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Stirling
Prize Shortlisted - Sutherland
Hussey Architects
‘two walls and a telephone box with no phone’
As we neared Tiree’s ferry terminal, An Turas was hard to discern. It
was lost amongst the hotchpotch collection of white-walled buildings clustered
beyond the pier. This, I would suggest, is a good start.
Calmac, on whose ferry we arrived, lent some land next to their pier to
Tiree Arts back in 2000. The purpose? To construct a shelter for people
awaiting the ferry on this windswept island. Thus the building should
not stick out: it isn’t a church or an art gallery, just a construction
to resist inclement weather.
The architects and artists have taken the ‘just a shelter’ concept, and
celebrated it. The result is a pure combination of walls, bridge and box
that is so simple it delights. As we enter it, the howling wind is stilled
and conversation is again fully audible. There will be harsher weather
than the mere breezes experienced on the day of the grand opening.
After a quick look round we headed up to Brian Milne’s, the brains behind
the project as chairman for Tiree Arts, the Client. We were greeted by
Brian handing out photocopies of an Independent article, suggesting An
Turas should be short-listed for the Stirling Prize. The text suggested
the shelter was too small to be a real contender. The group is all a buzz
with this good news: architects and artists mingled with funders and councillors,
islanders and interested hangers-on.
Over local trout I asked Brian about the commissioning of An Turas. Curiously
it started with a meeting in Aberdeen and was to open for the Millennium.
The two Charlie’s (Sutherland & Hussey) were engaged with Jake Harvey
and a rigorous selection process set up to appoint the other artists.
After lunch we reassembled at An Turas where a crowd squeezed into the
‘piece’. Duncan Macmillan, director of the Talbot Rice Gallery and Scottish
writer on art and architecture, gave the main speech: ‘the work represents
a community idea’. He compared the Angel of the North’s single named
artist with the inclusive team for An Turas. Duncan suggested it was inappropriate
to call the piece a shelter. ‘It creates pictures, it frames pictures,
it takes art and makes it public property, more important than celebrity
art, which stands for nothing that is very deep-rooted. Art has a dynamic…it
is not peripheral…you participate in it, you come into it’. Duncan
finished by saying the shelter was a working symbol of the community,
a lighthouse. There followed a long speech (mostly in Gaelic) by Brian
Milne’s doctor - Brian’s first site meeting was in his bedroom, following
a stroke.
Since the team came up with the diagram, Calmac have built what Charlie
Sutherland calls the ‘Pizza Hut’. This pyramidal-roofed box houses
ferry ‘check-in’. Apparently it was never discussed with Sutherland Hussey
Architects. It also happens to block views of the shelter from the start
of the pier, is rather ugly and spoils photos from the west to boot.
Another bizarre aspect to the work is the positioning. The building is
long and thin, pointing out from the settlement to the bay, slightly off
the pier’s alignment. The walls start at the edge of the road where the
ferry’s waiting bays end. All well and good, but this means the piece
blocks the view from the house opposite. The main vista as you enter the
shelter is the framed bay, specifically the speck of a white house across
the bay; but on return, the focus is on 1 High St, a local bungalow. Their
living room window, complete with begonias, thus forms the focal counterpoint.
This contrast between traditional vista, the framed landscape, and the
domestic, almost random focus, adds a curious frisson. Apparently the
house owners were the only islanders to object to An Turas and you can
see why. However, they apparently took to waving at the workmen, so they
can’t be that upset, plus they now have an award-winning project to neatly
frame their view and re-arouse their passion for their island’s landscape!
I wanted to learn more about locals’ reactions so headed down to the island’s
pub/hotel/restaurant - the Scarinish Hotel, complete with its single star
emblazoned on the door. A local campaigner had written to the local rag
almost encouraging graffiti on the pristine white walls. In fact a handful
of people mentioned the idea of graffiti, or of adding to the piece by
writing in white on the white walls or painting in glossy black on the
matt black felt. There must be something in the work that encourages this
engagement and the level, style of it.
One of the artists overheard locals calling it ‘two walls and a telephone
box with no phone’ and others suggested the shelter could be used
for a whole range of rather tawdry pursuits. The two Charlie’s call it
'Hector’s House' after a local tramp said to frequent its pleasures.
These interpretations assist in building up an idea of how the building
has been understood and how it may be used.
