Our approach
Our approach to your project is shaped by combining joyful design with the fact that sustainability and physics should be at the core of every design decision we make.
Our approach combines that joy with low-energy, low-carbon, and low-impact strategies, while always keeping an eye on aspirational goals, and practical concerns.
We believe our responsibility is to elevate the beauty and happiness that people can find in how they experience buildings.
This way of thinking, and the benefits that it delivers, is embedded in every project we undertake.
Every project is informed and influenced by three concepts that are foundational to how we think:
We have three foundational concepts
Emotional Engagement
When we talk of our work asking questions about how we want to live we’re really talking about making people feel something.
When we talk about joy we’re using it as a shorthand for emotional engagement with a building, and the impact of these feelings – in truth, it’s about much more than joy.
More than feeling warm or comfortable it’s about how someone feels watching the sunlight moving deliberately across their kitchen wall like a sundial, like waking up in a space that truly feels their own, or being in a place that feels completely and utterly designed for a purpose.
These are the intangible elements that make the pain of a build process worth it. This is how we answer those questions: with buildings that offer great experiences to their users and occupants.
Meaningful Impact
Impact can mean many things: environmental, spatial, social, and financial. It’s our belief that good design must account for all of these aspects.
Sometimes we’re focused on practical issues and fully rooted in environmental concerns, like minimising the use of cement in a big, bold development.
In other cases we contemplate the impact of time, how light falls, materials weather and develop patina, or how the surrounding flora and fauna will contrast with our work, or change with the seasons.
Importantly, impact is something that can be realised over decades, it doesn’t have to be immediate.
Some projects have the greatest impact by making the most of a modest budget that’s used to lay foundations for the future, setting out a grand, ambitious plan in a way that can be realised piece by piece.
Building Performance
Our primary concerns include overall building performance and delivering the right wider outcomes for our clients.
Energy efficiency and high thermal performance are valuable metrics, but they’re not the only markers that matter.
We’re as concerned with enhancing the human qualities of a building and evaluating whether it works in the way its inhabitants want and need.
Our approach leads us to think about what high performance means in human terms, whether that’s about comfort, health, noise, or other sensory experiences.
As trained Passive House architects its principles of comfort, health and energy efficiency, and our experience, are baked into every project, regardless of whether we’re considering certification.
It's about more than four walls and a roof
The work we do is always innovative and often unique. Our thinking extends beyond a building’s walls and boundaries out into the landscape around it.
In design terms, this can mean making best use of the available aspects from the inside and the outside, or thinking about how light with travel through space over the course of a day.
It can also mean thinking about how materials will weather on site, how this might affect their sympathy with their surroundings, and the logistics involved with getting materials to site in the first place.
And, because we are long-experienced Passive House designers, we have developed a methodology that will perform whether we’re creating a rural family home or repurposing an Antarctic whaling store into a science and art centre.
Projects
We work on projects across Scotland and as far away as sub-Antarctica. Our projects include homes, schools, offices, exhibition and arts buildings, sports facilities, visitor centres and emergency shelters. All are underpinned by commitment to comfort and low environmental impact.