we have just been granted planning for a painting / potting room in Morningside, a really nice project to work on, giving a boy a new inside-outside place to play
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saltire plaque
We are delighted to have won a Saltire Housing Award for our Ramp House – it is now shining on the caithness wall at the front door. Here is what Lesley Riddoch, Chair of the Judging Panel said:
“We admired your determination to fit a house round you – not the other way round. You took a pint pot of a site and cleverly built a house just high enough to “borrow” views of all the fabulous gardens around. You created a house with a common way of moving about – not isolating your daughter into lifts and hoists and it works beautifully. Connecting with one another via the ramps inside you also connect directly with the street outside via that lovely wee breakfast window. The whole house breathes confidence in its location, in one another and in your neighbours. Wonderful.”
We’ve just had the great news that The Ramp House has been shortlisted for the Saltire Housing Awards single dwelling.
Here is the press release:
Lesley Riddoch Unveils Saltire Awards Shortlist…With Scottish Minister Set to Present the Accolades
Saltire Society Housing Design Awards Guest Chair Lesley Riddoch has announced a diverse awards shortlist for 2013, with the scheme enjoying another year of encouraging submissions from across Scotland’s innovative housing stock.
The Society has also revealed that Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Minister for Housing and Welfare- Margaret Burgess MSP – will present the gongs at the 76th annual ceremony later this year.
The Society stated its delight at sustaining the quality of submission from previous Awards despite the hard times the housing market has seen in recent years. With schemes as remote as a striking new-build in Kilmaluag, Skye by Rural Design; and as diverse an Artist’s Residence, gallery and workshop in one by Fergus Purdie Architects up for the Awards.
The Society also reported that one of the shortlisted schemes was an affordable housing project within a wider regeneration initiative in Govan Glasgow, a progression that allies with their Housing Design Awards’ mission to encourage better quality housing and neighbourhoods for everyone in Scotland.
The 2013 shortlist for the new Innovation in Housing Award has also been revealed, and includes examples of innovation in the development of volume housing building and inner city residential neighbourhoods to better meet the needs of current and future residents. The award encourages original thinking in housing design and delivery in Scotland.
Welcoming the 2013 Shortlist, Ms Riddoch– who will select and present the Saltire Medal to her favourite project from this year’s entries – gave her reaction to this year’s submissions: “I was really impressed with the herculean effort shortlisted clients were prepared to put into creating a real home not just four walls and a roof. One couple chose to squeeze into a tiny, unlikely mews site and create an entirely stair-free, ramped interior to let their wheelchair-using daughter stay near friends and town facilities and have equal access throughout the building. Another combined an urban plot used by two different owners to build a unique three-storey house/gallery/office accessed only by outside stairs and yet another battled planners for almost a decade to build an extension beyond the original footprint of an old mill. One family used recycled material throughout – including old railways sleepers in the garden; another transformed hard-to-use attic rooms with bold dormer windows. All have shown that amazing, sustainable, bespoke homes lie within the reach of many Scots.”
Jim Tough, Executive Director of the Saltire Society said of the Awards in relationship to the Saltire Society’s aspirations:
‘We are delighted with the response to this long standing and influential commitment to encouraging and celebrating the very best design in the places we call home.’
The full 2013 Saltire Society Housing Design Awards Shortlist is as follows:
Large Scale Housing Development
– Dunsmuir Street, Govan: Anderson Bell + Christie Architects
Small Scale Housing Development
– Bridge of Dye, Banchory: NORD Architecture
Alterations, renovations and extensions
– Little Ennochie, Finzean, Banchory:Michael Rasmussen Associates
– Westbourne Drive, Bearsden: NORD Architecture
– Grange Loan, Edinburgh: Helen Lucas Architects
Single Dwelling – New Build
– The Ramp House, Portobello: Chambers McMillan Architects
– Artists Residence, Perth: Fergus Purdie Architects
– Passive House, North Berwick: Brennan & Wilson Architects
– Turf House, Kilmaluag, Skye: Rural Design
Innovation in Housing Award
– Stewart Milne Group Design Guide
– South Seeds Energy Snapshot Report
SALTIRE INTERNATIONAL STUDENT TRAVEL BURSARY
An Award to the value of £1500 will be made for a work of art and/or craft designed to enhance and enrich the built environment (in its broadest sense). Student artists and craftsmen working in any suitable medium were invited to enter a graduation piece for the 2013 award by nomination. The Award endeavours to enable the winner to pursue a research project, including international travel related to their practice. The winner will also receive an Award certificate and membership of the Society. The shortlisted candidates are;
Allison Secker The Scott Sutherland School of Architecture
Anna Barbieri, Andy Casey,
Chlose Fawcett, Sniedze Riekstina Glasgow School of Art
Marcus Rothnie Edinburgh College of Art
Louise Paterson University of Dundee
Lisa Irvine University of Strathclyde
This inaugural award is granted through the generous sponsorship of the British Council Scotland.
