Unique Industrial Property | Scottish Borders
To coincide with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery exhibition “Out of their Heads”, architect Rebecca Wober will be giving a talk on Peter Womersley on Wednesday 10th August, 12.45- 1.30pm at the Hawthornden lecture theatre, National Gallery of Scotland, The Mound, Edinburgh. Photo credit: Allan Garland.
I just received a link from Docomomo Scotland to a brilliant short film with footage taken back in 1970 of Womersley’s office! Click on the link and watch from 13 minutes in. It’s a Scottish Screen Archive film essentially celebrating the Borders and is available online on the National Library of Scotland website.
Womersley buildings in the Scottish Borders are representing the 20th Century buildings celebrated in the 2014 Venice Biennale, as showcased on the Creative Scotland website.
Thrilled to see that Peter Womersley was one of the three architects practicing in Scotland in the period 1950-1970 chosen by James Grimley of Reiach and Hall Architects to be showcased in one of the publications produced for Scotland’s presence at the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice. See page 6 of “Being There, The Fierce and Beautiful World” on the issuu website for a snapshot of Womersley’s work during that time frame. Also pages 19-25 for today’s view of Womersley’s stadium at Galashiels. And the back page for a call to arms to ask who will write the monograph on Womersley; Rebecca Wober I hope!
I’ve just come across the original plans for Peter Womersley’s Boilerhouse at Dingleton, Melrose. Copies were obtained by Gordon Duffy of Studio DuB architects at the point where he started work on the Listed Builidng consent and Planning Consent. These would have been hand-drawn in the early 1970s at Womersley’s beautiful office, just over the river Tweed from the Boilerhouse, in his expanded office at Gattonside.
After a good 10 years spent researching the work of Peter Womersley across the UK and in Hong Kong I am thrilled to say that I finally been lucky enough to visit High Sunderland, near Selkirk. One of the many joys of the visit was to spot a working model of its neighbouring Womersley building, the Klein Studio, as a scale model made in balsa wood. I would say that it is very unusual for this kind of model to have been preserved so well over this time, and it is just one sign of how much the client’s family cherish the collaboration between client and architect. A whole book awaits in fleshing out this theme…
Docomomo Scotland has picked up on the Womersley trail and sought out an article about the visionary Studio DuB project to give new life to the Boilerhouse, Melrose, see pages 36-38.
The architecture magazine Prospect held a readers’ vote to find the best 100 modern buildings in Scotland, and Peter Womersley’s textile design studio for Bernat Klein made it in at number 5, following the likes of St Peter’s Seminary by Gillespie Kidd and Coia, and The Scottish Parliament Buidlings by EMBT/RMJM.
