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maintenance, refurb & heritage conservation
the future of heritage is designed today
David Tibbs, Senior Partner at ORA Architects explains why heritage design should be less about replacing the old and more about reinterpreting it for a new era...
From stone-built crofts to city tenements and laird’s halls, much of our built environment in Scotland is founded on tradition. As architects working in this context, design is less about replacing the old and more about reinterpreting it for a new era. The craft lies in using traditional materials in new ways and finding fresh expressions that honour the past. It’s also about reimagining how these spaces are used, breathing new life into historic forms by adapting them to contemporary needs, whether that’s transforming a croft into a creative studio or a tenement into a co-living space. A recent project in St Andrews brought this into sharp focus.
We were commissioned to work on a small museum, set within a 17th-century Category C Listed building next to the cathedral ruins. The building no longer met the needs of modern visitors, especially when it came to accessibility. But rather than seeing
this as a problem, we treated it as a design challenge. Part of the solution was to add a new structure which was positioned to the rear of the site, designed to meet contemporary needs while complementing the original building’s character and context. However, conservation isn’t simply about careful restoration;
it often uncovers intricate structural and material challenges that demand specialist knowledge and a deep understanding of historic construction techniques. At a site in Cupar, what began as a relatively straightforward refurbishment uncovered far more serious structural problems. Years of hidden deterioration, masked by surface-level fixes, meant the roof and upper floors were beyond saving. It was a stark reminder of how fragile traditional buildings can be, and how even well-meaning interventions can do more harm than good if they’re not grounded in a true understanding of the original construction.
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