Kinerras
A new rural home and studio, arranged around a walled courtyard garden. The house is carefully placed within a clearing, surrounded by native birch woods. The garden is defined and contained, while everything beyond the courtyard remains an untouched woodland landscape.

The house has been designed for a family of five including Lewis, a watch designer and founder of anOrdain, and Charlotte, a painter. They wanted a low-impact lifestyle, and a robust grounded building on their family croft in the Scottish Highlands, close to where Charlotte grew up.

The garden acts like a room - sunken into the surrounding topography and contained with a boundary wall, which belongs to the geometry of the building. Rooms open onto the garden through a covered colonnade, which creates a space between inside and outside. Doors can be left open on showery spring days and are afforded a sense of openness and generosity which encourages a lifestyle more directly connected to the garden.

The external shell of the building is load-bearing, constructed in monolithic thermal clay blocks. The internal structural framework is contrastingly lightweight, formed of locally sourced Douglas Fir. The timber frame is intricately constructed, using timber-to-timber dovetail joints in place of steel fixings.