White Hill Design Studio LLP – Sustainable Scottish architecture

Award-winning Scottish
architectural design consultancy
specialising in
PassivHaus & sustainable design

Have a low energy build or conversion project in mind?

We work with commercial developers & private clients as well as community & statutory organisations, especially in the residential, hotel & leisure sectors.

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Our Approach

Sustainability

White Hill Design Studio LLP has focussed on sustainability and ecological design since we launched in 1997. We’d been active in green issues for many years before that and were keen to ensure that our designs and work made a positive environmental impact where possible. We aim to provide our clients with environmentally aware and innovative design solutions that achieve high quality, affordable buildings that are deeply sustainable. We try to do this without significantly increasing build costs for the developer and with year-on-year benefits to the end user and the environment. Our projects encourage sustainability primarily through form and fabric rather than technical (and often expensive) ‘green’ solutions.

Designing for Vibrant Communities

Though architecture is the main area of our portfolio, from the beginning, we have been involved with a diverse range of projects, moving beyond formal architecture into landscape and Permaculture design and community involvement. We consider how a building connects to its surroundings and the people who use it and experience it, allowing us to work with interiors, landscapes and community. We seek to capture and express a ‘sense of place’ and to create buildings that feel just right – spaces where people feel at home.

Healthy Homes

The development of healthy homes – natural, beautiful environments which minimise chemical inputs and maximise the use of natural materials – is also important to us. We have worked with self-build clients for whom the creation of safe, organic environments has been a key objective. With the need for so many affordable new homes in the near future, there’s also a great opportunity to create low impact, sustainable, health-promoting volume housing – good for the bodies, souls and pockets of future inhabitants!

Future Proofing

White Hill Design Studio LLP is starting to explore the design and development of ‘power down alternatives’ – houses and localities which allow people to manage the transition from current lifestyles into something more sustainable, where people and communities can meet as many of their needs as possible from within their local area.

Selected Projects

Dormont Park

Dormont Park comprises eight new-build homes designed and certified to the ultra low energy PassivHaus standard. These homes were the first of their kind in rural Scotland; the first to be built on a commercial scale anywhere in Scotland; and the first private rented housing in the UK built to this standard for affordable rent. By building to certified PassivHaus standards and utilising solar and biomass renewable energy, each house will emit around 3 tonnes of CO2 a year – a saving of 60 tonnes of CO2 per house every year for the estimated 60 year lifespan of these houses.

Self Build Eco Home in Moffat

Our client wanted to take a stone wall in an existing derelict walled garden as the starting point for a self build eco home. Our design had to make sure the property was accessible and flexible enough to meet changing family needs over time. We designed using the low energy Passive House standard to make sure that no heating system was required.

Barn Conversion near Lockerbie

Our client wanted to renovate a disused, traditional stone barn to create new, energy-efficient eco homes for rent. The barn conversion had to be in keeping with the character of other buildings on the estate. Our design solution used energy-efficient features to make sure the new homes used as little energy as possible. We kept traditional details from the existing building in the redesign to keep the character of the original barn. The new eco homes offer tenants healthy, comfortable homes with great indoor air quality. The homes are very affordable to run because of their low fuel bills.

Low Energy Homes in Gretna

Following their visit to the multi-Passive House development at Dormont Park, developer Hadrian Homes set out to build 47 low energy homes at their site in Gretna. Hadrian Homes focus is on quality traditional construction. They were also keen to push deeper sustainability in all their future developments. The Passive House standard offered a perfect fit for their ambition to deliver low energy homes for open market sale.

Mar Hall

Erskine Mansion House, a Grade A listed building, was formerly used as a veterans’ care home and was acquired by our client for conversion to a 5 star hotel. White Hill Design Studio LLP was commissioned to work on the detailed development and implementation of the hotel refurbishment through the building warrant and construction stages.

About

White Hill Design Studio LLP is an award-winning Scottish-based architectural design consultancy.

As certified PassivHaus designers and Permaculture practitioners, we specialise in sustainable, affordable and ecological buildings. We can help you build affordable homes, fit for the future.

We work most frequently in the leisure and residential sectors, and on ‘green’ building projects, including autonomous Earthship dwellings and alternative construction methods such as straw bale. We have wide experience of Listed Building refurbishments, especially for the hotel and leisure sectors.

We’ve delivered projects across many different market sectors in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. Our clients include commercial developers and private clients as well as community groups and statutory organisations.

We also offer community facilitation and engagement processes.

For us, design is about more than just the built form – it involves how a building connects to its surroundings and the people who use it and experience it. In our designs, we seek to capture and express a ‘sense of place’. In this we are inspired by the Scottish landscape – especially the beautiful Annan Water valley in Dumfries and Galloway where our practice is based – and the work of design practitioners like Christopher Alexander.

“There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the centre of this way.

“It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.”

— Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building