Walled Garden Villa in Homes and Interiors Scotland magazine

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Excerpt from “East Meets West” by Catherine Coyle, Homes and Interiors Scotland, Nov/Dec issue 2016:

This project – a new house built within an existing Edwardian walled garden – owes much of its success to the architect, Ewan Cameron, and the landscape architect, Susan Gallagher, considering it as a whole, where the building informs its surroundings, and vice versa, and the two work together in harmony.

While the Edwardian walled garden was an undoubted source of ideas, both the architect and the landscape architect have also drawn inspiration from elsewhere, particularly Eastern cultures. Indeed, one of Cameron’s trademarks as an architect is the subtle influence of the Far East and the introduction of elements of Chinese and Japanese structures to his designs. He lived and worked in Hong Kong and Singapore for a time and has travelled widely in the region, and the impact of seeing the Japanese temples of Kyoto and the gardens of Suzhou in China has left a lasting impression on him.

“Experiencing at first-hand the compelling symbiosis of architecture and nature to be found in these World Heritage Sites was a moment of revelation for me,” he says.

This villa in Perthshire was one of the first designs Cameron completed following his return to Scotland, and the effect can be seen in everything from the lighting to the glazing and the orientation of the building. He planned the villa so that it would harness as much natural light as possible and then redirect it through the spacious, understated four-bedroom interior. “As you approach it, there is no sense of what lies behind the original, high brick wall,” he says. “Beyond this, the villa initially retains its sense of intrigue, echoing the original wall in slate. But once through the entrance, the house reveals its true nature: two interconnecting glass pavilions, one for living and one for sleeping.”

The glazed corridor of the bedroom wing is bathed in morning sun, while the living-room portion gets the evening light. Balance is everything.

Walled Garden Villa in Homes and Interiors Scotland magazine