Saltire Society hits 80 with its housing awards – and the search goes on for more winners
This year’s judging process will be as thorough as ever, writes John Brennan
The Saltire Society supports and celebrates Scotland’s culture and this year marks the 80th anniversary of its housing design awards. One aspect that helps define civic society is to have homes that provide shelter and that also delight, inspire and empower us all. Since 1937, the Saltire Society has recognised more than 500 projects that have made positive and distinctive contributions to our built environment.
The launch of this year’s awards is again an opportunity to seek out and reward the best in Scottish housing. The judging process looks to understand the full story behind a development, and not rely on rewarding only the physical appearance of a building. This year there are two very straightforward categories, for either single or multiple dwellings. The field is therefore open for both new build and renovation, for public sector or private developer and in size and scale from a remote bothy to a new urban neighbourhood. What sets these awards apart from others is a willingness to award excellence and distinctiveness wherever it is found. Developments receive recognition not only for housing design but the quality of the urban and landscape design of the spaces around them.
The judging panel reflects this diversity with representation from the construction industry, housing associations as well as architects, landscape architects and planners. Overseeing the whole process this year will be Dame Seona Reid, past Principal of Glasgow School of Art and currently Chair of the National Theatre of Scotland.
80 years of the awards have charted many fundamental shifts in the way in which we design and procure housing. Over decades, increases in population in Scotland has been modest but household growth has been startling. Our communities are diverse and ever more demanding. Student housing, sheltered homes, supported housing, cohousing, self-build, live work units and modern crofts are all fast growing sectors that are changing the way we choose to live. The Housing Design Awards welcomes this diversity and seeks excellence across a broad spectrum of developments. The Saltire Society sees its awards as encouraging and advocating best practice in a sector that sometimes seems lukewarm to innovation and best practice.
In the past, projects have been celebrated on account of a distinctiveness of approach and a rigour in which a design is realised in a completed development. The Gorbals has been a part of Glasgow that the Saltire awards have returned to repeatedly in recent years. They have recorded an ongoing transformation recognising six projects in the last two decades that records sustained improvement from darker days of slum clearance and comprehensive redevelopment. Recently the most significant work here is the completion of the first phase of
a new neighbourhood at Laurieston. Designed by Page and Park and Elder and Cannon Architects the work has won Saltire design awards for its housing design and landscape strategy. It provides 200 affordable homes in the heart of Glasgow deploying a broad mix of houses and apartments. Laurieston provides a contemporary take on the tenement, carefully planned to respond to the established Glasgow street grid. This particular award promotes design embodying confident scale and presence and at the same time fosters social and economic regeneration.
At the other end of the scale, Blakeburn, a single home in the Scottish Borders, recently won the Saltire Medal for Housing Design. Designed by A449 Architects, this is a transformative project involving the ingenious conversion of an existing cottage. It is an entirely bespoke building crafted around the needs of the client. Just as the Saltire Society celebrates new interpretations of the Glasgow tenement, in this case the Awards recognise rural design as no longer being the poor relation of its urban cousins. Blakeburn takes the simplest of forms, that of the longhouse and clads it in beautifully-detailed scorched larch to make an object of great sophistication.
So, if you’re a developer, client, housing manager or designer, the Saltire Housing Design Awards offer an opportunity to celebrate your work. Projects may be about regeneration, or innovation in new housing types and technologies. Or, like Blakeburn, simply a thing of beauty. John Brennan, Saltire Housing Design Awards Judge and Programme Director, Advanced Sustainable Design – MSC at Edinburgh College of Art.