New Timber Architecture in Scotland is intended to show politicians, planners and building control officers that it is not unusual to build with timber. In doing so it also documents around 70 of the best projects built in Scotland over the past 10 years and signposts towards the next generation of timber buildings that are already either in design, planning or on site. The evidence is not of a new style or of an identifiable ‘Scottish’ architecture: rather it is one of increasing technical proficiency and genuine delight in the architectural potential of wood.

One of the most noticeable changes in architecture in Scotland over the past decade has been the increased visibility of timber in and on new buildings. The most widely published example is probably the complex roof structure and interior of the debating chamber of the country’s Parliament building designed by Enric Miralles but, from the Shetland Isles in the north to Dumfries and Galloway in the south, a significant number of new and excellent timber buildings continues to emerge. The trend has in some ways paralleled the arrival of devolved government, but it would be inaccurate to suggest it was instigated either by this event or by the creation of Scotland’s first policy for architecture.

Intriguingly, the first indications of a new interest in timber arrived with the first generation of Lottery-funded buildings. Mostly small and designed by a younger generation of architects, projects such as Malcolm Fraser’s Scottish Poetry Library indicated the potential of timber in facade design, while Richard Murphy’s high-level western red cedar cladding on social housing in Edinburgh’s Old Town made contemporary reference to the area’s mediaeval building traditions. Across town, Gareth Hoskins was introducing curving laminated beams within a new building type – a prison visitor facility.

Elsewhere around the country, a new generation of the type of visitor centres more associated with tourism was appearing in different forms – uncompromisingly modern at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute by Munckenbeck and Marshall; historically responsive as at Arbroath Abbey by Simpson and Brown Architects; and ecologically sensitive in the rethinking of the Highland clachan form in Glencoe by Gaia Architects. Larger cultural projects such as the Museum of Scottish Country Life near East Kilbride by Page and Park Architects similarly aimed to interpret traditional rural building forms.

Sensitivity to environmental concerns and a desire to create more energy-efficient commercial buildings underpinned the design of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency at Galashiels by RMJM, while designs by Davis Duncan Architects for a new headquarters for the Scottish Association for Marine Sciences near Oban demonstrated that timber cladding could be used even in exposed coastal environments.

Schools too, began to be clad in timber, such as at Auchterarder by Anderson Bell Christie Architects, but more than any other building type it has been housing – rural or urban, detached or multi-storey – that has seen the greatest increase in the use of timber.

Scotland has long had a sophisticated timber frame industry delivering around 70% of the country’s new housing, but what has been different has been the extensive use of wood on the exterior of new apartment blocks in inner city areas.

Two projects in Paisley by Gareth Hoskins Architects and Elder and Cannon Architects respectively, are representative of the new confidence in the use of timber in urban architecture, while in the rural environment, the range and invention in the use of wood on new houses has been a revelation. From Lotte Glob’s house in Sutherland, via Paterson Associates’ house and office in East Lothian to Crallan and Winstanley Architects’ house and studio in Dumfriesshire, outstanding new timber homes continue to emerge across the country to challenge the hegemony and often trite romanticism of the volume housebuilders.

And there seems no limit to the range of building types given the timber treatment – fire stations, recycling centres, cookery schools, multi-storey car parks, offices for government agencies, school and university facilities, and health centres, not to mention the world-renowned Maggie’s Centres in Dundee and Inverness and the outstanding Children’s Hospice at Balloch near Loch Lomond.

• New Timber Architecture in Scotland is published by arcamedia (www.arcamedia.eu)

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