We designed this workplace and visitor centre, fabricated with the client’s own timber products, as a showcase for the client’s flagship Lockerbie sawmill, the largest in the UK.

The design takes the form of two pitched-roof buildings, one a north-facing single storey office, the other, two-storey and south-facing, housing the reception, meeting rooms and a first-floor conference room. An elegant glass link connects the new building to an older office.

Among the sawmill products used, an unprocessed tree trunk provides the building’s loadbearing ‘backbone’, the cladding is all Scottish Larch and walls use timber joists to minimise cold bridging. Highly insulated interiors are lined with Douglas Fir and heated using an air source heat pump. 

The link is clad with white terrazzo panels featuring a sculptural relief pattern, updating the rusticated bases found on nearby Georgian buildings, and, above street level, with slender timber fins.