conversion
Re-purposing an existing, often dilapidated building can be an exciting and rewarding process.
The presence of established building will often allow occupation or development of a site where this might not otherwise be permitted. Retaining an old building does place certain constraints on what can be done - especially if that building is highly valued or Listed - it demands that one work with the grain of what is there. But, it can also anchor a project into its site, immediately providing deeper roots for the new. People built here before, for a reason.
Two projects feature below; one an improved farm steading in rural Argyll, the other an urban stable, hidden behind the grand houses it once served in Victorian Glasgow.
Auchoish
this conversion of a farm steading to residential use was done on a very tight budget but won awards and plaudits, as well as the love of its owners. Unsurprising - but perhaps not always fully understood - is that changing a building designed for cows into one designed for people presents challenges at various levels. How do you make a barn or a byre really feel like a dwelling? The answers go beyond windows, insulation and heating. Some rather wonderful characteristics of these old buildings really want to be preserved but others simply have to go. Deciding just where to draw the line is a subtle skill.
Kirklee
In a more urban context, this long, narrow building forms a retaining wall to Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens. Together with the grand houses above them and the coach houses below them, the stables complete an A-Listed ensemble of buildings from the city’s heyday in the mid 19th Century. Latterly used as a variety of garages and stores, they were combined, reconfigured and renovated as a contemporary dwelling.
credits
good buildings always involve collaboration. Thanks are due to Leslie Welch, Tilo Einert, Chris Platt, Colin Meikle and Davy McAllister for their hands in the above.
photography: Keith Hunter; Bruce Fitzgerald