Living in Argyll: Voting in the 2009 Sustainable Design Awards

Public voting goes live online today in Argyll’s 2009 Sustainable Design Awards.

The rules are:

• You don’t have to live in Argyll to vote.
• You may vote only once for one individual entry in any one category.
• You may vote in each category.

There are four award categories, three of which are open to public voting. The fourth, Conservation, only has one finalist so there is no voting to be done (although we’ll give you photos and information on the very interesting finalist). The panel of expert judges, drawn largely from within Argyll, will later decide how best to manage this situation.

They will also make the formal award on behalf of Argyll’s Sustainable Design Forum, sheltered within Argyll and Bute Council for the moment but destined for independent existence.

The public voting award is sponsored by For Argyll, media partner of the Sustainable Design Forum for these awards. Certificates will be presented to the winners of the public vote in each of the three available award categories:

• Small scale residential (1-5 units)
• Large scale residential
• New-build non-residential

If you missed the introductory article we published on this at the weekend and which has been widely read, click here to read it now. Among other things, it gives you the finalists in each category and photographs of them. And to keep in touch or refer back to any article in this continuing series, click on our Sustainable Design archive, where you will find them all, published in order of the newest article.

Now – we suggest that you don’t rush to vote. We’ll be running a series of articles over the next few days, giving you more information and photographs of each of the finalists in each of the three categories you vote in.

After that, we’ll be running articles looking in greater detail at some of the finalists, talking to their architects and owners or commissioners.

We’ll also be giving our own opinions on the finalists and it would be fun to have yours posted in the Comments box below. It would also be good to have your comments on your own experiences and insights on sustainable design – layout, systems, materials – things you’ve used, places you’ve seen, initiatives you may be conducting just now.

When you’re ready, this is where you click to vote - and we’ll keep this link available every day in each article we publish on this exciting initiative – until 20th November, the end of the public voting period.

The Sustainable Design Forum

Key figures driving the Forum are Councillor Ron Simon and Paul Convery, Planning Development Officer.

The Forum came into existence to promote sustainable design in all forms of construction projects in Argyll from private homes to public buildings.

A major challenge, which Argyll & Bute’s Planning Department is now energetically taking up, is encouraging innovative new architecture that marries with the landscape and the traditional building styles it carries.

The affordability, the pleasure, and the efficiency of where we live, work and visit makes a real difference to all of our lives. The Sustainable Design Forum, these awards and For Argyll’s interest in the subject are all due to the importance and imaginative challenges of the subject.

• Everybody has an opinion and every opinion matters. Swopping them – and arguing – will be fun.
• Everybody has got some useful information and experience on this issue – and exchanging those will be very useful.

The Sustainable Design Forum’s inaugural meeting was in June 2008. It exists to:

• discuss the key design issues within Argyll and Bute;
• run the Council’s bi-ennial design awards (Council wide and identifying new categories of development);
• promote sustainable design as a key factor of the Council’s design awards;
• assess applications for the design awards against the Council’s new sustainable design guidance;
• undertake an audit/review of the Sustainable Design Guidance in order to test its success
• update the Sustainable Design Guidance and provide additional guidance on other forms of development like industrial buildings etc.

Among the many interesting initiatives the Forum has already achieved in its short life, is the production of the first of its planned series of area specific design guidances, for example - the Isle of Tiree – the first of all to be published. (One for the Isle of Coll is finalised and is to be adopted. Another, on Loch Na Keal NSA, Isle of Mull is currently bveing prepared.)

The traditional building style on Tiree sees low, sturdy buildings with the unique setting of the roof, within the line of the walls and with no overhang, This style evolved in response to the prevailing weather conditions on the island – mainly the wind, which rackets fiercely across this largely flat little island out in the Atlantic.

This photograph above, of what is called ‘the spotted house’ on Tiree, shows the style. The spottedness of this example is unusual. Most of the stone crofts are, again for reasons of weatherproofing, covered in thick external plaster and, traditionally, were whitewashed.

As with all of the Forum’s Area Specific Design Guidances, the overriding philosophy is to be sensitive to the traditional architecture of an area but to encourage new and innovative design that works with it and takes Argyll forwards architecturally.

The photograph above of the ‘spotted house’ on Tiree is by copyright hoder, Cactus Man and is reproduced here under the Creative commons licence.