South Crescent Road

With wide coastal views and a prominent location marking the entry to Saltcoats, the proposed site on South Crescent Road presents an instantly compelling opportunity for a landmark residential development.

The site is also deceptively challenging; other than the views there is little of immediate note to respond to. Our response to this is to propose a building that wraps itself around the northern and western sides of the site enclosing a south facing landscaped courtyard. Along the northern side, the building typically continues the scale of the adjacent built fabric, while along the western boundary the building steps up in scale to a maximum of 7 storeys.

Careful consideration of how the building will age has led to a deliberately simple palette of materials - brick, with a slurried finish, and glass.

Client: McLaughlin Construction

Cost: £2.2 million

Area: 1,957 sqm

Status: Competition

The building has been planned on a consistent module that across the facades gradually reveals itself; solid wall becoming broken down into brick piers and openings which are grouped together across different storeys to give the elevations texture at both large and fine scale. Further subtleties are derived from the play of windows between these piers in the facade; sometimes flush, sometimes deeply recessed, and sometimes completely absent - forming terraces for the larger apartments. The result is that this traditional everyday construction technique becomes somehow more special and interesting giving the project both a sense of familiarity but also sophistication.