074 RUINS
good what was once loved or lovely in order to let it live again. And that comes from a deep knowledge of place as well as audience. It was while occupying the Observatory for an Edinburgh Festival commission in 2010 that Collective director Kate Gray realised the potential for its reincarnation; and plenty of useful local insights were then gathered while Collective was camping out in portakabins during building works. What they heard from many a windswept dog walker was that they wanted loos, views and a cafe – which the new scheme provides in spades. However, it’s only
by a stroke of luck that such gorgeous ruins were available to a small arts organisation, thanks to a peculiarity of Scottish law: As Gray says: ‘Edinburgh Council couldn’t do anything with it as it was held in the Common Good – the council was responsible for the buildings and could neither sell them off nor loan them to a private entity that might prevent public access.’ Te donation of remarkable sites to unlikely recipients is not as unusual as you might think. Te aforementioned Orford Ness was handed over to the National Trust in 1993, after the MoD had taken full advantage of its lack of
What they [Collective] heard from many a
windswept dog walker was that they wanted loos, views and a cafe
CASE STUDY HOSPITALFIELD, ARBROATH
Hospitalfield has long had a place in the hearts, minds and summer cultural schedules of locals in Arbroath and the wider Scottish arts education community. Built in the 1850s by artist Patrick Allen-Fraser and his wife Elizabeth, this striking arts and crafts mansion emerging from the remains of a medieval monastery and a 17th century farmhouse, was filled with the work and craftsmanship of their many artist friends, and the couple put in place a legacy that would turn it into a residential art school after their deaths. It later evolved into a postgraduate school, used by all the leading Scottish art colleges for residencies and workshops, enriched by its idyllic, coastal setting, 15 miles north of Dundee. But by the 1970s, this local landmark was struggling both financially and structurally. When Lucy Byatt took over as director in 2012, she launched a fundraising campaign to improve facilities for both visitors and artists and expand the programme while retaining all those best-loved qualities and characteristics of the house and its 60-acre site. In 2013, Caruso St John was selected through architectural competition for its thoughtful, low-key and long-term masterplan. The first phase of that £12m vision was completed in summer 2021: restoration and replanting of the monastic, walled gardens (under the direction of Olympic Park designer Nigel Dunnett), plus the reincarnation of a ruined Victorian fernery, and the creation alongside it of a glasshouse companion, housing a new, permanent cafe, serviced by a professional catering kitchen. While the house is important for its idiosyncratic style and impressive collection of Victorian paintings, drawings and sculpture, the gardens are arguably more vital to the surrounding community – not just to the volunteer garden maintenance team that has been nurtured over the years (rewarded for their efforts with their own plots for growing vegetables) but also to local primary schoolchildren, who have taken part in Hospitalfield’s annual parades and festivities, under
the guidance of the education and outreach team plus visiting artists, for the last decade. The next two phases
entailed a new accommodation building – providing 10 bedrooms to supplement the current accommodation for residency visitors – within the west side garden, and a new studio building that will also be suitable for artists working in new media along with renovation of existing studios at the rear of the site. With these upgrades and extensions, says architect Peter St John, ‘We are improving facilities for artists, but also providing Hospitalfield with good
accommodation so they can use the site more flexibly, for conferences and events. It’s about creating a revenue stream for the house to make it more sustainable.’ Caruso St John’s interventions respect and enhance the house’s history and its additive qualities – that visible layering of periods and uses - which makes it, says St John, such a special building, in the true spirit of the arts and crafts movement. The new accommodation building has been designed like a little cloister, making a garden within a field and incorporating an existing stone wall into the structure. Contemporary elements – such as the steelwork that supports the new fernery roof, as well as the glazed courtyard café – sit lightly against the red sandstone and brick. To preserve the house’s tranquil atmosphere, parking has been relocated nearer to the main connecting road, in an area that, it is hoped, may one day feature a new collection building (Phase 4), which will be the first point of reception for visitors, with a shop, an open archive of the collection and an exhibition space.
Client Hospitalfield Architects Caruso St John Landscaping €21 Nigel Dunnett Cost £12m over three phases Completed Phase one, summer 2021
THIS IMAGE AND ABOVE: VERONICA SIMPSON
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