Thoughtful planning has made this a home to grow old in, designed to contain precious memories and create new ones

As I chat to Matt Loader about this recently completed project in Perthshire, he casually remarks that his architecture practice, Loader Monteith, is now almost a decade old. It’s a sobering thought, especially as I recall covering the Glasgow-based studio’s first project (and many more subsequent ones) in this very magazine. The time has passed at a ferocious pace, bringing with it an evolution in the studio, and also in design and architecture generally.

Evidence of this can be seen here, in the gentle renovation and extension of an 18th-century cottage in the Perthshire countryside (which, until recently was being used as a dental surgery), where owners Jim and Frances have also felt the shift of time, and with that their own need for change.

The couple had planned to retire to a rural corner of the west coast but, with family in Glasgow and Edinburgh, they realised that a countryside community in a more central area would better serve their needs. The cottage, explains Jim, was bought “to provide an alternative to urban living, to allow us to care for a relative with dementia, to be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to accommodate visiting family, to make a home that gives both pleasure and comfort, and to satisfy a long-held imperative of having a view of water from the house.”

Loader Monteith came to the project in a fortuitous position; Jim, who trained as an architect, had already secured planning permission for the changes he and Frances wanted to make to the property. “The existing building has a delightful cottagey feel to it, with low ceilings, small windows, a humble outlook to the road,” says Matt, “and so you wonder: how do you dovetail in a fairly modern piece of architecture, without losing that lovely feeling of being in a cottage?”

What the practice does very subtly, in pretty much all its projects, is to create a connection from the front of a house all the way through to the rear. “You can see greenery literally as soon as you open the front door, and it helps to draw you through the plan, meaning you gravitate towards the living spaces in the house, which are at the back of the property.” This, adds Matt, helps to regulate the arrangement of the space, create flow, break down the previously modular layout and make the most of a special garden where the River Earn flows at its furthest point.

Working in collaboration proved to be the crux of this reconceived cottage’s success. The owners had to consider exactly how they wanted to live, and the architects had some deep thinking to do as well. “There have been a lot of lessons from this build that I think we’ll carry forward,” says Matt. “There was a reimagining, on our part, of how you use a house; almost a challenging of our preconceptions.”

There are elements of design inherent to all Loader Monteith projects but here they carried extra significance since this would also occasionally be a place for caring for a relative with dementia. For example, the architects incorporate open storage in many of their plans but here it took on a greater importance, beyond aesthetics. “It became clear that putting items of special significance on display – objects, sculpture, art, books – was beneficial to someone with Alzheimer’s. It had this added weight – that it would, as the dementia advanced, help them recognise that they were somewhere they knew, surrounded by familiar objects, in a place that was safe and secure. “In the same way, the clients and their relative have always baked and cooked together, so the kitchen is designed so that some of the storage is not behind cupboard doors; it’s open shelving. It was a slightly different way of doing a kitchen than we’d done previously.”

The new extension also contains a bedroom suite, with a large picture window overlooking the valley. A ‘tea nook’, unusually on the first floor, provides a warm spot for daily routines, helping to stimulate memories. A perforated aluminium canopy outside casts dappled light and gives the veranda privacy from the tall neighbouring church. Cut into the framework of this brise-soleil are the names of Jim and Frances’s grandchildren, so while it has a practical function, it possesses meaning and significance, enhancing the couple’s relationship with their new home.

These interventions might feel slight but their sympathetic execution has been transformative for the owners. “One of the joys of the house is the sensitivity of the design to the passage of the sun through the day, and variations of light through the seasons,” recounts Frances. “Every detail has been thoughtfully considered, and the result is a home that will evolve with us over time.”

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