Context 158 - March 2019

38 C O N T E X T 1 5 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 9 and Rural Design,⁴ established by wife and husband Gill Smith and Alan Dickson. Other practices producing architecture of this type include Mary Arnold Forster Architects,⁵ who formerly worked with Dualchas; Colin Andrew Smith Architects,⁶ CP Architect;⁷ and Cameron Webster Architects.⁸ Much of this new architecture takes the famil- iar vernacular form of traditional crofts, black- houses, steadings and sheds, and dresses it with simple contemporary detail and materials. Scale is often traditional and human, with low-lying houses built into the landscape. Unenclosed curtilages and natural landscap- ing bring the wild organic environment up to the house and anchor the architecture in the landscape. Houses are built to exploit the view but in the best cases sensitive placement makes the building contribute positively to other views: sitting in the landscape and becoming part of that landscape too. Some elevations, for bedrooms and bathrooms on cold north sides or away from the view, have limited window openings, while extensive glaz- ing on other sides frame the views of mountain, moor, sea, beach or sunset, and take advantage of solar gain while being built to withstand gales, wind and rain (and there is just a bit of rain). Many houses sit close to the sea or the lochside, and the water is seen as a moving picture through large windows. Some are so close that from inside the house appears to be floating in the water or part of the beach. ‘It is this response to location and environ- ment, as seen in the blackhouse, which is our inspiration for modern Highland design,’ Dualchas Architects write. ‘Careful siting in the topography, creating shelter from the wind, the use of materials and their sustainability are all lessons that can be applied. ‘But we now also have to consider capturing sunlight, exploiting the views, creating beautiful volumes, carefully crafted detailing and integrat- ing modern technologies.The result is a language of architecture that is distinctly of a place – that connects to what has gone before but is also a modern statement of what the Highlands is and can be. It is responsive yet restrained – trying to sit within the landscape rather than seek to shout out.’ Materials are simple and suitable. Walls are sometimes clad in blackened or scorched larch and oak, corrugated cladding and zinc. But plain larch is the predominant cladding material, left untreated and fading over time from reddish brown to a subtle silvery tone. The materials may not be always be truly local to the site but in these more remote areas, traditional building materials were imported historically.The materi- als may be genuinely considered the most fitting for the site as part of the design process, and although some might feel they are used because they are popular with decision makers and more likely to obtain support, or that designers are simply following the wider trends in modern building fabric, they do befit this rural location and are not out of place, as they could easily be in urban areas. In the far Hebrides and the more rugged outposts of the western and north-western main- land, the landscapes are more austere. A single tree can be a gnarled and stunted novelty. The predominant traditional building material has never been timber and new architecture might not principally include timber either. Here more of the new design is based on earth-sheltered homes, almost like Hobbit houses, partly under- ground, with curved stone rubble walls and turf roofs. Curving rubble perhaps echoes the walling of iron-age brochs and blends with the ancient High Trodigal, Machrihanish, Kintrye: an earth- sheltered, stone- walled cottage built into the hillside ⁴ Tinhouse, Milovaig; The Hen House, Fiscavaig; Lusta, Waternish; The Black Shed, Skinidin, Dunvegan; and Turf House, Kendram, Kilmaluag; all on the Isle of Skye ⁵ The Black Shed, Heaste, Isle of Skye; Nedd, Assynt, Sutherland; and Sandbank, Isle of Iona ⁶ Askival, Arisaig ⁷ Tigh Rois, Sanna Bay, Ardnamurchan ⁸ Due West, Isle of Lunga