Poppy Nixey Godfrey
Hello, I am a third-year architecture student at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, eager to take on the PPYO and develop my practice within the industry. My work is driven by an interest in sustainable, low-carbon architecture, with a focus on natural and innovative materials and techniques. I am particularly drawn to vernacular building traditions and how their methods can be thoughtfully reinterpreted in contemporary design.
A Civic Place
Fort William is the centre of outdoor tourism in Scotland, but the town lacks a place for locals and visitors alike to gather and appreciate the arts, including visual arts, literature, performing arts, and music. A new ‘Town Hall’ for Fort William would help create a space for public assembly, creative expression and a physical centre to the town. A place for people to live, work and visit and hopefully reconnect to a sense of community and civic life that has seemingly been lost, creating a universal sense of togetherness.
The building is composed of two main areas and a connecting circulation zone, separating predominantly public and private spaces, with the most public spaces facing onto the high street, and an adjacent public courtyard. Whilst the more private/closed off spaces towards the rear of the building face a semi-private secondary courtyard. The main structure of the building is made up of a concrete grid system and a glulam truss roof system; the material choices are intended to keep the building’s embodied and carbon footprint as low as possible. The timber used for glulam can be sourced within Scotland, and the concrete can be sourced from existing building materials on site to produce recycled aggregate. Additionally, the building is clad in pretty plastic tiles, which are made from recycled PVC materials like drainpipes and gutters, creating a visually appealing lattice appearance.
Weaving Away From The Burn
Ericaceae — from the Greek Ereike, meaning heather — names a plant, a landscape, and a material culture, quietly forgotten. Once central to Scottish rural life, heather was harvested for thatching, woven into household objects, and intrinsically bound to the rhythms of the croft. That relationship has weakened, yet the material itself remains — waterproof, resilient, and ecologically indispensable.
Scotland’s peatlands are among the most significant natural carbon sinks in the world, yet they remain under threat. Heather is central to their health; its cyclical harvesting is not extractive but regenerative — opening the land to rewilding, enabling new forests to take root, and actively protecting the carbon stored beneath. This project places the peatland at its centre, proposing an intervention that collaborates with both land and people to restore and sustain these vital ecosystems.
Rooted in Scottish material craft traditions, this work engages critically with the ecological preservation of native carbon sinks through the cyclical harvesting of heather. It seeks not merely to observe vernacular techniques, but to interconnect with them — bridging the lost relationship between craft and croft, and asking what architecture might look like when it is shaped by the land it exists to protect.
