BATHROOM NEWS Tiles, towels and taps

AT E R I A L S

[Above] Sections of the rear of the house have been clad in mirror-polished stainless steel, reflecting the trees and bamboo planted opposite. [Middle] Huge windows frame views of the garden. [Top right] The ‘Staircase of 100 Objects’ was designed as display space for small artworks. American walnut clads the wall. [Right] A piece from the owner’s collection of ethnographic art is recessed into a wall

360-degree views,” says David. “But because it had never been planned, the kitchen (which we all know is where we spend most of our time) was in the middle of the old farmhouse and had very few sightlines out of it. It was dark in the middle of the summer so we knew we had to move it.”

The couple were clear about what they wanted: a home with art at its heart and the barrier between indoors and outside dissolved. But it wasn’t going to be straightforward, given the cellular layout of the farmhouse and the restricted floorplan of the single-storey 1970s extension. And there was another problem: the architects David had been calling about the redesign were proving impossible to pin down. “I thought I’d better go and actually see the next person and maybe I could make my case better face to face,” he says.

That person was Brooks, who was at a curious juncture in her career, having won several awards, including the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize (Wrap House, 2006) and the RIBA Manser Medal (Salt House, 2007), but was not yet internationally famous. David’s plan worked. “We were lucky to get her to run the project for us,” he says. “To her credit, she stayed with it and remained until the bitter end. I asked her why she did that and she said it gave her a chance to experiment with ideas.”

The first experiment was more of an inversion: to start thinking of the farmhouse as if it were the extension and vice versa. The older building was restored, insulated and waterproofed, given triple-glazed windows and a new roof. Next came the second experiment: to turn the space into a three-storey gallery for David’s collection of African ethnographic art, which stars pieces from Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. “It is a con trarian interest,” he says, “and a bit of a whimsical thing to pursue.”

[Above] Douglas fir ceiling beams enliven a minimalist window and allow an African sculpture to steal the show. [Opposite, top] Frameless glazing offers unobstructed views, while slimline glass doors slide open to the terrace. [Bottom] The pared-back simplicity of the decor puts the focus on key artworks such as this pair of 15th-century doors from a Rajasthani hunting lodge despite the stark appearance of the 309 sq.m west wing, clever tricks allow it to settle into its hillside location. For starters, indigenous wildflowers such as quaking grass, poppies and small scabious grow on the Alumasc sedum roof. Also, the extension is set back from the farmhouse, allowing the older building and the landscape to shine. “It was really important that the west wing receded against the farm house, which is made of local limestone and is quite light in colour,” says Brooks. “By working with very dark materials, it is like a shadowy presence in the background.”

Inside the west wing is a cooking-dining-sitting area that spans the full depth of the building; it is open-plan but subtly delineated with carefully placed items of furniture. The kitchen is a bespoke design built to the architect’s drawings, with Carrara marble worktops from Middlesex Marble and Hansgrohe taps. A dark-grey polished concrete floor runs throughout and all the timber panels are made of American walnut, adding warmth and texture. A new staircase – in itself an art installation – is also a storage system with 100 display cells for David’s smaller treasures. Elsewhere, there are four bedrooms, two studies, a cinema and bathrooms with sanitaryware by Hansgrohe, Duravit and Kaldewei.

The building feels rooted to the outdoors, thanks to views of the walled garden to the north, the entrance courtyard to the east, a second walled garden to the west and the sheltered terrace to the south. The internal walls all angle towards the living area, gently inviting you to sit, while huge expanses of glass from Fineline Aluminium and Schueco capture further green scenes. “There are glazed walls and windows in every direction and so many openings to the sky that you feel as if you are outside,” says Brooks. “That is

NORTH ELEVATION

onventional wisdom suggests that when you retire, you’ll be wanting to dow nsize and

Cput your feet up. If that’s the case, Nigel and Sue Evans have broken the rules. As their retirement approached, they were looking to relocate from Aberdeen to Edinburgh with the intention of finding a home they could put their stamp on.

That opportunity presented itself in the form of a handsome detached Victorian villa in the Midlothian suburb of Eskbank. “Our daughter had just moved to Eskbank and when we took a look around the area we could see that it was just beautiful,” recalls Sue. “There are so many really nice houses there. It’s a little further out of town than we’d initially imagined but it’s actually very accessible for Edinburgh.”

The villa’s grand scale appealed. “We wanted to have a good-sized family home with plenty of room to entertain,” explains Nigel. The mature garden was also a major selling point, so much so that right from the start the couple knew that as well as redecorating the interior they wanted to open up the back of the house to the garden. So, before they’d even put in an offer, they approached Níall

Hedderman of Capital A Architecture to discuss their ideas and find out if they were achievable.

“The house as it was had little connection to the garden,” Sue recalls. “In order to get to it from the back of the property, you had to go through a whole series of rooms – seven in total. The two just felt so detached. We wanted to open everything up with the idea that the garden would almost become part of the house.”

