The project considers the role of the architect and archaeologist in uncovering the peculiar past, present and future of St Peter’s Cardross. The project addresses wider debates surrounding the intersection of architectural history, design and archaeology, and how their interaction can generate new and radical methods of reconstructing authentic and contextually driven architecture.

The famous modernist ruin of St Peter’s is situated within the rather mystical forest of Kilmahew, which has a remarkable ability to store memories within its ruinous landscape. The memory of Kilmahew House, an important Scottish baronial mansion at the heart of the forest, sits in a liminal state, on a threshold between being remembered and forgotten after its demolition after a fire in 1995. The project develops a fictional narrative whereby the (re)construction of a picturesque landscape and Kilmahew House allows for the design of an architecture that can poetically repair and rebuild itself, whilst pragmatically testing different approaches to the operations of recording, conserving and recasting. This proposes a new type of architecture that can draw upon its past whilst simultaneously putting forward and testing new forms of construction; a tectonic, archaeological and architectural palimpsest.