Output details

The Shed (Drummond House), Meigle, Scotland

Context

The research extends a scheme design (RAE 2008) into a constructed building which was used, with subsequent cognate designs, as a platform to develop a serial design vocabulary for architecture in response to sensitive agrarian sites. The development of ‘Constructed Landform’ as a built project and articulated position was undertaken during the REF period and is on-going.

Questions

How to articulate a narrative framework of principles for serial design practice in landscape settings?

How to extend local agricultural building technologies and landscape forms into an appropriate architecture language for domestic buildings in an agricultural context?

Methods

The research constitutes a form of ‘model practice’ which articulates ideas about rural landscapes and transcribes them to contemporary architectural practice. Within the ‘landform’ conceptual framework, projects are developed in a serial manner; by recognizing this pattern of action-reflection-reaction, individual designs give way to more continuous themes in this practice-based research. The author has evolved a working method that resists the ubiquitous 'conceptual sketch ' or hand drawing during the initial stage of the design process as it tends toward promoting organisation and function as the defining narrative. Projects are intensively 'thought through' using a critical approach to place and programme to stimulate and constrain thought, and promote dialogue with the client. The aim is to consider the building in all its dimensions simultaneously, and loosely determine its spatial characteristics, material expression, and its 'presence' as a container for the programme.

Dissemination

Publication

• Academic, Professional, and Popular Press

• Web Journals

Exhibition

• RIBA Awards Exhibition

• Royal Scottish Academy

• Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre

Esteem

• RIBA Award 2009

• Scottish Design Awards 2009 - Best Residence

• RIAS Chapter Awards 2009 - Best Residence

• RIAS Chapter Awards 2009 - Supreme Award, Best New Building in any category

As a design project, the Drummond House ‘the shed’ synthesises two separate but related research contents. It articulates a theoretical position about the serial development of the house type that it puts forward as a model of practice and site enquiry; and it develops a new proto-industrial agrarian vocabulary for domestic dwellings in sensitive rural sites. This research was supported by design- and text-based methods in dialogue. As a built project, Drummond House further tests this serial design strategy and this formal/spatial/material vocabulary within the Scottish planning and procurement system and within the fields of popular and professional opinion.