“We started discussing this with Níall, and he got it straight away,” adds Nigel. “He felt that a much more liveable space could be created. Almost off the bat we agreed on what we could do with the house, and then Sue and I went ahead and bought it.”

Research revealed that the property had been built for a local brewer, who was clearly a figure of some standing, which accounts for its grand scale. As is traditional with villas of this period, the formal rooms faced the front (in this case looking north). An extension had been added long ago to the rear and contained a ‘guddle’ of rooms including a kitchen and scullery, utility and bathroom. On the back of that was a more recent conservatory. “The whole thing had a convoluted layout with different floor levels from room to room,” says Hedderman. “There was little or no connection to the exterior. The brief was to create a space that would take advantage of the beautiful rear garden and also be a hub for family life, with a modern kitchen, dining and living space.”

The architect proposed dismantling the conservatory and then removing the old extension’s internal walls. Once the floors here had been lowered and levelled, a new steel-frame structure could be ‘dropped’ into the shell that remained. These external walls were a mix of good-quality cut stone and solid (but less appealing) brick, so it made sense to retain them. Most of the

[Below] The old extension that sat in this space was a warren of small rooms all with different floor levels. The builders dug down to level the ground and create much more head room. The glazing and the external doors were supplied by Mitchell Glass of Galashiels. [Right] The hallway’s beautiful floor tiles were revealed when the old carpets were lifted. [Previous pages] The patio was built by local firm John Lessels Landscapes. VMZinc supplied the zinc cladding

matching the new window frames. The grey is used on the roof and vertical cladding. The other striking element of the design is the cantilever roof that provides shelter from rain and shade from summer sunshine. It gives the rear elevation a long, horizontal modern elegance.

While they were waiting for these changes to receive planning permission, Nigel and Sue set to work refurbishing the villa’s interiors. “We’ve retained a great deal of its original features and character, including the marble fireplaces in the two living rooms, although these have now been fitted with modern log-burning stoves,” says Nigel. “We kept the original solid wooden window shutters too, which are ideal for keeping the place cosy at night in winter. The beautiful Victorian tiled floor in the entrance hall was completely hidden under carpeting when we moved in – it was a lovely surprise when we lifted the carpet!”

Getting the go-ahead from the planning department turned out to be straightforward. The timing, however, could have been better: approval was granted in January 2020, just two months before Covid forced the country into lockdown. Nigel and Sue were renting a flat in Edinburgh during the build and fortuitously the small team of contractors were able to keep working. The Evans’, architect and contractor formed a WhatsApp group so they could communicate quickly and easily, thus allowing the build to progress.

But the supply chain was badly affected by the pandemic, particularly in the manufacture and delivery of crucial elements such as the windows, which led to a delay of four months. “We couldn’t get hold of some materials, and prices were fluctuating,” recalls Nigel. “But there was such a good working relationship between Níall, the builder and us. Incredibly, the project still came in on budget, and the schedule in the end didn’t stray too far off course.”

f the walls of this property in Edinburgh’s Comely Bank could talk, they would have salacious tales to tell. And perhaps, in a way, they can: all you need to do is dig around behind the plasterboard to discover two eyebrow-raising objects that wink suggestively to the flat’s former life as a so-called gentlemen’s club. “We found a Venetian mask and a whip beneath the floor,” laughs the architect David Blaikie, who was hired by owner Innes Miller to help him reimagine the building, which dates from the early 1900s. “We hid them again so that whoever does a refit in another fifty years’ time will find them.” Miller wasn’t the first person to consider turning the commercial unit into a domestic residence, but he was the first to follow it through. In 2014, another property developer had secured planning permission to convert it into a four-bedroom dwelling, but the project was abandoned in the early stages after some initial structural changes had been made. For nearly six years it lay dormant, until Miller bought it in 2020. “It was like a building site when we first went in,” recalls Blaikie. “There was material lying around and temporary structural propping still in place. The floors had been dug out but there was no concrete, so it was just earth.”

Not that Miller was fazed by the empty shell. Though he works in financial services and had never developed a property before, he had a clear v ision for what the interiors could become, as well as the determination to realise it. “Since I was a teenager, I’ve been interested in interior architecture, particularly modernism and minimalism,” he says. “I remember in my younger years getting interested in what had been produced by the Bauhaus, and the passion has never left me. If you walked into my house right now, you’d see a bookshelf filled with architecture and design titles.”

Kyle House by Edinburgh-based architects GRAS and Peter’s House by Denmark’s Studio David Thulstrup were two projects Miller looked to for inspiration. Both are soothing in their streamlined simplicity, with neutral palettes and a use of humble materials. He was already familiar with David Blaikie Architects and felt the practice could achieve what he had in mind. “David had done work for some of my friends, so I understood the aesthetic he’s interested in and was confident we would work well together,” he recalls.

The admiration was mutual; Blaikie was pleased to have a client with ambition and direction. “That’s always a good starting point,” he says. “If you’ve got a client like that who is interested and engaged in every level of detail, and you’ve got the imagination and skills to figure out how it’s all going to work, that’s a good project. Innes’s wife said something very funny which I think is very apt: she saw me as the midwife, and Innes was having the baby!”