The awards will be announced at a ceremony at the Lighthouse, Mitchell Lane, Glasgow on Monday 9th September 2013
There will also be an exhibition of the shortlisted projects at the Lighthouse from 4th September until 16th October 2013.
For more information on the awards, the Saltire Society, and the judging panel please visit:
http://www.saltiresociety.org.uk/awards/architecture/housing-design/
-Ends-
Notes for Editors
Further images of shortlisted projects are available from Sarah Mason and Fergus Bruce.
Image copyright exists where expressed.
About the Awards
Our Housing Design Awards have been rewarding and advocating innovation and excellence in Scottish house building and place-making for longer than any other design awards in Scotland. They are a highly regarded, long-standing example of the Society’s commitments, aims and objectives.
Intended for Owners, Clients, Architects, House-builders and Housing Developers of all shapes and sizes, the length and breadth of Scotland – the awards have recognised everything from single dwellings in the remotest reaches of the Highlands, to large-scale commercial developments in the country’s major urban centres.
Successful entrants agree that recognition by the Society’s panel of industry leaders is a major enhancement to their image and profile, and a ringing endorsement of their work.
2013 marks the awards’ 76th anniversary, having been the very first Awards scheme initiated by the Society. Far from just glancing backwards at this proud history however, the awards have in recent years been re-imagined in a Scotland where the need to promote good design and housing for all is just as immediate as it was in the 1930s. We are once again looking forward, and seeking new entries from across Scotland.
About the Saltire Society
We believe we have an important and unique role to play, as an independent advocate and celebrant of all that is good and important about our cultural lives and achievements. We are working hard to refresh our work fit for changing times. The Society has played a crucial role over the last seventy five years, at times as a lone voice, in recognising our cultural achievement. And while times have changed the need for that independent voice remains.
We are;
- An apolitical membership organisation open to all
- An international supporter and patron of the arts and cultural heritage of Scotland
- A champion of free speech on the issues that matter to the cultural life of every Scot
- A promoter of the best of what we are culturally, now and in the future
- A catalyst to ensure new ideas are considered and the best of them are made real
About the British Council
British Council Scotland was established in 1946 in Edinburgh, with the purpose of promoting the best of Scottish culture and learning to the rest of the world; bringing foreign academics, engineers, students, policymakers and artists to Scotland and taking their Scottish counterparts abroad. Today our mission remains to promote Scotland’s cultural and educational assets on the international stage, with the objective of building enduring relationships and trust between the peoples of Scotland and other countries through an exchange of ideas, knowledge and information.
British Council Scotland has global reach through a network of offices in 110 countries around the world. It can pull together overseas knowledge, experience, views and perspectives, catalyse relationships, and provide confident comments on issues affecting Scotland’s profile and standing on the international stage. And its overseas offices are a source of support and assistance in-country to visiting cultural and educational envoys from Scotland; knowing who the key players and most relevant institutions are.
Every three months a magazine called life style drops through our letterbox. You can’t buy this in the shops for love nor money, but is sent out to the 400,000 motability car owners. Each issue has at least one story of people who have taken their circumstances and used them to make things more accessible for others as well as themselves. Ian thought that they might want to know about our story so emailed them, and we were interviewed by a lovely journalist who understood our situation through her own experience. Since the magazine came out we have had a number of really lovely comments and enquiries, just reminding us how many people are in similar circumstances to ours, needing inclusive environments designed for them. It seems we are becoming a specialist practice without trying. lifestyle ability
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