Building a bold new contemporary home directly on the British coastline is a tall order. Aside from the logistics of designing a house that functions successfully in such an unforgiving setting, planning permission is likely to make it a nonstarter. But on the shore of Loch Long on the Rosneath peninsula, 40 miles north-west of Glasgow, John MacKinnon and his wife Laura found a way to make it work for their house, Rock Cove. While the area is wild and ruggedly beautiful, its history has long been intertwined with the military and was once a brownfield site, home to disused Ministry of Defence huts and garages, overgrown and strewn with rubble.
Back in 2008, MacKinnon had bought a property on the same site, a 1940s cottage that had been repurposed as a navy signalling station. MacKinnon has a deep-seated passion for design, and worked closely with architect Stuart Cameron of Cameron Webster to completely reimagine this humble property as a modernist beach house, Cape Cove. He then began contemplating what could be done with the scruffy space alongside his new home.
