THE SKY'S THE LIMIT
When the commute gets too much the obvious solution is to move closer to work, which is how one couple ended up living on Strathaven Airfield, hears Nichola Hunter
When the daily commute became too much to bear, one couple built their dream home at Strathaven Airfield
Fourteen years ago, when Colin Mackinnon and Marta Briongos bought the airfield in Strathaven the couple were living in Glasgow and commuting back and forward to South Lanarkshire. It was not, they soon found, a lifestyle that was conducive to family life.
‘As the airfield could be operating from sunrise to sunset and pretty much seven days a week, we realised we really needed to be closer,’ Colin explains. ‘We thought it would be a good idea to move to Strathaven and then we thought it would be an even better idea to build a house on site if we could.’
Having made a number of changes and improvements to the airfield since they’d purchased it, Marta and Colin already had a good relationship with the planning department. ‘We talked through what we were thinking, and they were supportive of our plans,’ says Colin. ‘However, then we had to decide who we were going to ask to design a house for us.
‘Marta went to art school in Madrid and I’ve always been interested in art, so we had a few of our own ideas in terms of design. After looking at architects from all over the globe, we invited Richard Murphy, a world-renowned architect from Edinburgh, to come and see the site. He flew over
in his microlight aircraft and instantly seemed to get what we were looking for.
‘We said that one of the things we’d really like was our living space to be sited on the first floor as the views would be better from there. Richard shinned up the windsock mast and said: “Yes, you’re absolutely right – much better view from up here.” We very much liked that hands-on attitude.’
With her art school background, Marta had been working on some ideas even before Murphy came on board. ‘I’d been working on a rough mood board, collecting colours, shapes, putting together things that we like,’ she says. ‘We gave it to Richard, discussed a few ideas and the next time we saw him, he came with his design, even though we hadn’t even confirmed whether we were going to work with him or not.’
Although Murphy’s single-mindedness took them aback at first, when they saw his designs any reservations instantly melted away.
‘At first I was thinking, where’s our choice of three designs,’ laughs Colin. ‘However, Richard came up with something neither of us could have imagined. He’s created something we would have dreamt of, if we’d known what to dream about. It’s a big credit to Richard that he actually listened to what we wanted and then added a bit of magic dust.
‘From the original design he produced there were only two changes. One was that we wanted a garage with a door on it while he’d suggested a car port. The second was that he had put the washing machine in the bathroom next to the bedroom, so we decided to create a utility room which we located downstairs in the room furthest away from the bedroom.’
While the internal layout was obviously important, what’s probably most stunning about the design is the way the building sits in such a barren landscape. The structure is a simple cantilevered steel frame with the roof and wall cladding in mill-finished corrugated aluminium, a material which resonates with local farm cladding and indeed the cladding of the adjacent hangars.
‘At the end of the airfield we have Europe’s largest on-shore windfarm, so on one hand it’s a very modern landscape and on the other a very traditional, old landscape. The planners were happy because a modern, kit-built house would have
“Our architect actually listened to us but then sprinkled a bit of magic dust
looked bizarre in the middle of an airfield and we were happy because the house ties in with the hangars and complements the land around it.’
Marta was delighted with the finished design. ‘Obviously tastes are subjective,’ she says. ‘But I love coming around the bend in the road and seeing the shape of our house. I love how it changes in the light of the day and I love how, from whichever side you look at it, it has a different aspect.
‘I’ve never understood why you have to paint hangars green; you see them in the landscape whether they’re green or not; they’re big sheds so why not just make them more interesting? When I see our house in this openness around it, it’s like a big sculpture in the middle of the landscape, it’s a piece of art. It was important to us that the house added to the landscape, it didn’t need to merge, just as long as it added something.’
The finished result is indeed impressive but the journey to get to here was a long and bumpy one. ‘We had been building for two years and then had to stop for a couple of years because our main hangar burned down causing £850,000 of damage,’ explains Colin. ‘It took five years for the insurance to pay out and we had to use the house fund to keep the airfield going.
‘It ended up roughly four years of building with about a two-year hiatus
in the middle. Whilst it was tempting to abandon it at times, the frame was up, and the windows were in, but it was incredibly difficult to get the momentum going again.’
But get it going they did and today there is nothing they would change about their unique home. ‘What we tried to do when we were planning the house was to think of all the different circumstances in which we would use it,’ he says. ‘Everything from what we would see when we were lying in bed, to having friends round for dinner and where we would dine and relax.
‘In that respect we don’t really have a favourite part of the house because our favourite part will depend on the weather and what we’re doing at that particular time. Each space reacts perfectly to its purpose.
‘Building our home was a challenge and one that we’ve completed but I don’t think we’d do another one,’ says Marta. ‘However, I think that’s because we can’t imagine the need to build again. It’s not just the house, it’s our airfield, the community in Strathaven, it’s a whole package and there’s nothing we want to change in that package.’