archid office development
Existing Building
archid
Since its start in 2006 archid had operated from one of its partner's houses. This was only ever meant to be a temporary solution and it was quickly established that for efficiency and the sanity of the partner new premises would have to be found. Finding premises that met the needs of the growing practice for the right price and in the right location was a difficult premise. Eventually we found a small building at the bottom of Thomson Street in the heart of Dundee’s West End in which we could see great potential.
Existing Building
The existing building was originally a coach house for the large villa on the corner. For a number of years the building had operated as a commercial garage. The building itself was in a very poor state of repair when we bought it. The roof was missing slates and the flashings had perished this had in turn caused the timbers to rot.
Design Proposals
The concept for the office design was to retain the external form and materials of the coach house and insert a contemporary interior to suit our needs and reflect something of our design philosophy. We like the dynamic set up between ‘old’ and ‘new’ so that the history of the site can still be read yet the building feels light and modern. Another aim was to maximise the possible floor area within the building and create a flexible design that could be easily adapted for the possible future usage as a compact two bedroom mews house. In order to achieve this, the building itself would have to be stripped back to basically four stone walls.
Finished Design
The finished design has been kept as open plan as possible with a central “cube” which houses the bathroom. A mezzanine floor has been installed to the property adding a third more floor area than would have been possible prior to this. The structural steel which forms the mezzanine also ties the existing building together; it is exposed and expressed rather than hidden. We have used a limited palette of materials that we feel is appropriate to the existing building and maintain Scottish vernacular language externally. We have re pointed the existing stone walls with a traditional lime based mortar and we have used a traditional white render finish on certain elements of the stone work where the build quality was poor.
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