Findhorn Garden Renewal

The Findhorn Foundation educational charity is embarking upon a programme of development and renewal of its campus of structures at The Park in Findhorn, Scotland. Located in the Original Garden area, at the heart of the community, this project proposes five new guest accommodation buildings and two administrative buildings for the organisation. The new buildings replace those that have gradually become unusable as they were temporary chalet and bungalow structures that, despite their intended service life, have been made to last for more than 50 years. The renewal is an opportunity for the Foundation to build buildings bespoke to their needs and in alignment with their core values of inner listening, co-creation with nature and work as love in action.

The Seed Lodges are five small buildings that offer guest accommodation to visitors of the Foundation who are attending their educational programmes, workshops and other events. They are envisioned as natural artefacts that have grown out of their garden setting. Each lodge provides three or four beds as well as kitchen, living and dining spaces. They are timber framed structures that sit on micro-pile foundations fitting closely within the existing trees and planting with minimal disturbance. Their curved forms are covered with a tiled cladding that is ceramic where needed to manage moisture or fire risks and wood shingles elsewhere.

The Wave is a new administrative building that consolidates an existing group of smaller structures into a single elegant structure that provides flexible office and meeting spaces. The wave-like form allows the building to be low in some places and higher in others, fitting naturally into its setting by staying low at either end where it adjoins trees or other buildings and rising up into the open space in the middle.

Nautilus is a second administration building that also provides office and meeting spaces. It is located on a corner of the site where key pedestrian paths intersect and thus has a form that holds this corner and activates the street frontage. Its round form compliments its visibility from many viewpoints and it is set back into the earth bank giving the sense that it has emerged from the Original Garden behind.