Alongside our work on designs for a new Iona Craft Shop, we were delighted to also be commissioned to design a new home across the road for Iona Wool: a sister business to Iona Craft Shop focused on realising the full potential of the island’s sheep flock. The new building (named The Sheds after the old storage sheds that occupied the site for many years) will provide gallery space, a small studio apartment and space for a new pizzeria.
The understated forms of the building set the scene for details and material treatments to invite discovery and to delight. The fit-out of the building with shop furniture and display forms a holistic part of the overall design, focussed on providing a calm and inspiring space to browse in.
The new building responds to the siting of existing mature trees, level changes across the site and the ancient Iona Nunnery, a Scheduled Ancient Monument and neighbour to the Sheds. Designing for a site in such close proximity to historic structures and in the heart of the village required careful assessment of how the form and materials of the building related to its context.
Naturally weathered larch cladding and dusky pink brickwork reflect the soft palette of the Nunnery pink granite and grey-blue slate. The blue-grey profiled metal roofs provide an echo of the sheds that previously occupied the site. The simple gallery spaces spill out onto a terrace, inviting in passers-by and creating a social space in the centre of village life.
Completed Summer 2022.
Team
Client: Iona Wool
Quantity Surveyor: Morham and Brotchie (Oban)
Structural Engineers : Narros
Contractor: Mull Joiners Ltd
Photographs : Dapple Photography