The story When Neil Sutherland started an architecture practice in the Scottish Highlands, he realised that the local construction industry was unable to support his triple ambition of building with locally sourced, nontoxic, ecologically high-performance wood. He decided to take matters into his own hands. Twenty years on, Neil Sutherland Architects (NSA) is a unique, vertically integrated architecture, construction and research practice, and Sutherland himself part of a growing innovation network in the Scottish wood sector, deeply rooted in the Highland landscape whilst engaging with the challenges of contemporary house building. Innovation is not the word he prefers to use – instead, he speaks about familiarisation, emphasising that creativity and product improvement happens in the everyday refinement of products through a meaningful and integrated work process. The journey to his practice is exemplary for this. Having quit school early and worked in engineering apprenticeships before embarking on architecture, Sutherland spent an exchange period at the Illinois Institute of Technology – learning directly from the heirs of the famous Bauhaus tradition of integrated but forward-looking craftsmanship. Back in Scotland, he first worked on an environmental restoration project in the western Highlands before setting up his practice in Inverness. His approach to architecture and building, therefore, is decidedly hands-on. Acquiring a mobile sawmill and setting up an integrated construction company – Makar – within the practice
made sense from this point of view. With a collaborative team that includes experienced joiners, NSA / Makar can carry out practical research into making structural beam and panel systems that are beautifully detailed, more energy efficient and quick to build. Integral to this is investment in the workforce – initially Sutherland employed German carpenters-in-training, as the local workforce lacked the necessary skills, but now the practice has a very productive relationship with the Scottish government’s apprenticeship scheme. On average, apprentices – a remarkable proportion of whom are in their late 20s or early 30s, rather than school-leavers – stay for four years. This is much longer than required by the government scheme but necessary to acquire a broad range of skills across the production chain. Many of them end up with jobs at Makar. Diverse collaborative networks have always been central to the practice – local social networks and word of mouth, for example, are crucial to obtaining good-quality Douglas fir from the region to reduce transport cost; most of his primary materials come from within 50 miles from Inverness. Increasingly, Sutherland is also linking into wider networks of research, innovation and reform. He works with the Wood Studio at Edinburgh Napier University on the development of innovative timber products, processes and systems, integrating best practice from around the world to support a more purposeful, competitive and dynamic industry. Sutherland is also an adviser to the regional Forest Forum – with the aim of getting people in the forestry, construction, and product development to work and learn more closely together. He is also scaling up practice-led research workshops, with EU funding, to develop a next generation of frame and panel systems to increase his capacity for off-site construction, standards and performance testing, and cost reduction. In the next few years, he wants to move from being able to build five homes a year to about 20. Sutherland’s research and consultancy work is also leading him into planning reform and landscape architecture, as part of an ambition to build pathways for placemaking that are truly in sync with the local landscape, climate and ecology, and that reduce impact on utilities and infrastructure.
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