Scottish Architecture

Roshven, Belladrum

Lying on an elevated site in mature woodland the new house for Mairi Ross and her two children is the result of detailed discussion between the architect and client about the kind of house they were looking for. Primarily the house was to be full of light, easy and economic to heat and would need to provide a social and communal arena for family life balanced by areas of privacy.

The issue of how much glass can be incorporated into family housing has been looked at in various houses completed by this practice over recent years with different orientations and areas of glazing on to living areas. The wish to introduce as much light as possible has to be balanced by consideration of possible glare, overheating from solar gain and heat loss through the glass. We believe that in this house we have achieved a good balance between lighting and comfortable heating.

The house is constructed in timber framing, clad with home grown larch, stained blue. Interior accommodation features 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and study area on the upper floor, with a study, living area, utlity room and kitchen and dining area on the ground floor. All the living rooms and bedrooms open on to the 2 storey living space therefore overheating from passive heat gain has been reduced.

Heating is via a ground sourced heat pump linked to underfloor heating with a wood stove in the living area and a solar panel heating hot water.

Construction started in December 2005 and was completed in October 2006.

Roshven was recently awarded ‘Best New Building’ at the Inverness Architectural Association District Awards (3 July 2008)

Project: Roshven, Belladrum
Architect: David Somerville
Client: Mairi Ross
Location: Inverness-shire
Cost: £200,000
Link: www.somervilledesign.co.uk
Images: Ewan Weatherspoon

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Tigh na Dobhran

Tigh na Dobhran is a single-family dwelling built in a rural location on the West Coast of Scotland. After taking Studio KAP's advice the clients purchased the plot with detailed planning consent for a staggeringly obtuse building obtained by a mainstream speculative house-builder. The Glasgow based practice's brief was to start again.

The site commands a wonderful aspect and curving around its back is the embanked coastal road. The location is very beautiful but highly exposed to the open sea-loch. Studio KAP’s first considerations were of buildings and landscape; how a house could be placed, formed and orientated to at least begin to protect and contain some element of the site within its influence - how “sense of place”, enabling dwelling, could be established and reinforced.

The pier offered a key starting point and a long house, similarly aligned, responds to its orientation to stake a claim on the space between. Sitting back off the pier enabled the main, long side of the house to address coast and garden, looking SE to the morning sunshine, while only the gable braves the more direct view out to sea. The darker NW side is largely populated by bathrooms, top-lit beneath the trees. The dug-in NE heel of the building is entirely closed towards the road, buffered by the garage.

In the external composition many thoughts have been at play, they key themes of which can perhaps be read in the finished building. In their opposition, orientation, materials and meeting of the ground a conversation is imagined between house and pier. The beach is always a place where the natural and the man-made meet – driftwood lodged amongst rock, pier cast over skerry – and the house recognises this. Materials are self-finished and durable, responsive to changing light and landscape but also acknowledging local traditions from a non-traditional position, down on the shoreline.

In the internal composition the overriding theme has perhaps been the resolution of exposure and shelter, how to provide the latter without anaesthetising the former. Massively thick, creamy walls are played against cool grey windows. Through the plan and sectional composition – a held bunch of flowers – an inevitable journey towards the sea continues, passing by shady caves and through sunny volumes.

Project: Tigh na Dobhran
Architect: Studio KAP
Client: Private
Location: Arduaine
Cost: £430,000
Link: http://www.studiokap.com
Images: © Studio KAP

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HBOS, The Mound

HBOS was formed out of the merger of the Halifax and the Bank of Scotland in 2001. The Headquarters of the old Bank of Scotland was a venerable and vigorous, much altered but hugely significant piece of A-listed Edinburgh townscape that had dominated the northern flank of The Old Town since 1806.

The merger provided the impetus for the creation of a renewed, working Headquarters. The brief was short and both practical and symbolic: to create a “stunning” and practical working Headquarters that “would be seen as a public commitment and endorsement that the Head Office of HBOS will permanently be in Edinburgh at the Mound”.

The twentieth century had been unkind to the building. Aside from everyday depreciation, the building had been skewered by the addition of eight lifts. While none served more than a couple of floors each, they had destroyed a suite of rooms, reducing the building’s capacity with the result that the great Telling Hall, the heart of the building, had been subdivided with a mezzanine and offices. The Design Team demonstrated how a double lift-shaft, located strategically, could replace seven of the existing lifts – thus gaining so much useable office space (principally in reclaimed late-Georgian and Victorian rooms) that the mezzanine could be removed and the heart regained, while still showing a healthy net gain in floorspace. The Great Hall acts as a Meeting, Conference or Function Space – the heart of this major financial institution – its grandeur giving a fillip to all the everyday and extraordinary business transacted there.

