Date: 17 July 08
Author: Caroline Ednie, Web Editor
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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: Keith Hunter Photography
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