A building that makes extensive use of locally-harvested timber was among three projects short-listed for the prestigious Most Innovative Design accolade at the Scottish Architectural Awards 2000, which were run in conjunction with last month’s Scotbuild exhibition in Glasgow.

Ultimately, the Loch Garten Osprey Centre at the RSPB’s flagship Abernethy Forest Reserve missed out on the top prize but was highly commended by judges for ‘the following through of a genuinely sustainable agenda when so much contemporary architecture simply makes the right noises’. The ‘low tech’ approach ‘does its best to touch the ground lightly in a fragile habitat,’ they added.

With the centre’s two new buildings to be set in a forest of mature Scots pine, architect Mary Binnie of Perth-based Bell Ingram Design saw this as ‘an obvious sustainable resource’ and therefore chose it as the principal construction material. Some 1,500m³ of wood was brought out of the surrounding forest – much of it by horse rather than motor vehicle ‘because it is such an environmentally sensitive site,’ she explained.

Shingles on the roof of the observation building – which outline a bird motif – were made from Scots pine extracted from the reserve itself while remaining timbers required for construction, including Douglas fir, were sourced from nearby estates. Furthermore, scraps of timber deemed unsuitable for construction were sent from a local sawmill to the Building Research Establishment for conversion into longer sections of finger-jointed timber. One of the project sponsors, Nexfor (formerly CSC Forest Products), donated large volumes of its OSB Sterling board for use not only in the observation building but in the nearby ticket/toilet block.

According to Bell Ingram Design, the curved lines of a bird’s wing inspired the shape and detail of the building, both of which feature curved eaves. Meanwhile, the lower rows of shingles on the observation building roof have rounded butt ends to give a feathered effect to the bird-wing image.

The centre will be monitored by the BRE.