peffermill Residences

The University of Edinburgh

The challenge

As part of a full redevelopment of the Peffermill Sports Campus, the University are seeking to expand their own student residence portfolio. The brief has been to design a circa 600 unit student residential facility at the western extent of the Peffermill playing fields. The design is to blend with and enhance the external environment creating a “sports village” campus.

Our solution

The site is bound by a railway and a small watercourse, the Pow Burn. The siting of the buildings, both in plan location and level, have been very much a three-dimensional challenge. Ensuring the buildings are sufficiently distant from the railway and at an elevation to eliminate flood risk have been key. The external design of the site has been a very collaborative approach between Etive and the Landscape Architect, Harrison Stevens. Ground modelling techniques have been used to good effect to ensure the landscape setting for the completed facility will be true, widely used amenity space, whilst efficiently designed from a earthworks perspective. The development comprises three similar ‘pavilions’ to a maximum of ten storeys which will be constructed in reinforced concrete.