You were architect and contractor for the project — how do you wear both of those hats at the same time? How do you control cost?

We were also the client so you could say my internal loyalties were split three ways!  

Managing tensions between competing priorities is part of designing buildings generally, so aspects of the process felt quite familiar. What was particularly wonderful about this project — and shared with some of our earlier projects where we have also been the architect and the contractor — was the level of control and the enjoyment that comes with working directly with independent tradespeople from joiners to metal workers. Over the course of successive projects, we work with these specialists consistently, the dialogue is always relaxed, and a mutual understanding develops. It’s quite an old-fashioned way of working — I think less common now due to parts of an architect’s traditional role having been disaggregated into several disciplines. Perhaps the only reason we have been able to continue working in this hands-on manner is because I’m also a director of the construction company. It makes for an incredibly rewarding process and we’re lucky to be working in this way on three more projects that are currently on site.   

In terms of controlling cost, it is always useful to remember that the flip side is risk and we took some relatively large ones to save money. One example is with the concrete chimneys: for the first few hours after the pour, the hydro-static pressure on two stories of formwork is huge so requires careful management and absolute confidence in the shuttering. We could have used a specialist concrete contractor, but we decided to try it ourselves. Of course, had it gone wrong it would have been an expensive mistake however we also knew we would be able to rectify even the most catastrophic failure. So, we took the risk, it was a success and we ended up saving ourselves roughly 75% of the cost of a specialist contractor.

Could you explore the intimate relationship you had with material procurement and how that is materialized in the building details? 

When working as the contractor you naturally get involved in the detail of procurement. Given that so much of what makes a good building is in the sourcing and control of material, this is a key benefit to carrying out the work in the way we did.  

There can also be a personal dimension to this: 

The timber cobbles to the external walkway are the offcuts from the Douglas Fir wall in the office so instead of going on the log pile became the outside wearing surface. We procured this material from Logie Timber up in Forres and when they delivered the timber, we were told that it was felled in Birse, near Aboyne — which turned out to be from the garden of my next door neighbours when I was growing up!  I climbed in those trees when I was a kid so there’s a great personal sense of delight and satisfaction when I walk on those cobbles each day…

The building is located in quite a robust landscape — how did this influence your approach to scale and form? 

The surroundings here are awe-inspiring. It is a tightly woven landscape of drumlins and eskers and it is utterly beautiful. The land formations are incredibly pronounced in a very small geographic space, and it is into this context that our building is snugly fitted. Although the studio shares aspects of its form and construction with agricultural barns it has been designed from first principles as a response to the glaciated landscape that we’re sitting in.

What you think the value is for an architect to be working in a self-designed space?

It is difficult for me to be critical about this because I am so close to the project. I know all the foibles, so the drawback of now working here is knowing where compromises were made. But there is straightforward value in terms of visibility to potential clients and members of the public visiting the building. While there are only eight or so of the team working in the studio at a given moment, we typically have 60-80 people coming to the site most days to use the café, with even more at weekends. It’s not unusual for visitors to wander around the building, go onto the roof terrace and look at the work in the studio that might be on display. So, the value is quite obvious and we have received commissions off the back of having publicly-accessible elements to the building. 

This has also led to valuable interactions with the local community and we provide our meeting room pro bono to various local organisations while the café is used out of hours for yoga and wellness classes. This community offering is something we’re looking to continue to facilitate and expand on in the future. 

Is there anything you would have done differently?

During design the mass timber walls in the building were originally concrete as we were focused on discussions about energy consumption in use and ensuring there was sufficient mass in the building to act as a thermal store. We looked at this further during detailed design and it became clear that we would have sufficient material in the slab and chimneys so could extend the use of timber throughout the interior — this was a positive change that we caught pre-construction. The ground source heat pump delivers at least 50% of all the energy used in the entire complex so half the total demand is effectively free, out of the ground.  

If we were to do the project again we would have put greater emphasis on using engineered timber in place of steel to achieve our long spans.  Since completion we’ve been working on a handful of similarly scaled projects and they are all primarily engineered timber. Interestingly, we’re also proposing to lift some of these buildings off the ground to avoid the use of concrete slabs, using nothing more than a couple of piles which would necessitate a different approach to thermal mass. 

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