it back together in different ways,” he says of the process.

“I really see the work that I’ve done on that cottage as a collaboration with those builders from 200 years ago.”

Using derelict homes

Although Harrison isn’t from Ireland, he believes that old ruins and derelict homes are a part of our culture that need to be protected.

“We’ve got to stop thinking about housing and shelter strictly as a commodity or as a product. It’s so much more than that. So much of Ireland’s history and culture is tied up in those buildings, and the way that life was lived,” he emphasises.

A few years after buying the cottage, Harrison met his now wife, Erin, in Dublin and convinced her to join him in the west.

“I had to convince her to move back to the countryside: that it wasn’t a regression, but that it was still progress and there was a great thing that we could be doing out there and a great quality of life that we could live out there,” he explains.

When they got pregnant with their first daughter, Harrison decided he didn’t want to travel for work anymore. Using his experience in construction and renovation, he launched ‘Build School’ and after advertising the course on Instagram, eight people showed up.

“We sat around my breakfast table and I explained to them how to build a building and then in the afternoon, we went outside and we actually built a building; we built a small structure together,” he recalls.

‘Build School’ in turn developed into Common Knowledge - a non-profit social enterprise based in The Burren - with co-founder, Fionn Kidney. At Common Knowledge, Harrison breaks down the invisible barrier that building is out of reach for people, as he believes it’s really not.

“These skills and techniques, they can all be learned, they’ve been learned by people before. It’s only really in the last few generations that we stopped handing these techniques down,” he explains.

Safety measures

While there is a huge amount you can do yourself, there are also several elements of building your own home where you need to use licensed and specialized contractors. like electricians and plumbers. This is for your safety, and the safety of those using the house, as well as in order to comply with Irish regulations.

Housing crisis

According to Harrison, the housing crisis and the cost of building and buying in Ireland are pushing a lot of people to a point where building for themselves is the only way they see themselves ever owning a house.

“Being able to buy a house that is ready for you to move into is a total luxury, that not many people can really afford,” he says.

Harrison maintains that you can learn how to pour your own concrete countertops and build your own cabin if you have time to commit to learning and being a student.

“You won’t do it perfectly the first time you do it, and that’s okay, it’s okay not to know the answers. Most of the time people are pleasantly surprised by how quickly they pick up these skills and these ideas,” Harrison explains.

Making building accessible

Harrison’s book ‘Build Your Own: Use what you have to create what you need, was originally meant to be a textbook for people coming to the Build School for courses.

“As I started writing it, I realised that everyone kind of needs to know these things. If I really believe in what I’m talking about where everybody should understand these basic concepts of construction, I needed to make the book accessible to everyone,” he explains.

That said, he believes that for many people, it’s already in their nature and skillset to use what they have to create what they need.

“Anyone who’s grown up in a rural setting, or especially in an agricultural setting, that’s how life works. When you’re working around machinery, when you’re working on the farm or in an agricultural setting, you have got to problem-solve all the time,” Harrison states.

Build Your Own TV series

Producers at RTÉ took note of what Harrison was doing and reached to him about coming on to a different show that they were making at the time, which he wasn’t really interested in doing.

“I never had any dreams of being a TV presenter or that kind of publicity,” he says.

Harrison explained what he cared about and started throwing ideas back and forth with the producers.

“I said I would do it, if it was about people building their own houses. I have no interest in coming in and being people’s saviour and building a house for them. I really think that the only sustainable solution to people not being able to do things for themselves is to teach them how to do things for themselves,” he says.

That led to the series Build Your Own Home, which featured people building their own houses.

“They did all the work themselves and I’m really proud of the show. I loved watching them; [they] surprised themselves at what they could do,” Harrison adds.

Women and agriculture

Harrison is one of the speakers at this year’s Women & Agriculture conference, which takes place on 25 October in the Lyrath Estate, Kilkenny. When asked what he is looking forward to most, Harrison replies:

“Across Ireland, we’re experiencing a loss of agency when it comes to building, repairing and even maintaining our homes. Farmers and people who work with the land in Ireland are experiencing the effects of this in a very real way and I believe that farmers in particular might have some of the solutions that the rest of the country needs when it comes to solving some of our everyday problems ourselves.

“I’m looking forward to connecting with the backbone of the Irish farming community at the annual Women & Agriculture conference and celebrating a culture of repair, reuse and repurpose that is instinctual to every farmer in Ireland.

“Whether you’re male or female doesn’t decide whether you should be able to build your own house, everybody should have access to that.”

HARRISON GARDNER