IQ Elliott House

Completed September 2020.

The Elliott House project involved renovating a Grade A listed William Playfair building in Edinburgh. We successfully designed a combination of exceptional amenity spaces and apartments for the students to enjoy.

Being given a William Playfair building to design was a gift – it was however in a desperate state and required a full refit in line with Historic Scotland who had a series of stringent rules we had to follow in order to respectfully restore and enhance this iconic A listed building.

I dispensed with the ‘colour splash’ that is so often seen in student accommodation and instead used a very mature heritage palette for the backdrop. This allowed lots of design opportunities as the offset of old v new creates drama and impact. I created lots of statement artwork (very low cost) that really makes the scheme stand out. The FF&E budget was tight – this increased the need to get very creative!