Emotional connection and heartfelt collaboration between clients and architect propelled this project off the drawing board and into real life
This extension, remodelling and refurbishment project in Edinburgh’s Morningside, completed last year, resulted in a stunning new home for its owners and was a particularly satisfying job for its architect. But it actually meant even more than that, for both parties, on the deepest emotional level.
The story starts, rather surprisingly, at the North Pole, then takes a detour to Australia, before coming back to Scotland. Kirsten Woolley and her husband, Richard McGregor, a GP and a surgeon respectively, are return clients of Leith-based practice Konishi Gaffney – always a good sign when it comes to architects. They first worked with director Kieran Gaffney when Richard, as Kirsten puts it, “made the mistake of going to the Arctic for several months”, and she bought their first house while he was away.
“Even though he had no means of communicating, I sent him a text saying, ‘just in case you get this, how would you feel about me buying a house you’ve never seen?’,” smiles Kirsten.
To cut a long story short, that house was purchased, and Kieran was enlisted to transform it into a home for the family they were about to have. Fast forward several years and the couple, along with their three young children, moved to Australia for 15 months. When they had to find a home to return to, a virtual tour around this magnificent late-Victorian pile in Hermitage Drive was enough to sell it from half a world away.
“I loved the front,” recalls Kirsten. “It has a beautiful face and was in an area of Edinburgh where we can get our dog and our kids out and about.” The main issues with it were the layout (jumbled and lacking natural flow), its condition and the feel. As Kirsten says, it was “very brown, very imposing and decorated in a different century”. She recalls, “You had to go through lots of doors and mini corridors to get from one bit to the next, and while all the rooms were a decent size, you felt awkward in them.”
Cue a second call to the architects at Konishi Gaffney. “Initially we just listened to Kirsten and Richard talk about why they’d bought this house, because in some ways it didn’t suit them,” Kieran recalls. “It was big and formal, and that’s not them at all. So, it was a process of ‘deformalising’ it, bringing that Australian life they’d had, with a connection between the inside and outside.
“Kirsten and Richard did a lot of the hard graft on the design,” he adds. “Some of the things I like most about the house were designed by them, not us! That’s how you know you’ve got a good collaboration.”
It’s just as well they had such a positive relationship, as the project was no small undertaking. There were two main elements: a complete refit and refurb of the large main house, with some structural changes; and the conversion of what would have been the maid’s quarters into a stunning open-plan kitchen, dining area and family snug, with a modern extension and a mezzanine level.
“This project was quite tricky,” admits Kieran. “There was a utility building with a maid’s room above, and in a few of the designs we proposed we got rid of this entirely. In the end, though, we kept the form of the building with a double-height space inside and a mezzanine. We extended out into the garden and that connects to the house through the double-height space.” The result of opening up this part of the building into the roof, and adding huge sliding glazed doors on the front, back and side walls, is a living area that is highly functional, deeply calming, bathed in light and totally connected to the beautiful outdoor spaces. It’s exactly what Kirsten and Richard wanted for themselves and their children, who are now aged between four and ten.
“The orientation is now in line with the front façade of the house rather than at 90 degrees to it,” says Kirsten. “Now we look out at beautiful flowers, the Hermitage hill and the trees and sky beyond. It has opened up a connection between the inside and the outside space. If you want to have breakfast or lunch outside, you go out that door. But if you want to have an evening cocktail or dinner or barbecue, you go out this door. We can have our meals inside or outside at all times of day.”
Inside the converted maid’s quarters, living became more open, too. “When I’m in the kitchen cooking, there’s a huge island where the kids can be eating or colouring in, or whatever,” smiles Kirsten. “And if I’m sitting in the dining space, on the right of the L-shaped layout is the TV snug where we can all pile onto the enormous sofa together. It has a completely different feel to it now. Even though it’s huge, it has a lightness to it. I used to feel it was sitting on top of me, and now it’s light and warm.”
