Its sandstone walls, slate rooflines and rounded bay forms belonged naturally to the coastline, carrying the weight and permanence of traditional Scottish domestic architecture. The challenge was never to compete with that history, nor to imitate it. Instead, the project sought to establish a careful dialogue between old and new, allowing the original house to remain legible and dignified while introducing a contemporary extension rooted equally in landscape, materiality and daily life.

The existing building was preserved with sensitivity, retaining its period proportions, masonry and architectural character. Rather than forcing contrast through rupture, the new intervention grows from subtle visual relationships already present within the house itself. The curved geometry of the extension, for example, quietly echoes the turreted forms of the Victorian villa, allowing the new wing to feel less like an attachment and more like a considered architectural response.

Materially, the project takes direct cues from the clifftop setting. The iron-rich geology beneath the site informed a palette of terracotta brick, warm plaster and corten-toned columns tones that appear almost lifted from the surrounding rock face. These are materials chosen not for spectacle, but for how they weather, soften and settle into the coastal atmosphere over time.

At the heart of the addition is a sweeping colonnade of cylindrical red columns, forming a sheltered threshold between architecture and landscape. Rather than sealing the house from the elements, the extension embraces exposure, framing expansive views of sea and sky while maintaining a strong sense of shelter and enclosure.

The completed home feels defined less by contrast than by continuity: a conversation across eras, materials and ways of living. The Victorian villa remains intact and recognisable, while the new extension introduces a quieter, more expansive relationship to the surrounding landscape.

Inside, the architecture turns deliberately calm. Pale Douglas Fir joinery, clay plaster walls and terracotta herringbone floors create an atmosphere of warmth and restraint against the elemental drama of the North Sea beyond. Views become the primary decoration of daily life; kitchens, living spaces and circulation routes are all oriented towards shifting light, weather and horizon.

The extension unfolds as a sequence of framed thresholds and softened edges. Full-height glazing dissolves boundaries between inside and out, while the curved colonnade mediates between domestic interior and exposed coastline. The covered terrace functions almost as an outdoor room, open to sea air and changing skies, yet deeply sheltered beneath the circular roofline above.

Importantly, the project resists becoming a showpiece. Despite its strong architectural identity, the house remains unmistakably lived in. A child’s pull-toy by the window, flowers left casually on the floor, lemons gathered on the kitchen island. These quieter domestic moments soften the rigour of the architecture and ground the project in family life rather than performance.