Information about this scheme

The new HQ for St Andrews Links Trust is located near the Eden Clubhouse in a semi-defined area of historical development within the wider links landscape. Remnant boundary walls and mature trees on the site sit in contrast to the open outlook across the immediately adjacent Eden, Strathtyrum and Balgove golf courses. The HQ has been designed with future flexibility in mind and includes a mix of open plan and cellular office space, together with a range of flexible meeting and training rooms, bring staff from throughout the organisation together under one roof. The organisation, articulation and material quality of the Headquarters is designed to ground the building quietly yet confidently into this site. It draws influence from the familiar language of heavy sandstone masonry evident in so much of St Andrews, juxtaposed with a lighter touch that alludes to the pavilion forms traditionally found in the golfing landscape. The HQ follows and reinforces an established site perimeter, continuing and emerging from a curving stone wall along its north-western edge that defines the boundary to the 18th green of the Strathtyrum Course. The building responds to the changing context around it, setting back along its south-western edge to present a new public frontage and landscaped entrance sequence accessed from an existing car park and looking out over the public right of way and onto the Balgove Course. Office accommodation sits discretely within this carefully composed perimeter masonry massing to one side and opens up to an area of beautiful mature trees to the other, taking full advantage of wonderful views back to St Andrews and out across the rolling greenery of the surrounding golf courses to the Eden estuary and beyond. A new Gateway element leads from a drop-off point and car park to the Eden Clubhouse and golf courses beyond. In conjunction with carefully considered hard and soft landscaping elements this further reinforces an architectural narrative of edges and thresholds that redefine and re-orientate visitor journeys. A new Starter Box serving the Balgove course completes this series of subtle interventions, seeking to present an overall composition of building and landscape that is simultaneously new yet familiar.

Judges’ Comments:

“An elegant, beautifully detailed building which sits harmoniously within the surrounding landscape.”