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A Hotel Retreat Within a Wall at Stirling Castle

Part 1 Project 2008
Aisling Shannon
 Robert Gordon University | UK
A boutique hotel within a wall at Stirling Castle. Thick concrete walls contain niches which offer intimate moments, and a sense of ownership. The design is solid and monolithic like the castle walls, becoming small-scale and vernacular like the neighouring old town buildings. The view is an event, not a constant. In-situ concrete walls are cast against textured wallpaper internally, offering a luxurious, tactile finish. The hotel seeks to improve a visitor’s experience of the Castle; the Esplanade, currently a car park, becomes a civic gathering space, contributing to a sense of arrival at Castle and hilltop.


The project brief called for the design of a hotel on a sloping site of great distinctiveness close to the Esplanade of the Historic Castle in Stirling.
Aisling developed her own brief for the site after undertaking a scholarly review of the context, place and nature of how we should make a building on such a site. Led by a deep rooted understanding of culture and history she proposes a design which learns from and for the site blending new with old while reinforcing the eternal qualities of the place.

The design encompasses key moments in external and internal space that evoke memory and familiarity through proportion, atmosphere and tectonic expression.

The outwardly cool and measured design response belies a depth and complexity of ideas that are revealed from formality to intimacy from the macro to the micro, in the site planning and linear expression of the ‘inhabited wall’, circulation and habitation patterns, the disposition of public and private space to the design of rooms intimate places and thresholds. This ‘meaningful’ response is enforced with a knowledge and attention detail of how things are made.

Tutor(s)
Mr Neil Lamb
Mr Iain Ramsay
2008
'Before I built a wall I'd ask to know, What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense...' (Robert Frost) This is a boutique hotel that abuts the walls of Stirling Castle.
There is a 17m height difference across the site at the Castle end. At the town end the site narrows to 6m wide. This new building flanks the approach to castle and enjoys views to the Trossach mountain range.
The brief was expanded to include the re-pedestrianisation of the castle's Esplanade, currently a car park. Cars will be banished to a multi-level car park on the site, beneath the level of the Esplanade. Varied textures of paving will denote routes and
Walling out: the hotel as a sanctuary, an escape from the real world. Walling in: the hotel as a home from home, enclosed.
An inhabited wall. Like the walls of the castle, openings are placed only as and when they are required, avoiding a strict pattern. Walls are of in-situ concrete sandwich construction:internally cast against textured wallpaper to give a luxurious, tacti
Within the thick walls are nooks and crannies, spaces that can be inhabited and posessed for intimate moments within larger social spaces.
The building blurs the boundary between the small domestic buildings of the old town and the monumental monolith of the castle walls.
Cross-section through hotel at function room and upper entrance/viewing tunnel, showing Esplanade with castle walls beyond.
Basement and lower ground floor plans: lower entrance tunnel, from the narrow end of the site, leads to foyer bar and function facilities beyond. A grand stair within the wall leads to the reception mezzanine above, at the heart of the building.
Upper ground floor plan: upper entrance tunnel leads to reception and public facilities. A tunnel in the wall overlooks the foyer and leads to a guest lounge.
First floor bedrooms: the corridor opens out at points to create gathering places and Castle viewing points. Above the car park, level with the Esplanade, is a viewing terrace with Scottish wild flower beds.
Second floor bedrooms: duplex rooms within the roof. Roof of timber rafters with timber rain-screen cladding using timber reclaimed from the shuttering of the concrete walls.
The upper entrance tunnel draws visitors in as they make their way up to the Castle; it is the first opportunity to experience the view.
Within bedrooms wardrobe and bathroom facilities are within the depth of the walls. The window becomes a seat. A niche contains either a sensuous bath or a day bed within the room.
The foyer bar, and seating in niches within the walls. A blanket of suspended lights humanises the scale of the space and creates continuity through to the function facilities beyond.
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