Scottish Design Awards 2022

Hi everyone.

I hope that everyone on LinkedIn has had a wonderful Christmas. I'm feeling a bit guilty as it has been a number of months since I last published anything on LinkedIn.

I thought I would take this opportunity to highlight two of my favourite projects which I had the honour of photographing back in 2020/21. The two projects which I am featuring today were winners at the 2022 Scottish Design Awards held earlier this year.

The first project that I would like to present to you is the Laidlaw Music Centre at University of St Andrews which was designed by Flanagan Lawrence Architects. This project was awarded first prize at the Scottish Design awards in the category of Architecture: Public Building.

The Laidlaw Music Centre provides three large rehearsal spaces as well as 10 individual practice rooms, recording studio, amplified music suite and main performance space.

The McPherson Recital Room which is the main performance space in the building can accommodate audiences up to 250. The Laidlaw Music Centre is the first Recital Room in the world to be fitted with a reverberation chamber which allows the acoustics of the space to be fine tuned perfectly for each musical performance.

The space in the recital room can also be reconfigured in an infinite number of ways with the entire floor comprising of a grid of movable floor panels which are controlled electronically. The flexibility to reconfigure the layouts of the performance space are illustrated in the video which follows.

The second project that I would like to present is Campus Central at University of Stirling which was designed be architects Page/Park. This project was awarded first prize at the Scottish Design awards in the category of Architecture: Education Building or Project.

The Campus Central Project comprises of a refurbishment and extension of an existing building. The new extension forms a new gateway to the campus providing flexible learning spaces, Student Service Hub and new box office/entrance to the Macroberts Arts Centre.

Having come from a design background, I really appreciated the attention to detail and the very tasteful, subtle, restricted colour palette contrasting the grey concrete with natural warmth of the timber wall linings and suspended acoustic panels.

I would like to congratulate Flanagan Lawrence and Page/Park for the part they have played in designing these two truly outstanding facilities.

I look forward to bringing you my annual project review for 2022 in the next few weeks.

I hope that you all have a great 2023.