An Turas affects the senses. You enter it and there is sudden calm, less
buffeting of the body, reduced wind noise. You enter it and the white
walls almost blind you; when the sun shines and at certain times, the
whiteness is dazzling. You enter it and your voice becomes augmented,
voices echo down the hard space. You enter it and your field of vision
that is so expansive on this low treeless island, is suddenly narrowed.
You enter it and feel drawn to the end, physical energy is created with
a lull in the middle to gaze out of the glass box. You enter the bridge
and your pupils dilate, there is still light, coming through slats and
reflected from the exposed rock below. You enter the glass box and your
pupils return to normal. You may be covered in dappled light from the
water above, or protected from driving rain. This project is a sensory
tunnel, a route through various emotions. An Turas of course means journey,
and not just aboard the ferry.
The three main elements not only are resultant from a desire for sensory
variation, they also represent a good range of the local building tradition.
The rooted white walls and the black felt are seen throughout the island:
I know this, as I toured the island and saw almost every house. Many ‘black
houses’ have replaced marin grass thatch with black felt that beautifully
takes the same rounded forms. The darkened bridge, with its simple pine
framework and boarding, comes across as typical rural Highland construction.
Memories invoked for me include Black Houses of course, but also reserve
bird-watching huts. In fact, birds seem to like it: swallows are nesting
at the far end of the black felt-shrouded bridge.
An Turas also plays with ‘rhythm’. The bridge is made up of black-painted
timber frames, forming subtle bays. The floor plane’s unpainted boards
run transversely allowing only brief glimpses of the frames and stone
below. The lower foot of the walls is unsheathed but slatted in the same
direction as the floorboards, with the length of An Turas. The slats cast
shadows on the strongly striated cream rock below which is viewed in a
myriad of small sections. In the glass box, 3200 ‘blue’ slates are viewable,
randomly placed side on. The galvanised frame to the glazing is clamped
with exposed dome-headed bolts. Not everyone seems to like these but the
feel is suitably rude and continues rhythms found elsewhere, like the
unplugged floorboard fixings.
What surrounds An Turas? At the entry, sits a galvanised steel sheep grid,
half of which lifts up to allow cleaning of the gully below. To the right
of the entry is a simple metal plaque with salient details, including
website for those with a laptop, or a means of recording. Beyond, half
way down the length of the piece, is a mound of grass. It embeds the walls
into the site and allows an invasion of the interior’s privacy. You can
look down at close range on people.
Likewise, from inside, the purity of space can be twisted by a line of
onlookers along the mound popping up above the white walls. To the west
there is a much more mundane element: livestock pens. The galvanised steel
gates and fences howl in the wind and meet an older rubble wall sheep
pen to the north. The rubble wall doubles back and runs down to the shore.
An Turas cuts diagonally across this wall and breaks it. The boulders
are thrown into the meadow and shore plants now peep through giving the
ruinous boulders an established feel. This puncturing of existing wall
and breaking out of the piece is very important. It symbolises unconstrained
energy, conquest and the seeking of a view.
You could ask why do locals need to be spoon-fed the view they have digested
year after year? Why give them an unheated shelter with no carpets in
an area of such inclemency? And why is a building, which is hardly discernible
from the ferry approach, be suggested for the Stirling Prize? Is it because
its being ''very newsworthy' - far western island with artists and architects
working together?
The answer to these questions lies in the strong artist community of Tiree
that commissioned this piece, this project.
The answer also lies in the unstinting photographic investigation that
the artists and architects carried out on Tiree before designing An Turas.
The answer lies in experience, not by reading, but in actually visiting
the shelter.
The misleadingly simple plan and forms use well-balanced juxtapositions
to achieve pure poetry. Make the journey.
© adrian welch for Edinburgh Contemporary Architecture
An
Turas Tiree Photos
More Sutherland Hussey Architecture:
Burns
Heritage Museum, Alloway, Scotland
Scottish Architecture
Sutherland
Hussey Architects - other Scottish projects / buildings include:
Mansfield
Park
World Architecture : e-architect
- a guide to key buildings across the globe
Building Competition
Comments or building suggestions / photos for the Sutherland Hussey
page
welcome: info@e-architect.co.uk
An Turas Tiree Building :
page - adrian welch / isabelle lomholt
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