In search of silence Part 2 Project 2011 Hannah Fothergill Edinburgh College of Art | UK “In search of silence” takes the remote site of Loch Coruisk on the Isle of Skye and looks atthe notion of silence in architecture within the natural landscape. Loch Coruisk is famed forits isolation and rugged terrain. “Rarely human eye has known a scene so stern as that dreadlake.” proclaimed Sir Walter Scott. More recently the location was a focus for RobertMcFarlane in his book “The wild places.” Turner also reputedly visited the loch, almostfalling to his death as he sketched from a precarious perch.The project attempts to identify methods of silence through three design experimentslocated within the context of the Black Cuillin range; Whale bone bridge, HighlandTeahouse and High altitude shelter. Each serves a practical purpose, but also aspires to aheightened advantage of focusing the individual’s attention on single aspects of thelandscape, thus facilitating silent meditative thought and understanding of being.Whalebone Bridge utilizes natural geometries taken from the site and focuses attention intothe loch at a key threshold between one world and another; Noisy and silent. The Highlandteahouse plays upon the silence of the Japanese teahouse typology and the desire of the hillwalker for a good cup of tea in the outdoors. Its rusting steel form and heather thatch roofmake reference to existing highland typologies, without forgoing innovative contemporarydesign ideas. In part its material concept is taken from the Kaikado tea caddy that becomesmore beautiful with age, picking up the patina of fingerprints and use. This particularintervention provided me personally with a rewarding opportunity to explore design ideasthrough the production process.Finally the High altitude shelter explores the notion of silence through controlled materialdecay. Located half way along the Cuillin ridge, by day the shelter provides a look out point- a moment of static pause in an otherwise dynamic route, by night it cocoons its inhabitantsin dreams of silence. The form adapts as it melts back into the landscape. The mountainswatch it and its inhabitants leave. Tutor(s) Colin Gilmore