Stella McCartney couldn’t – but here’s how to win over your nimby neighbours

Stella McCartney’s hopes to build a dream holiday home on a wild headland in the Scottish Highlands have come up against a formidable force – her neighbours.

Others who live in the vicinity – a beautiful spot on the edge of a loch within a protected National Scenic Area (NSA) – are reportedly upset at the designer’s plans for an ultra-modern glass-fronted mansion nestled into the cliffs above Roshven Bay.

McCartney’s application to construct one of the only buildings on a vast, windswept spot has, perhaps unsurprisingly, attracted more than 50 objections. The “simple materials palette” that her and husband Alasdhair Willis’ £5m property had gone in for involves the use of “rough-cut natural Scottish stone” as well as steel and concrete. Given McCartney’s much-vaunted eco credentials, some had expected something more “sympathetic” – perhaps with a living roof to help it completely disappear into the scenery.

Instead, the designs have been dismissed as a “futuristic eyesore”, an “insult”, a “blot on the landscape”, and – perhaps the most-pointed put down of all – a “monstrous carbuncle”. It was perhaps a reference to the memorable speech given by King Charles in 1984, in which he called plans for a “modern”, mostly glass extension to the National Gallery in London a “monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”. (The Richard Rogers carbuncle was quickly shelved.)

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With McCartney’s home, there are a number of things at play, not all of them to do with the proposed design. As an architect, I know how planning permissions can become a battling ground for all kinds of wider political and societal issues.

For instance, it is unclear whether, under McCartney’s application, access to the nearby “private” beach, which has been used by the public for many years, will remain open. Scotland’s Right to Roam laws give the public responsible access to most of the countryside. It is an important egalitarian act and alters the perception of how land ownership is considered in Scotland.

Other concerns include the removal of a number of mature trees and the impact of the proposal on the overall views of the NSA.

Placing these admittedly important issues aside, this is a prominent exposed piece of headland which has been sold and bought with the intention to build a house on it – what, if anything, should go on it?

The question is: is it possible to get your neighbours to warm to modern architecture?

The architects of McCartney’s proposed design have made an effort to lessen the building’s visual impact by breaking up the mass of the structure and keeping it mainly horizontal and low-lying, following the contours of the landscape. A previous (successful) planning application on this site had been for a “two-storey, substantial, four-bedroom house of a rather traditional design”. Would this have been less controversial?

I am a conservation architect, and therefore I am absolutely in favour of protecting our built heritage, but this does not mean that we must create carbon copies of the past or stop building new. However, we must build well. What we construct now will be the heritage of the future – how does “modern” architecture represent the current times we live in, especially in the context of the climate crisis?

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How to build something beautiful and functional, with low environmental impact, that also relates to the surrounding context but is of its time, is an enduring problem for architects. But several practitioners have been celebrated for their approach to contemporary domestic design in a Scottish rural context. Nedd House, a timber house in the Scottish Highlands by Mary Arnold-Forster Architects, and Haysom Ward Miller’s Lochside House – a modest, off-grid cottage on the edge of a West Highlands lake – are considered “modern” houses, but feel very much rooted to their place.

It’s important that members of the public are given opportunities to learn about design and debate it, rather than it happening behind closed doors or presented in token planning consultations. Good design is the synthesis of many different and often conflicting factors into one comprehensive whole, and a process much more complicated than it seems.

It is up to architects to try and demystify this process. Programmes such as Grand Designs and House of the Year have been pivotal in bringing architecture into the mainstream and allowing an insight into the design and construction process. We need more of this. Additionally, teaching architecture at school, and general public education on the subject, including the language that is used to describe it (architectural literacy), is essential.

It is time that we acknowledge that architecture is a collective endeavour and that to have good design that everybody understands, we need to talk about it.

Natasha Huq is a conservation-accredited architect at GRAS in Edinburgh, and co-organises the design series Talks at the Lane