The Scottish arts charity NVA is looking for an architect to carry out the restoration of St Peter's Seminary in Cardross, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in 1966. The building is an icon of post war brutalism; the Grade-A listed structure was voted as the best modern building in Scotland by readers of Prospect Magazine in 2005, and is likely to feature heavily in Scotland's show at the 2014 Venice Biennale. However despite this adoration, the building had a very short functional life and has been in a state of ruin ever since it was abandoned in the 1980s.
NVA is looking for an architect "highly skilled in the conservation of modernist buildings" to take on the £8 million restoration, which will see the sanctuary and refectory preserved in a "semi-ruinous state", and a nearby 19th-century greenhouse converted into a visitor centre.
Read on after the break for more on the restoration
These plans, however, are a significant step backward from an earlier design by Avanti and ERZ Landscape Architects for an education and public arts centre, plans which were scrapped after it became clear that the £15 million in funding required for these designs would not be available. Liz Davidson of NVA commented that these designs were "more about what NVA really wanted to do. The task of the new team is to engineer the scheme so we get the same outputs without a fairly sizeable chunk of funding."
The majority of the funding will come from an application to the UK Heritage Lottery Fund, which will be made once the plans are drawn. Providing this application is successful, the restoration is planned to begin next summer.
Story via Architects' Journal
