In the rugged Highlands of Scotland lies Fort William, a region of dramatic landscapes and rich history, once a key player in Scotland’s industrial revolution, thriving as a hub for stone masons, coopers, and craftsmen, industry. However, the decline of traditional industries has led to economic and cultural erosion. The High Street, now filled with outdoor gear shops catering to tourists, symbolises gentrification and the loss of civic identity. The region’s residents reflect a broader decline in architecture, culture, and opportunity. This project aims to explore how tourism, urban development, and cultural preservation can coexist in such a fragile environment. Inspired by Lochaber’s natural resources and the craftsmanship embedded in its history, this proposal envisions a lifelong crafts learning retreat. It’s not just a building, but a commitment to balance progress with conservation, modernity with history, and commercial interests with civic responsibility. The goal is to shift the dynamic from a tourist-consumer relationship to one of guest-host interactions. This project reimagines Fort William as a space that engages with the interdependencies between people, materials, and landscapes. Architecture can’t solve ecological crises, but it can intervene meaningfully within its limited scope, fostering a more sustainable and interconnected community.

the Scar is a landscape intervention that explores the visual, ecological, and political impact of power lines in the Scottish Highlands. Situated north of Fort William, the project responds to the infrastructural scarring of the landscape, where high-voltage pylons carve corridors through native woodland, breaking the continuity in ecology, dwarfing its context and distorting the sightlines of the Highlands. The project frames these clearings as invasive spatial violence. Exploring the tectonics of pylons and their components, the intervention Kit-of-parts utilises steel lattice frames, tensile mesh, rammed earth, and quarried slate to convey architectural intent. These materials express both weight and dissonance, grounding the project in the physical logic of pylons while disrupting any illusion of harmony. The design introduces three interwoven paths, each with its own spatial logic, thus creating an experience of reflection, tension, and disorientation. This intervention hopes to make legible the neglected relationship between landscape and infrastructure. By choreographing unease and atmospheric awareness, the project invites visitors to reckon with the cost of progress… not through erasure, but through presence.