GLAS Architects Start a project

Every house
starts as a line.

We design Highland homes that sit low, face the weather and keep the view.

Start a project See the work

Then we
build it small.

Every scheme is made at 1:50 in white card before a single stake goes into the ground.

Then we let
the land in.

The heather, the granite and the old path stay where they were. The house moves around them.

Allt Dubh.

A three-bedroom longhouse above Loch Arrach, Wester Ross. Finished in the spring of 2025.

Read the project
Pencil floor plan of a longhouse on drafting paper. The finished black-timber longhouse at dusk, windows lit, loch and hills behind.

We design for weather, light and the long view.

A house up here has to face sixty-knot gales and four hours of winter daylight. So we start with the site, build with what is near it, and leave the rest alone.

Allt Dubh

Gaelic: the black burn

A long, low house for a family who wanted to see the loch from every room and the weather coming a mile off. The long range holds one room for cooking, eating and the fire. The square wing keeps the bedrooms out of the wind.

Location
Loch Arrach, Wester Ross
Area
186 m²
Bedrooms
3
Structure
Timber frame on a stone plinth
Cladding
Charred larch, standing-seam roof
Finished
2025
Living room with stone fireplace, linen sofas and a full-height window to the loch.
The long room. The fire sits where the plan's centre line crosses the view.
Kitchen with a solid stone island, black timber cabinets and a long oak table.
Kitchen. The island is one block of Caithness stone.
Bedroom with an oak bed and a deep window seat framing the loch.
Main bedroom, with a window seat deep enough to sleep in.

More houses

How a house
gets made.

Usually eighteen months from the first visit to the day you move in.

  1. A hand sketching a longhouse elevation on yellow tracing paper.

    01

    Sketch

    We walk the site with you in every season we can, then draw by hand until the house sits right.

  2. A white card model of a longhouse on a studio table with a steel rule.

    02

    Model

    A 1:50 card model you can lift the roof off. Most decisions get made around it.

  3. A pale timber frame being raised on a Highland hillside.

    03

    Build

    Local builders, a frame made in Inverness, and us on site every fortnight.

  4. A cup of tea and an open book on a window seat looking out at a misty loch.

    04

    Live

    We come back after the first winter to see what the weather taught us.

Inside the studio: long timber desks, drawings pinned on limewashed walls and card models on shelves.

Twelve of us, in an old mill in Strathpeffer.

  • New housesFrom a single room to a family home.
  • RestorationBothies, steadings and listed buildings.
  • ExtensionsNew rooms that don't shout over old ones.
  • InteriorsJoinery, lighting and the furniture that fits.

Tell us about your site.

A photo, a grid reference, a rough idea. We reply to every letter within a week.

Write
studio@glas-architects.example
Call
01632 960 318
Visit
The Old Mill, Strathpeffer