CASE STUDIES

Denfind Stone Client Case Study

Project: New Head Office Building

Client: Hillcrest Housing Association

Architect: Nicoll Russell Studios

About Client

Hillcrest Housing Association is a registered charity and is one of Scotland's largest regional Housing Associations, with over 40 years experience of managing and developing quality housing.

Hillcrest provide a comprehensive range of affordable accommodation, specialising in general needs housing for families, couples and single person households. They also provide a tenancy support service to people who are vulnerable to homelessness. Hillcrest is one of the largest providers of housing and support services directly for the homeless.

With offices in Dundee, Edinburgh, Arbroath and Perth they currently manage around 5,000 homes for rent and low cost home ownership.

The Project

Hillcrest Housing Association engaged Broughty Ferry based architecture firm, Nicoll Russell Studios to design a new headquarters building that would help them meet their operational needs for the future.

With a site on the edge of the city of Dundee chosen, the design team at Nicoll Russell Studios worked extensively with the client to develop the brief; with sustainability being the overriding objective throughout the project.

The key themes of the selected design approach were sustainability, flexibility and openness. The building was going to be a key driver in bringing all the client’s staff together in an integrated layout.

The external design approach looked at rooting the building into the landscape. Whilst the finished look of the building would have sleek lines and extensive glass panels throughout, it also required the use of natural stone to give it mass and permanence.

Nicoll Russell was looking for a traditional Scottish stone that would provide this visual look.

The Solution

The design team at Nicoll Russel Studios visited Denfind Stone’s quarry outside Dundee to look at their Pitairlie Stone and agreed that this was exactly what they needed in terms of visual look and technical spec.

The Pitairlie Stone was hand placed as a facing to the 300mm thick gabion baskets which were tied back to the building structure. The baskets were then backfilled and compacted. The use of stone and gabion baskets in this way had been relatively unknown in Scotland. The use of gabion baskets were not only to provide an extremely creative and functional method of stone cladding a building but moreover to form a trellis effect and being at one with the landscape – another factor in emphasising the overall design brief.

Pitairlie Stone with a traditional lime mortar was also used on a screen wall in the grounds of the building.

Gerry Farquharson, Senior Associate, Nicoll Russell Studios commented: “We had known about Denfind Stone but had not had an opportunity to work with them previously. The sustainable nature of their Pitairlie Stone was a big factor in the decision to specify them. We are very happy with the quality of stone that Denfind provided on the project and would have no hesitation in specifying them again.”

For more information visit: