Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
Scottish
Storeytelling Centre : RIAS Andrew Doolan Award for Architecture 2006
shortlist
The Scottish Storytelling Centre – Project Description + photos 210606
by Brendan MacNeill from Malcolm Fraser Architects
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
This site, combining the historic “John Knox House” with the
adjacent Netherbow Centre, marks the historic, mediaeval main gateway
into Edinburgh. The gateway, the Netherbow Port, was rebuilt many times,
with its great bell being hung in 1621. The Murray Knox Church came and
went to be replaced, in the 1970s, by the Netherbow Arts Centre, which
the new Scottish Storytelling Centre builds upon – both physically
and in its programme.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
The oral tradition is strong in northern European cultures in general
and Scotland in particular, through the great Gaelic traditions, Border
Ballads, Travellers’ Tales and elsewhere. It is an inclusive and
integrative artform embracing literature and performance. The storytelling
gathering – in Gaelic the ceilidh – is seen as art and hospitality
combined, and as a gateway to a community of artforms and cultures and
to our land, our culture, ourselves - “gateway”, as metaphor,
linking place and artform.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
The 1621 City Bell is re-presented in a new tower, combined with forestair
entry and complementary to the Renaissance vigour of John Knox House.
Bell tower and entry look from the location of the old gate east down
the Royal Mile, over the new Parliament and out to Aberlady Bay: the bell,
the gate and the place all wound-about with tales of the City and connections
to it, and from it.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
Entries through John Knox House and the new forestair unite the differing
levels of the previous buildings with the steep fall of the Royal Mile,
gathering all into the Storytelling Court. The Court is informal, a foyer
and ceilidh-room with the hospitality of a cafe as its welcome. It is
warm and full of light and adapts to form niches and storytelling places
via a great, hinged, “wall of stories”. The timber, all in Douglas
Fir, is detailed in differing ways relating to the activities in each
area. At the upper levels are a series of pre-manufactured slatted panels
form a continuous screen on two sides, performing both for acoustic absorption
areas and route for the air supply.
Scottish Storytelling Centre image from Malcolm Fraser
Architects
At lower accessible levels the lining is a band of tongue & grooved
boards at the level of the users with a series of inset ‘objects’:
principally the giant swinging “Wall of Stories”. Formed from
douglas fir boards around a steel frame cantilevering from a hinge at
one end, the cabinet acts as an exhibition to the front displaying hand-made
models illustrating the Stories of Scotland. When swung out, it acts as
a giant partition forming a “Storytelling Bothy”; a douglas
fir lined recess with a stage area and backdrop, with further cupboards
for props for Storytelling.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
The Court is overlooked and also outward-looking, connecting to: the City
and its tales through the front window; the natural world of the Storytelling
Garden through the big window to the rear; and the sky, through skylights
who’s fins catch and diffuse sunlight into the airy Court –
a trinity of contexts for stories, with a fourth the view out to the sea,
from the Bell Tower.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
As well as the deliberately informal spaces formed in the Court, the Netherbow
Theatre a storey below was re-built with an increased capacity and fully
upgraded acoustic linings and technical services, as a more formal storytelling
room as well as offering flexibility for plays and conferences. Storytelling
is, for us; intimacy, warmth and connection. The theatre is an enclosing
timber-lined space with a skin of elm to all sides and deeply coloured
linings. The lining panels are ridged veneered acoustic boards from Decoustics,
the opening providing scale and texture to the walls, with inset lights
to highlight the gangways. Entered at its upper level from a rear gallery
overlooking a simple space with a wide timber stage below. An intimate
relationship is set up between the performers and the audience.
Scottish Storytelling Centre: photo Brendan MacNeill
As in the Court above the theatre visually connects to the quiet garden
beyond through a large window in one corner of the stage, which animates
the space for daytime use. This can be closed-off when required to isolate
the theatre visually and acoustically with a giant sliding shutter built
in to the wall lining. Window, door and services openings are all absorbed
into the timber linings, framed in elm trims and boards, and the lighting
bars on the ceiling are similarly set up into recessed coffers out of
the sightlines. The Storytelling Theatre re-presents: seats wide and shallow
with aisles to either side so that a Storyteller faces people not corridor;
entry from the back so the audience is joined and not disrupted; and the
theatre lined and boarded dark and warm, but with a (shuttered) window
onto the sunlight and garden outside.
Scottish Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: photo 290406
© adrian welch
Scottish Storeytelling Centre
: EAA Building of the Year Award 2006
Project at the Netherbow - more Photographs
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: photos 290406 ©
adrian welch
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh
: Background info
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: Netherbow image from
2001 by MFA
Old context of John
Knox House
Netherbow Edinburgh - Dec 2005
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: photos from Dec 2005
© adrian welch
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: Netherbow image from 2001
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: Netherbow image from 2001
Storytelling Centre Edinburgh: Netherbow image from 2001
Scottish
Architecture: best Scottish Buildings of the last three decades
Edinburgh Walking
Tours
Buildings close to the Netherbow Arts Centre:
John
Knox House
Scottish Poetry Library
Scottish Storytelling
Centre : Malcolm Fraser Architects
Edinburgh : back to index
The
Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh : Scottish Design Awards 2007
- Public Building Shortlist : Malcolm Fraser Architects