Flight Of Fancy

A UNIQUE, AERODYNAMIC HOUSE HAS LANDED ON A PRIVATE AIRFIELD SOUTH OF GLASGOW AND SCOOPED A MAJOR RIAS AWARD

- Caroline Ednie

Being asked to build a new family home next to a runway is not exactly your usual architect’s brief. But a hangar-inspired home with airstrip views made perfect sense for Colin MacKinnon, owner of Strathaven Airfield, and his partner Marta Briongos, a trapeze enthusiast.

MacKinnon, a microlight aircraft instructor, took over Strathaven in 2005. It’s the oldest continually used airstrip in Scotland and a busy center for light aircraft in the spirit of a traditional grass runway flying club – so busy, in fact, that often in the summer, the couple’s working day wouldn’t finish until 10 pm. Driving to and from their home in Glasgow every day was starting to feel like too much; they were on site full-time not only to deal with microlights and small planes but because the airfield is a key destination when larger aircraft and helicopters have to divert in bad weather.

They couldn’t move into the Strathaven site – there was nothing there but two aluminum aircraft hangars and a Nissen hut. But was there any possibility of building themselves a home at the airfield? Who better to ask than an architect who is also a flying enthusiast and a qualified microlight pilot, Richard Murphy.

They told him about how, with the airfield sitting more than 250m above sea level and next to Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, they were keen for any new house to be as strong as the hangars themselves, whose metal roofs are screwed into steel beams. There was also a fixed budget amassed from the sale of their Glasgow house and a former flat in Edinburgh.