A DISUSED former hospital laundry building at a 85-acre estate on the outskirts of Dumfries is to be the site of a significant new cultural building, with a design competition to find architects for the ambitious £15 million project launched today.
The building will be sited at The Crichton and will focus on mental health and wellbeing.
The project, being organised by The Crichton Trust, will involve a competition being held by RIAS Consultancy – the competitions and procurement arm of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.
It says the scheme will transform cultural provision in Dumfries and Galloway, while complementing the wide range of facilities and organisations at The Crichton, which is home to a broad mix of academic institutions and businesses.
A wide range of events are also held at the site, which features landscaped gardens and historic buildings.
The new building, provisionally entitled The Crichton Centre for Memory and Wellbeing, will contain facilities to house the Crichton Archive and the Crichton Heritage Centre, enhancing people’s understanding of The Crichton’s 180-year heritage and innovation in the provision of mental health care and arts and health.
It will also house a new visual arts and exhibition space, an academic study space and resource centre, and a land art archives and research centre.
The Crichton Trust hopes to create a world-renowned home and destination for innovation – somewhere for people to come together and share ideas, inspired by The Crichton’s history, places and spaces.
The competition has been explicitly designed to encourage teams of practices, including smaller firms, to work together and submit joint bids. The competition is part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Community Renewal Fund.
An initial expression of interest stage invites participants to present their approach to this project with reference to their experience, although no design work is required at this stage. The closing date for first-stage submissions is Friday, August 19.
After a blind shortlisting process, five teams will then be awarded an honorarium of £20,000 to develop their proposals, with the expectation that a winning team will be announced in November.
Detailed information for entrants is available at www.thecrichtonproject.com Trust chief executive Gwilym Gibbons said: “We are very excited about creating The Crichton Centre for Memory and Wellbeing, in what will become a new landmark building in the heart of The Crichton.
“This is one of several development projects included within our ambitious 100-year plan for The Crichton and is an important milestone in our journey to connect people, place and the past to shape the future.”
Tamsie Thomson, chief executive of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, said: “We are excited and honoured to be working with The Crichton Trust on this hugely significant project for architecture and culture in Scotland.
“The end result will be transformative for The Crichton and wider cultural provision in south-west Scotland, and in the meantime represents an outstanding opportunity for practices of all shapes and sizes to create a building with a valuable purpose and an enduring legacy.
“This competition represents a step-change for RIAS Consultancy. The Crichton Trust’s progressive approach has allowed us to frame a competition that swerves many of the common blocks to larger tenders for small businesses, and will hopefully attract talent from every shade of the architectural spectrum.”
