Within the Landscape
Most contemporary “architecture”, as Grand Design homes, begs to draw attention to itself: to dominate its surroundings. In contrast a Highland house has, traditionally, sat within the landscape, in relation to it.
The site at Roshven sits in a huge landscape, with heartstopping views out past Eigg and Rum, but it’s also characteristically west-coast-intricate – broken and folded. It came with an Outline Planning Permission that assumed a house in the dell, at the back of its wee bay - a shadowed, north-facing, dreich place.
To its edge, though, was a towering wall of rhododendron ponticum atop a spine of rock: the invasive scourge of the west coast, that strangles and kills the rich, local ecosystem. Crawling about below the canopy revealed a narrow level strip between the rock and the cleft of An Garbh Allt – “the rough burn”, its roughness revealed when it crashes from regular flow to torrent as the rain skites off the thin, wet cover to the hill behind.
The ledge was just enough for a one-room-wide house which might then stretch from a wee entry court (at the end of a pedestrian bridge across the dell) to lean its living space out over the edge of the rocks, to address the view.
Location / Frisealach, Roshven, Moidart
Design / Malcolm Fraser - Malcolm Fraser Architects and Helen Lucas - Helen Lucas Architects
Delivery / Helen Lucas Architects
TimbER ENGINEER / Buru Happold
FRAME & CARCASS / Carpenter Oak and Woodland, Kirriemuir
Finishing & Fit-Out / Pod Carmichael, Glenuig
A Test-Bed for Building
Access was then difficult, particularly for heavy, unitary materials – blocks and the like. The site favoured our own interest in partial offsite: a heavy, green oak and douglas fir frame slid down from the layby above and raised Amish-like onsite, and then natural materials and vapor-open construction throughout, with hemp insulation and oak siding.
Two bedrooms on each of two floors, under a roof pitched up to the view, culminate in a double-height living space, with kitchen and dining under a mezzanine.
In all, the build acted as a test-bed for architectural preoccupations we have gone on to apply elsewhere: maximum carbon-lock, vapour openness, no need for toxic rot treatments and exposed timber, with limewash used as flame retardant – exposed timber emanating the hydrocarbon d-limonene that slows the heart rate; so the calming-down on arrival is not just the peace and the view, the sound of the burn and the sea’s fresh air; but the very substance of the building.
Sitting up Lightly
A framed building minimises its impact on the ground, floating over the rock on delicate feet, wee concrete pads under each and the wildlife still scampering about below. And perpendicular to road and foreshore it echoes the seatouns of the north-east and northern isles, narrow gable to the road (on its legs, in timber, the locals cry it “the Hen Hoos”) and sea, where its slenderness sits nice against the wooded slope behind.
Sitting high on the edge of the site the sun tracks round the house, from a breakfast deck to the east, which doubles as a bridge across to the top of the rock, to the sea deck, where the big doors slide open to view the drama of the sun setting over the islands.
Afterword
The rhoddy-bashing – labourious chainsawing, unfortunate stump poisoning – revealed the site, but, taken further, all over the surroundings, also allowed the old ecosystem to spring back: scots pine, birch, rowan, willow, and the defining tree of Scotland’s temperate rainforest, the sessile oak; plus all the holly, myrtle, blaeberries, ferns, worts, grasses and heathers of the understorey; and then, attracted to this native growth, all the insects they support; and then the riot of birds that eat the insects, and the pine marten that hunt the birds. Lovely to see.
