MacDiarmid Centre, Brownsbank
Konishi Gaffney Architects were appointed by MacDiarmid’s Brownsbank Trust following an invited competition to explore the future of Brownsbank, the former home of Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid near Biggar in South Lanarkshire.
MacDiarmid and his wife Valda lived at the modest nineteenth-century farmworker’s cottage from 1951 until his death in 1978. Now Category A listed, the cottage is being conserved as a record of the poet’s life and work. Our proposals look beyond the cottage itself, exploring how Brownsbank can once again become an active place for writing, education and Scottish culture.
| Client | MacDiarmid Brownsbank Trust | ||
| Location | Candy Mill, Lanarkshire | ||
| Category | Public | ||
| Status | Feasibility | ||
| Year | 2026 | ||
| Photography | Konishi Gaffney | ||
The principal new building sits beyond the historic cottage and provides a writer-in-residence apartment, teaching and event space, administration facilities and a sheltered courtyard. Its simple form and dark timber character draw on the agricultural buildings of the surrounding landscape, deliberately remaining quiet and subservient to the cottage.
From here the project disperses into the existing Scots pine woodland, with a small writer’s cabin, visitor accommodation and an art walk creating places for writing, reflection and exploration within the landscape.
Together with the conservation of MacDiarmid’s cottage, the project aims to safeguard an important part of Scotland’s literary heritage while returning the site to active use - as a place where writers can live, meet, think and write.
