Fiona McLachlan, Professor of Architectural Practice, has led a project to create new family friendly spaces for St Andrew’s Children’s Society in Leith. Fiona works in the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA), part of Edinburgh College of Art. 

St Andrew’s Children’s Society is an independent adoption and foster care agency based in Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Drawing on her established research and practice in colour design for architecture, Fiona created a series of spaces where siblings, who may be cared for in different families, can meet, eat, play, create or watch a movie together. 

Fiona said “The colour palette is intended to be lively and uplifting. As the rooms will be used by a wide range of age groups, the colours are deliberately not childish, but bright and varied in tone to give contrast. The colours repeat in different combinations, to provide unity, while each room has a distinct character.”

Design

People first encounter the colours on a curving stair leading visitors down to the basement with vertical stripes at low level. An abstracted ‘family tree’, in a curved alcove the foot of the stair, has pegs on the branches for children to add a name tag on arrival. 

The project has provided a series of colourful and characterful rooms: 

• A movie room with dark painted walls to make it feel special and different from the other spaces. 
• A games room with a polka dot design wall painting, visible from the corridor. 
• An eating room with a bluish-green colour wrapping one corner and a lighter green into the windows to link to the garden outside. 
• An arts and crafts room with a vertical stripe of orange that leads the eye towards a connecting door, with a deep turquoise colour running through into the kitchen area beyond. 

About the project

Design proposals and project planning were developed in consultation with the society’s representative Georgia Gialpa. 

Fiona worked with a group of architecture students who volunteered to paint the walls and install the series of abstract wall paintings: 

• Fiamma Caseley 
• Anita Huang 
• Beini Jiang 
• Kathleen McBride 
• Alicja Mrowicka 
• Yuxuan Wang 
• Xu Zhang 

Funding for the project was provided by the St Andrew’s Children’s Society and supported by the Edinburgh Dulux Decorator Centre.