Sanctuary apartments, Cardross

Each unit was designed to challenge the current tradition of family housing in Scotland, through employment of a new housing typology focusing on family living through the generations, supporting flexibility and longevity, in a tranquil and unique setting of the St Peters Seminary. Each floor has 2 apartments back-to-back, guaranteeing maximum privacy and facade coverage. Each apartment has a rectilinear facade which creates many opportunities for external “rooms”, providing much needed loggias, outside spaces, and greenhouses to support the rural nature of the family apartments. The typical column structure, which is rotated by 45 degrees to North, allows for the house to be adapted in many ways over the years to facilitate different tastes and demands of any given resident. In the long term, the building can be totally re-adapted for an alternative use. The architecture of the building references the renowned modernist abandoned catholic convent within the same park.

The interior spaces are all defined by their all-sided nature of the facade and their connection to the outside rooms. Here we see a living room on the 10th floor, where the 45 degree column structure forms both the structural nature of the space, but also the aesthetic character – with the use of a smaller grid size creating a more intimately scaled space.