Living in the city, I’ve long been interested in the spaces between – the gap sites or pockets of land that just sit there, waiting to be filled. These sites can often present challenges in terms of planning issues and access, not to mention the scale of property that can be built. One of my favourite houses in Edinburgh inhabits a compact site on Upper Gilmour Place and was designed by architect Andrew Stoane. Completed in 2005, the house was described by Edinburgh Architecture as “an adventurous essay in concrete Modernism”.
This was one of those houses that defied your expectations of scale as, from the street, it didn’t look very big, but Andrew had managed to create a surprisingly spacious multi-level living space once inside. That house, along with others since, really opened my eyes to what you could achieve with a complex urban site, and when I saw The Tailored House, which is listed with The Modern House, although very different in size and also in terms of style, it reminded me of this.
