coach house set in its own grounds already had planning permission to be converted and extended. “The permission had been there for a long time, but there was a reason no-one had developed the site, as it would never remotely stack up to the spend and to what the final result was worth,” explains Andrew. This was due in no small part to the actual condition of the coach house – which was now in a terrible state. All that was salvageable was the stone, and it would need to be entirely rebuilt in an appropriate way. Brown & Brown started by looking at some
retention plans, so they could figure out the best way forward and find a solution which was viable; one which would achieve the most from Russel and Wendy’s budget. However, in the end, knocking the majority of the building down and starting again was the most sensible option. Russel and Wendy’s wish list was relatively straightforward, and their brief to Brown & Brown was to design a house that was predominantly for them, but was one that their family could come back to. Also having been used to living in a rural location, they wanted privacy from the busy road that ran down one side of the site. “There were a couple of our designs that they had already seen, so we had a snapshot of what they liked. Beyond that, they wanted something that they wouldn’t think of designing themselves,” says Andrew.” The first consideration for Brown Brown was what to keep and what to get rid of, and where to site the house on the plot to maximise the clients’ privacy. “We wanted to create a barrier
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between the road and the house, and to site the house further east into the plot so that it would get the evening light.” This set Brown & Brown on the path to situate the build centrally in the garden rather than along its edge. Their vision was to build a house that was ‘in’ a garden rather than a house next to a garden. And while for some architects, the proximity to the busy road would have been a difficult challenge, for Brown Brown it was one that they were keen to take on, as Andrew explains: “It’s good to have a site where as an architect you have something to respond to, and for us it prompted us to think about a ‘secret garden house.’ The further you progress through the house, the more privacy you get.” To create the couple’s home, the majority of the coach house was carefully dismantled, and the masonry reused to create a boundary wall at street level which would mirror the other properties in the conservation area: all had stone boundary walls running the length of the gardens. “This boundary wall was something that this site didn’t previously have, and it was something that the planners suggested we could do to make a big difference in terms of how they viewed the design within the conservation area.” While the planners had been very supportive
of Brown & Brown’s plans in general, Historic Environment Scotland initially objected, not to the specific design, but to a new building in a conservation area in itself. “ortunately, the planner we were liaising with had written the conservation area statement, and we were able to show her that what we intended to build
sep/oct 2023
HIGH POINT
“I’d say the high point of the project was when we returned a few months after completion,” says Andrew. “We could see Russel and Wendy inhabiting the house and making it their own. It’s always exciting to see this, as the house sometimes evolves in ways you didn’t envisage as the architect, and it’s a sign to us that we’ve provided a home which people can enjoy living in.”
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