Dezeen Magazine

Fungarth Cottage houses an office and a home

Mary Arnold-Forster Architects designs barn-like structures for own office and home in rural Scotland

Scottish practice Mary Arnold-Forster Architects has designed a cluster of small buildings around a wildflower garden in rural Scotland, that contain both an office for the studio and a home for its founder.

Located in the small hamlet of Fungarth, Dunkeld, the home and office sit alongside a former ploughman's cottage and steadings.

Exterior image of Fungarth Cottage
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office in rural Scotland that was designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects

Rather than filling the site with a single building, the development was split into several buildings that loosely enclose a courtyard. They have been gradually completed since 2017 and include a greenhouse and wooden kayak store as well as the home and office.

"The site of the former ploughman's cottage was bought with an existing planning application for a square house sat in the centre of the plot," explained Mary Arnold-Forster Architects.

"The project was redesigned to create a south-facing 'walled garden', with the new larch house to the north, a corrugated office to the east, a lean-to greenhouse to the west and to the south a screen beyond which the steading can be seen."

Image of the roofline at Fungarth Cottage
The buildings were designed to look like existing barns

The two-storey home and single-storey office buildings were designed with barn-like forms that reference the area's traditional structures.

"The buildings sit in their context and are traditional in scale, siting and massing, but detailed in a contemporary way," said the studio.

The dwelling, which was clad entirely in horizontal larch planks, has a ground-floor kitchen and sitting area that surround a wood-burning stove and opens onto the central garden through sliding glass doors.

A staircase with a thick, exposed concrete balustrade leads up to the first floor, where a skylit living room, study, bedroom and bathroom sit beneath a gabled ceiling.

Image of the rear of Fungarth Cottage
The buildings surround a wildflower garden

The ground floor is finished in a terrazzo-style aggregate concrete from a local quarry, with waxed pine floorboards used on the first floor, complemented by birch plywood joinery.

The nextdoor office volume is clad entirely in corrugated fibre cement panels, and a gabled ceiling creates a high and bright studio space filled with desks.

Interior image of Fungarth Cottage
The structures reference the local traditional buildings

Turning away from the larch-clad dwelling, the office looks out through windows in one corner to the south and towards the original farmhouse building.

The kayak store opposite the dwelling acts as a wooden screen that helps to minimise overlooking, while to the north the site boundary is defined by a simple metal mesh fence.

Interior image of the office at Fungarth Cottage
The structures house living areas and an office

Both the landscape and architecture of rural Scotland has provided inspiration for Mary Arnold-Forster Architects' previous projects, including a black tin-clad house inspired by a traditional Blackhouse and a burnt larch-clad house in the Scottish Highlands.

The photography is by David Barbour.

More images and plans

Site plan of Fungarth Cottage
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects
Fungarth Cottage is a home and office designed by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects