A quarter of a millennium after the eponymous battle, Culloden is still an emotive word in Scotland, a reminder of a black day in the country’s history that has impacted ever since on its culture, governance and identity. But Culloden is more than just the story of the Jacobite Rising.
This bleak moorland five miles from Inverness is recognised as a site of international significance. It would be fair to say, however, that until the recent opening of a new £9m visitor centre, the tourists, school parties and other visitors attracted to it have been hard put to understand what actually happened in the flat landscape on 16 April 1746. True, it had a small interpretation centre, but it was hardly adequate to the importance of the location. Moreover, archaeologists showed it had been built on the government army’s second line in the battle, so the National Trust for Scotland decided to build a new visitor centre, away from graves and artefacts and take the opportunity to create a world class exhibition facility worthy of the site.
To secure the most appropriate design for the new building, the organisation held an architectural competition, for which it set the participants an extremely challenging brief. The winning solution by Gareth Hoskins Architects (GHA) is three times the size of the previous facility and designed for a quarter of a million visitors per year. It houses exhibitions and other interpretive technologies to explain the battle, with education and conference facilities for those who want more detail. There is also a 250-seat restaurant, shop and staff accommodation.
But it is the building’s sensitivity to its site and its environmental credentials that single it out, a design response invoked in part by tight planning constraints on heights, views and materials. The project is anchored between an existing field wall and a new rising berm aligned with the rearmost battle lines, a move that screens visitor traffic from the battlefield and guides them onto a planted roof terrace giving views across the site.
The building and the 80m berm combine to form a gateway for the route through the exhibition. Key points in the story are illuminated by views out to the landscape, before the promenade ends on the roof terrace itself. On Culloden’s cold, wet days, visitors may well opt to stay under the scalloped roofs of the restaurant. Equally, when the centre is closed, the site can be accessed via the portal formed by the bridge to the roof, a route passing a memorial marking its status as a war grave.
The form of the building itself is conditioned by many factors with its small surface-to-area ratio minimising heat loss and its low profile reducing exposure to northerly winds. Orientation maximises natural ventilation and glare-free daylight, the latter by the use of curved roofs to distribute north-east light via clerestory windows. The scalloped roofs are also extended to shade and shelter the building’s south-east glazed terraces, while large areas of south-facing glass are shaded by the external louvres incorporated into the larch cladding.
It is the extensive use of cladding that is one of the centre’s most notable features. GHA are, of course, no strangers to the use of larch cladding – their award-winning Robin House children’s hospice at Balloch used Siberian larch to exquisite effect – but here the client wanted a seamless link between building and environment and to use materials that were environmentally-friendly and locally-sourced. Both conditions have been met by one supplier: the Scottish-grown European larch used on the building was provided by Russwood which sourced the 1,700m2 of material from within a 60-mile radius of its Newtonmore base. Meanwhile, the automated space heating and hot water system is fuelled by wood pellets from the Scottish School of Forestry in Inverness.
The structure of the centre comprises a steel frame on a concrete floor slab with highly insulated timber walls and roofs. A large part of the roof comprises timber I-beams engineered to provide enhanced structural performance as they support almost 1,000m2 of green sedum roof. Supplied by Pasquill Roof Trusses, these are light, easy to fix and capable of installation without heavy lifting equipment. Similarly, Smartply OSB, an engineered load-bearing, wood-based panel product, has been used to good effect in the centre’s curved roof components and structural wall partitioning.
Many tourist and visitor facilities pay lip service to sustainability, but few provide such well-integrated solutions for this type of building as the Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre. Gareth Hoskins Architects has raised the bar and produced one of the most outstanding new pieces of architecture in the country.
The timber technology
Russwood’s ‘Scotlarch’ cladding comprises heartwood of Scottish-grown European larch (larix decidua) graded and dried, with proper detailing and installation, to enhance durability. The species is rated as moderately durable and, if the sapwood is excluded, can be used untreated for cladding. The sapwood requires treatment.
The building’s engineered timber roof from Pasquill Roof Trusses uses I-beams comprising PEFC-and FSC-certified wood.
The Smartply OSB used in the curving roofing and structural wall partitioning is an engineered load-bearing wood-based panel free of knots and voids and suitable for structural use in humid situations. It is also FSC certified.
The building’s internal timber linings use untreated local European larch with other joinery, from Hall & Tawse Ltd of Aberdeen, in oiled British oak.
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I-beams support nearly 1,000m3 of green sedum roof |
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The centre includes a 250-seat restaurant |
