Double Success for Maryhill Housing Association and Elder and Cannon Architects at the Saltire Society Housing Design Awards 2011.

The Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment - Alex Neil MSP - presented the two prestigious awards at the 74th annual ceremony in Edinburgh last month.

The ‘Botany Phase 1’ project in the Glasgow’s Maryhill won the ‘Large Scale Housing Development’ (In association with CIH) whilst Architects Elder and Cannon scooped the second-ever ‘Saltire Medal’,  a special design accolade chosen by 2011’s Guest Chair of Judges, Malcolm Fraser.    

The ‘Botany Phase 1’ project site was a former 3-storey inter-war tenemental housing demolished in 2003. The project is bordered to the North by Maryhill Road, to the east by Skaethorn Road, to the South by the River Kelvin and to the West by a private development on Celtic Street.

Thirty five homes have been created in the £5.9 million project and are a mix of flats and houses. They were designed by Elder and Cannon Architects in partnership with the Botany Consultation Group which included local residents ensuring the Maryhill Housing Association consulted closely with the community. This year’s Saltire Medal recipient also attracted praise from 2011 Guest Chair Malcolm Fraser – one of Scotland’s foremost contemporary Architects:

“Elder and Cannon’s housing at Maryhill shows that what’s at the heart of good building, is architecture.  Placemaking and urbanism are important concepts; and speaking to people, and the simple task of making a nice house for them, imperative.  But this project shows that what draws all together is the art and the craft of architecture.  This is building that is both strong and humane, its robustness at the service of those who live there.”