2025
Penicuik sits in a valley on the West Bank of the River Esk – a suburban “commuter” town occupying the A701, midway between Edinburgh and Peebles.
The landscape of the paper mill facilitates ideas of collective memory, pollution, and the decline of industry in Scotland: very little remains of the industrial centre, situated on the River Esk, which once received the raw material from the mill; Penicuik itself was built around the paper industry that no longer supports the town.
The built form is a response to the loss of the industry, where light comes through chimney-like light tunnels, the building fills up with space exactly at the time the last paper mill collapsed, 1st August 1975.
In collaboration with Harry Baldwin.
With thanks to Beate Hølmebakk.