Kinloch Lodge, Lairg

2025 RIAS Award

Private
GRAS for Wildland  
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 751m²

The architectural work undertaken at Kinloch Lodge, near Tongue in the Scottish Highlands, is an example of a ‘light-touch’ conservation project where historical buildings have been painstakingly and respectfully restored, maintaining their charming, idiosyncratic nature. 

This approach is particularly laudable because the lodge is relatively modest, with the original mid-19th-century building augmented by later corrugated-iron extensions and outbuildings. All of these elements have been lovingly restored exactly as they were found. GRAS (Groves-Raines Architects Studio) has gently coaxed the buildings back into life over many years, thereby avoiding hastily made decisions.

The interiors are particularly noteworthy, with all existing finishes and fittings retained and carefully restored. The retention of the boarded walls and ceiling throughout give the project a calm sense of unity. 

Where changes were made to the interior layouts, such as the kitchens and the detached corrugated-iron guesthouse, these have been done with consummate skill. Even the more modest outbuildings, such as the corrugated-iron laundry building, received the same care and attention to detail as the main house. The end result is a project where the changes made are seamlessly integrated in such a way that the architects’ involvement is refreshingly understated and thoroughly respectful of the original building.

The lodge is run as a business that is let to visitors to the area. The work undertaken has not only enhanced the visitor experience but also improved the building’s sustainability for the immediate future. 

Equal care and attention have been given to improving staff facilities. The work has involved careful repairs using traditional methods and local and salvaged materials, as well as reinstating, uncovering and repairing lost features and sensitively improving the thermal performance of the buildings.

Rather unusually, the lodge is characterised on the interior by walls lined in painted butt-beaded boarding, and great care was taken to repair and reinstate as necessary to unify this important aesthetic element. Caithness slate was used extensively for the floors, and special purpose-made washers of the correct gauge were used for the fixings to the corrugated iron. Thermal improvements were painstakingly carried out on all the walls, removing the historic boarding and adding insulation, before reinstating the original boarding.

The project is a fine illustration of how modest historic buildings can be upgraded and enhanced, on both the interior and exterior, while simultaneously preserving their distinct character and atmosphere. This philosophical approach is rarely practised and is a tribute to the experience and humility of the architect.

View all of our RIAS Scotland winners here, and all our RIBA UK Award winners here.

View the full RIBA UK Awards 2025 process.