The first few months were spent getting to grips with the shapes and the spaces to see what was possible. “It was like a three-dimensional puzzle, shifting walls and floors to get to the right solution,” recalls Blaikie. There were some constraints

Old storie s & fre sh st arts

Tucked away in the back streets of Stockbridge, a former shop with a murky past has begun a new chapter as an award-winning home

Words Natasha Radmehr Photography ZAC and ZAC

ost of us recycle our soup cans, take a bag for life to the supermarket and never leave the TV

Mon standby. And that’s great – anything that cuts waste, prevents the burning of fossil fuels or the production of carbon dioxide is worth doing. But if we’re going to come close to achieving our net zero targets, we’ll have to do a lot more – starting with making changes to the way we live. That’s because buildings and the construction industry are a major source of planet-warming CO2 emissions. It’s a big problem in Scotland, where many homes have draughty windows, insufficient insulation and inefficient central heating.

One person who is all too aware of this is architect Calum Duncan. He is currently working towards accreditation in the passivhaus standard – for super-insulated homes that need next to no heating – despite feeling that new-builds are only a small part of the solution. “Sustainability is so important,” he says. “We’re supposed to be hitting net zero by 2050, but 80% of the buildings that will be around then already exist now. We need to improve these – we can’t just replace them with energy-efficient new buildings.”

He and his Edinburgh-based practice are more interested in ‘EnerPHit’ – retrofitting

existing buildings with passivhaus components. Energy and CO2 savings of up to 90% can be achieved.“Where passivhaus only applies to new buildings, EnerPHit aims for similarly high levels of energy efficiency in a house that has already been built,” he explains. “You get a significant improvement in the thermal performance and comfort of your home through upgrading the building fabric rather than by simply introducing renewables.”

Duncan put some of these theories into practice at this Georgian farmhouse in Fife. It has stood on a gentle hill overlooking the fertile fields of Auchtermuchty for well over two centuries and should be around for at least a couple of hundred years more. It will certainly be more enjoyable to live in, now that the upgrading of the interiors is complete.

Owners Nikki and Sandy Storrar farm the land here, raising livestock and crops. Sandy grew up in the farmhouse, as did his sister Gillian who’s now an architect working alongside Duncan. “She had a lot of inside information about the building and how it functioned,” he smiles. “That connection really helped when it came to having quite frank conversations with the clients and making suggestions about what could and couldn’t be done.”

The brief was pretty straightforward: “The house is cold and draughty, so we’d like it to be more comfortable,” the couple told Duncan. “We need a place where we can entertain and where

[Left] “Very little work was needed to the exterior,” says Calum Duncan. “The masonry was rock solid and just about all of it was in pretty good condition.” [Above] The house now has a much better connection to its surroundings, looking out across a wide expanse of fields, hills and farmland

French doors from the newly enlarged sitting room now open to a sheltered west corner. “The owners have a lovely kitchen garden there and a little patio,” says Duncan. “It’s a great afternoon sitting area and evening barbecue spot.”

Most importantly of all, the changes have allowed substantially more daylight into the heart of the house. A new opening was made in the side of the old dining room so the family can now go directly out to the ‘morning’ side of the building. “It has given them views across the fields to the Lomond hills,” says the architect. “And this is not on the ‘farm’ side of the building. You’re avoiding tractors. This is their private space.”

He has been meticulous about distinguishing his interventions in the existing walls. “It’s just good conservation practice not to pretend that it’s all old,” he points out. This appealed to the local planners too; the farmhouse is a listed buil ding and the architect worked closely with them to get the necessary per missions. “The new openings on the side didn’t interrupt the front elevation in any way or how you view it from a distance, and the materials were all appropriate for a listed building.”

The mullions of the new openings are deliberately deep. The idea is that as the sun comes around to the side, they’ll pick up the light. “That’s why we could get away with slightly darker timber there,” explains the architect. “It creates interest all day. We were never going to put in just one big pane of glass – the opening had to have the same proportions as the existing windows.”

He suggested how the materials could work in the kitchen, developing a concept for all the surface finishes, and the owners followed up with a kitchen supplier. “We always try to guide our clients with the palette of materials. It’s a question of money too – we have to be realistic. We don’t want people to spend thousands of pounds on stuff that is not actually needed.”

Rather, the budget was directed to things that really will improve the lives of the occupants. The existing windows were all upgraded and the new areas of glazing all have good thermal properties. The ground floor was properly insulated, underfloor heating was installed and there is much more solar gain. A woodburner was fitted too at the couple’s request. “They love it but they don’t use it as much as they thought they would because the interiors are now so toasty. But it’s a lovely focal point and it’s nice to have it on for special occasions.”

There must be so many farmhouses like this – and period homes in general – that would benefit from a similar upgrade. “It’s making the best use of a property in a way that maintains it and keeps it in good condition,” concludes the architect. “It doesn’t go out of its way to show off. It just wants to work well for the users and be delightful in a quiet way.”