Beach House / Dualchas Architects

Architects: Dualchas Architects
Area: 150 m²
Year: 2014
Photography: Andrew Lee
Lead Architects: Daniel Bär
Environmental Consultant: An Cuilionn Consultancy
Structural Engineer: IPM Associates
Contractor: AN Fraser Joinery, Robbie Gordon, Alastair Fraser
Drainage Consultant: Jig Environment
City: Morar
Country: United Kingdom

Beach House, a holiday home designed by Dualchas Architects in Morar, Scotland, overlooks the White Sands of Morar and the Small Isles. Completed in 2014, the 150 m² house harmonizes with its natural surroundings while providing unique views and a blend of private and public spaces.

The site, located three miles south of Mallaig, overlooks the White Sands of Morar with the Small Isles of Rum, Eigg, Muck, and Canna as a backdrop. The West Highland Railway and the Road to the Isles follow the coast’s contours, confining the sloped site between them. Dense vegetation covers adjacent land where excess excavations were dumped, forming the plot’s foreground.

The holiday house comprises two stacked volumes with perpendicular focal points. The cantilevered first floor connects to distant scenery, while the ground floor offers focused views of the immediate site.

The ground floor, sunk at entrance level, appears as a single-storey volume from the narrow access track. Two long external retaining walls slope the ground towards the building, focusing on the bedrooms’ view.

On the first floor, public spaces have reversed openings, pushing views towards the distant scenery. This creates a contradiction: the lower floor, with fewer boundaries, becomes public, while the upper floor, with dominant boundaries, privatizes far-reaching views.

The exterior follows a rural typology with a dual-pitched roof, stripped of stereotypical attributes. The first floor rests on a recessed ground floor plinth, making the vernacular form the focus. The building’s use remains ambiguous to onlookers, as dense vegetation reclaims the site.

A timber rain screen protects the building, with rainwater running as a curtain from the bedroom windows. Light entering through glazed walls and roof lights enhances the building’s atmosphere, with the outside becoming more dominant as the inside darkens.

Whitewashed walls inside and outside extend past the insulated envelope, creating a blank canvas that emphasizes natural light. The continuous lacquered concrete floor mirrors this light, while exterior retaining walls cast changing shadows throughout the day.

A holiday house differs from a permanent residence by the defined period of stay. This building captures the intersection of being part of a place and creating its own environment.