TANTALLON, SCOTLAND

Academic | Creative Hub

Tantallon Castle, Scotland | 2009

BRIEF

Eco-Sustainable Creative Hub at Tantallon Castle. 

A Brutalist-inspired Passivhaus, envisioned as a vessel for thought and creation, serves as a hub and retreat for environmentalists, designers, architects, artists, and scientists. Housing a studio, flexible workspaces, sleeping quarters, and a restaurant and bar, it forms a self-contained environment for focused creation, exchange, and reflection. 

Timber and stone engage in an honest, tactile dialogue, balancing weight and warmth, permanence and renewal. Modular volumes and permeable layouts frame spaces for collaboration, experimentation, and contemplation, while Passivhaus principles ensure efficiency, sustainability, and comfort throughout. 

As a centre for innovation, the programme nurtures sustainable ideas, products, and systems. Workshops, conferences, and events activate the space, welcoming professionals, students, and academics worldwide. At its core lies a philosophy of reduction—of materials and energy—focusing on what is essential in both creativity and resource use. 

Set within the ruins of Tantallon Castle, the building draws strength from its remote coastal setting. Isolation sharpens focus, while the enduring ruins embody material reduction over time. In dialogue with this landscape, the architecture reconnects inhabitants with nature and prompts a reconsideration of the built environment and its lifecycle. 

Residencies, studios, and communal halls become chambers of possibility—spaces where ideas are distilled, and disciplines converge under a shared ethos of clarity, essentialism, and ecological responsibility. 

This is architecture as a living manifesto—where form amplifies purpose, restraint sharpens imagination, and sustainability coexists with human ingenuity in deliberate, poetic balance. 

[From final year thesis at the University of Edinburgh]

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