The Design Team’s second principal initiative was to deck-over the car park that had been cut-into the “Mound” (Edinburgh’s first link between the Old and New Towns) below the Bank, recovering a useful garden space on top of the deck. The garden would act as a resource for both staff and functions, but would also have a public function, acting as a garden entry to the front door to the Bank’s new Museum, which was planned to sit under the main floor.

Access was greatly improved. At the front door cash machines have been removed from the main entrance bays, internal screens removed and the generous, glazed connection to the Mound regained. Instead of windows, doors are inserted into the side bays – the recovery of the general proportion of the original entrance allowing disabled entry at the front door. This is an unusual success for a Grade A-listed building – as, indeed, is the achievement of level access throughout the precipitous, complex, historic building and its Gardens.

Modern IT and Services were carefully stitched through the building, led by a low-energy strategy with geothermal heat pumps which, depending on the season, dump heat or recover it from shafts sunk deep below the garden, to where the ground temperature is around a constant 12°C. Traditional crafts employed on the building included stonework and the repair of stone statuary, plasterwork and gilding, and cabinetmakers repairing and re-assembling panelled rooms.

Project: HBOS, The Mound
Architect: Malcolm Fraser Architects
Location: The Mound, Edinburgh
Client: HBOS plc
Contractor: Sir Robert McAlpine
Landscape Architect: City Design Co-Operative and Malcolm Fraser Architects
Link: http://www.malcolmfraser.co.uk

Photographer: Paul Zanre Photography

McGregor House

The McGregor House brief consisted of alterations to a large Victorian property located to the south of Edinburgh.

An existing single storey utility area was converted into a high quality kitchen by removing the existing roof and replacing it with a continuous glazed clerestory in satin glass around the edge of the new roof. A large window with a breakfast bar provides ample south facing views down the garden. In addition, a natural slate floor and white kitchen units with solid timber worktop complete the minimalist but practical appearance. Underfloor heating was provided throughout.

The adjacent existing kitchen has been turned into a large family dining room. Finishes include solid Jatoba flooring and a dropped ceiling with low voltage lighting separated by a shadow gap detail from the walls, which are painted a light grey. A skylight in the new kitchen roof illuminates a serving area located in a new opening between the two rooms.

More straightforward upgrading was involved in the adjacent study, and an attic conversion now provides a new family bathroom and double bedroom.

Project: McGregor House
Architect: Graphite Studio
Client: McGregor Family
Location: Midlothian
Cost: £140,000
Link: http://www.graphitestudio.co.uk
Images: Andrew Lee

Childcare Facility, Dingwall

The recently completed Childcare Facility by Reynolds Architecture emerged out of a developers brief to speculatively procure a crèche in Dingwall after identifying a gap in the market.

The design parameters of the purpose-built centre, which accommodates babies up to pre-school toddler age, have been set within the national guidelines set for childcare facilities in terms of supervision, staffing and area requirements. Located on a green field site in a local business park, the project features a steel clad, steel framed structure combining modern construction technologies and insulation values. Naturally lit domestic scale spaces throughout create a more intimate ambience to the interiors.

Project: Childcare Facility, Dingwall
Architect: Reynolds Architecture
Client: James Evans and Sons
Location: Dingwall
Contactor: James Evans and Sons
Link: http://www.reynolds-architecture.com/

The Shed

The Shed’s raison d’être is the marrying of the humble agricultural sheds of rural Scotland with modern technology.

The house has been constructed via a steel frame that allows the creation of a layered effect to the walls. The whole depth of the wall is around two feet, much like a traditional stone building, and this allows various elements, such as the cantilevered gable window, to be contained within the depth of the wall.

Various fixed and sliding glazed elements take full advantage of the spectacular views. Rooting the building firmly in the agricultural shed tradition is the use of corrugated steel sheeting on the roof and cladding. A rainscreen and external storm shutters of locally sourced Scottish larch effectively enclose and protect the house against the elements.

The simple rustic aesthetic of the exterior is also reflected in the interiors – both in terms of space and materials. The Shed is arranged over two main levels with an open plan kitchen / dining and living area at the heart of the ground floor with a bathroom and bedroom to the east and two further bedrooms to the west. Due to the spatial possibilities allowed by the steel portal frame (which dispenses with the need for any ceiling straps or ties) the first floor extends into the roof space and features a living area in the west gable which in turn leads up three steps to a small landing office space and finally the master bedroom with en-suite bathroom. There are no halls or corridors or indeed any wasted space at all in the house.

The Shed’s energy efficient credentials are assured via solar panels, over-insulation and the first grant-aided exhaust-air heat pump in Scotland to power the under-floor heating and hot water system.

Project: The Shed
Architect: Dualchas Building Design
Client: Mary Arnold Forster
Location: Skye
Cost: £250,000
Links: http://www.dualchas.com
http://www.skyeshed.com/
Images: Andrew Lee