LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

Building in one of Scotland's remotest corners is a challenge, but it's worth it when the reward is living here, in a beautifully designed, ultra-eco-friendly house

- Chae Strathie

When it comes to a house, it's always a good sign if the idea of being stuck inside it is seen as a positive rather than a negative.

It says even more if the designer of said house would be quite happy to be imprisoned there.

So it is with Thomas Fitzgerald, the architect behind Taigh na Coille, a remote house on the far northwest coast of Scotland. “I actually spent a week there on holiday and there was at least one day where we were basically trapped indoors by bad weather - but what a lovely place to be trapped!”

It's not just the weather that could lead one to feel pleasantly cut off from, well, everything. The very geography of the place adds to the sensation of blissful isolation. If you were driving from the central belt, you'd head up past Ullapool, then keep driving north for another hour. For Thomas, that meant a five-hour journey from the South Queensferry offices of WT Architecture to visit the site.

“Once you get there you have to go down a mile-long single-track road and then go through some woods and over a hill,” he says. “Then you eventually get to this spot that's almost the last bit of hill before it drops down to the rocky shore, and finally you can see across to Lewis.”

It might seem like a long way to go for a bonnie view and some peace and quiet, but the Perthshire-based clients had a deep emotional connection to the area. “The land has been in their family for 50 years,” explains Thomas. “They'd spent a lot of their childhood going there so it wasn't just a plot they bought online and wanted to stick a house on. It meant a lot to them.”