The Scotia Approach

We create classic, desirable neighbourhoods which reflect the area’s culture and traditions. All in all, it’s about recapturing some of the good things about design from the past – many of which have been forgotten over the last 40 years.

There’s another important factor too – Scotland is committed to being far more sustainable than before, so issues such as traffic reduction are right at the top of the agenda.

Here are some of our guiding principles and how we are implementing them at Nairn:

• ‘Walkable’ communities – ideally within a ten-minute walk of the main amenities. Pedestrians need to be given priority – foot and bicycle paths run through the development making it easy to access the town centre and the future mill district which forms part of the Nairn master plan
• Connected spaces – streets, lanes and intelligent planning to help you get around town. We want to banish the cul-de-sac – there are no dead ends – all streets and open spaces are linked
• Public places – areas that form focal points in the town, allowing people to mix and relax – parks run throughout the plan, all linked together. Additionally we have crafted many interesting civic squares and meeting places dotted around the area
• Mixing it up – housing needs to go hand-in-hand with commercial properties. We also like to mix private residences with affordable rented or shared-ownership housing
• Visual variety – we don’t build rows and rows of anonymous houses. Instead, we prefer to mix housing types and design features
• Local first – the designs, materials and layouts need to reflect the best of the existing area. Our buildings should blend seamlessly into the town – and never feel like a separate annexe – at the modelling workshop our architects were designing these new houses (below) that are inspired by Nairn’s existing beautiful buildings