Dunbar Maritime Culture House

The Dunbar Maritime Culture House is proposed as a contemporary civic building rooted in the working harbour, combining maritime craft, cultural interpretation, and social gathering within a protected waterfront setting. Positioned on an exposed peninsula edge, the project responds to Dunbar’s strong coastal climate through two one-storey volumes arranged to create a wind-buffered courtyard and a semi-covered public threshold. The proposal brings together a working layer of boat repair, net mending, archive and tool storage, a cultural layer of exhibition and storytelling, and a social layer of café, event space and harbour-facing gathering areas. Rather than operating as a static museum, it is conceived as a living maritime institution that supports local identity, public engagement and year-round use. The project is organised through three interrelated programme layers: working, cultural, and social.

The project was developed in response to The Ridge SCIO, a Dunbar-based social enterprise whose work centres on repair, training, community support, and local participation. Understanding the client meant recognising that the proposal should not operate as an isolated cultural building, but as a working civic space that supports making, learning, gathering, and public engagement at the harbour edge.

Early massing studies tested whether the project should be resolved as a single harbour block or as two smaller one-storey volumes. The split-volume option D proved stronger because it framed views to the sea, created a central public courtyard, and allowed the west-facing volume to buffer prevailing W/WSW winds.

The exhibition hall is assembled as a layered tectonic system in which retained masonry, new floor structure, timber enclosure, primary trusses, and insulated roof build-up are clearly differentiated. Rather than concealing construction within a single envelope, the exploded axonometric makes visible the relationship between support, enclosure, and environmental control, showing how the new intervention is inserted above and alongside inherited harbour fabric.