C O N T E X T 1 3 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 21 context (in the widest sense) and sensitivity towards the building traditions of Scotland have allowed Reiach and Hall Architects to develop a number of successful projects. Although they are not conservation architects, their attitudes to the built environment are informed by their respect for Patrick Geddes, John Muir and Robert Lorimer. Their work strives to reveal the history and the beauty of the existing structures. Gillespie finds inspiration in art, philosophy and poetry, and acknowledged a particular debt to Peter Zumthor, an architect who uses historic precedents to generate ideas for new works. ‘Something new does not stand beside the old but grows out of it and is interwoven with the old,’ Zumthor has said. An appreciation of the Scottish landscape and its peculiar qualities of light were also evident. The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness is unquestionably rooted in its place and revels in the drama of being an ‘un-familiar’ building in the townscape. Gillespie described it as a ‘form that transforms’; the facade appears dense from one angle but becomes more open as you move past. The external timber ribs relate to the rafter spacing, allowing light in during the day and emitting light at night. In this case, the Orcadian summer twilight (the simmer dim) was considered a fundamental part of the building’s context and setting. Gillespie appreciates the value of opposites. It is a preoccupation visible in the recently opened Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre, where the practice took a surprisingly low-key approach to developing much-needed new facilities. Looking to the past, he acknowledged that Robert Matthew’s design for the original monument was inspired by the spiritual landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and Erik Gunnar Asplund’s Woodland Chapel. These images became touchstones, suggesting that the new building should be similarly introverted, re-emphasising the solemnity of the battlefield.The white walls of the internal courtyard contrast starkly with the highly glazed black pantiles, which seem to hint at chainmail. This refined reinterpretation of vernacular materials is also seen in the subtle reworking of the traditional snecked rubble to form the brickwork bond. Gillespie’s presentation was a timely reminder that the art of conservation does not lie in thinking about old buildings in a different way to the design of new buildings, but that it stems from a commitment to sensitively investigate each site’s context and meaning in order to develop a scheme that elegantly responds to the brief in a manner appropriate to our time. Sara Crofts Steps towards the conservation of Scotland’s best modern building With such a divisive subject as Category A listed St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross, it would take someone with the passion of environmental arts group NVA’s Angus Farquhar to keep order. Farquhar stormed us through an impassioned challenge to conventional conservation practice, using art to turn the site around. St Peter’s is a truly unusual piece of architecture, an unashamedly aggressive 1960s Catholic seminary encasing a Victorian baronial house in a 15th century landscape. Designed by young-gun architects at Gillespie, Kidd and Coia for an aesthete bishop at a particularly optimistic time for the Catholic Church in Scotland, it is a powerful, unapologetic symbol of the church’s self-confidence in its mission. The heavy ziggurat external form creates, enthused Farquhar, some vast, beautifully lit geometric halls inside, Neil Gillespie outlined a low-key approach to extensions and alterations Angus Farquhar envisaging a new future for the Gillespie, Kidd and Coia’s 1960s seminary at Cardross
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