Windyhill

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s genius is internationally recognised; he is considered one of Scotland’s greatest architects. For BARD, the opportunity to design a new public-facing intervention at Windyhill, his first fully autonomous commission and last remaining major work still used for its original purpose, came with clear responsibility. Our aim was to serve our client’s needs while honouring Mackintosh and Windyhill.

Windyhill was commissioned by William Davidson, an early patron of Mackintosh, who entrusted the young architect with complete creative freedom. The resulting house is seminal to his architectural development, a prototype of his domestic ideals and a precursor to The Hill House.

Our project mirrors this origin. It was BARD’s first commission and responds to a brief from Windyhill’s current owner, David Cairns, who has meticulously restored the house to its original condition. He required a motor garage that could sensitively address the practicalities of the 21st-century life without disrupting the architectural harmony of the site.

The process demanded deep study of Mackintosh’s design intentions and inspirations. This led not only to our intervention but also to involvement in restoring other elements of the house, inside and out.

Rather than mimic Mackintosh, we chose to respond, abstracting and extending his narratives into the present. The garage comprises three primary elements: a concrete basin where ground and wall become one; tapering steel stanchions that rise to support a plate steel roof; and hand-finished translucent glass, encasing the structure in an atmosphere akin to trapped fog. The garage acts as a seed, an early gesture ahead of a future bloom, echoing Mackintosh’s design ethos.
Though technically complex, the execution leaned more toward jewellery-making than traditional construction, made possible by the exceptional skill of craftspeople who brought the vision to life. This project has been our honour to deliver.

"It does not seek to announce its existence, more the opposite, it attempts not to be there, to be silent. It promotes the theory of the unity of opposites, being deliberately lightweight against the solid mass of Windyhill. Through the use of ethereal transparent materials the proposals are dematerialised, where a morphism will prevail, where a building of today will support a masterpiece of yesterday. It will do this by being itself with no attempt to emulate or copy. Architecture has always been concerned with new thinking, technological discoveries and design innovation. I suggest that Charles Rennie Mackintosh would support this.” – John Cunningham FRIAS