Now it stands there: stone and gray, just like all the buildings in the small town of Dornoch up here in the Highlands. The new clubhouse of the world-famous Royal Dornoch Golf Club, which opened in mid-December, is set to be a building for at least another century. After all, its predecessor lasted 116 years. It looks majestic as it sits above the two golf courses. No wonder the enthusiastic comments on the various social media channels have piled up in recent weeks. But the response from members has also been “overwhelming”, says General Manager Neil Hampton. “When people were able to see the building in real life, it changed a lot of opinions. The interiors were a hit right from the start. The interior design team understood our brief right from the start and created our club for us.”
What is hardly mentioned in all the enthusiastic comments is the fact that this clubhouse is now probably one of the most sustainable clubhouses the UK has to offer.” With the opening of the £13.9 million-plus building, a balancing act between historic aesthetics and radical technical innovation has been achieved, a task that, according to architect Fraser Davie of Keppie Design, was by no means easy.
Hidden technologies
The architectural leitmotif of the project was the seamless integration of state-of-the-art environmental technology in a classic setting. Davie calls it “hidden in plain sight”, meaning that the technology is there, but you can’t see it. “It’s actually a compliment for us when observers today remark that there are no solar panels,” he says with a smile when talking about the south-facing roof: the entire roof surface consists of a 45.56 kWp photovoltaic system that is so precisely color-coordinated with the natural slate that it is barely recognizable as a solar system to the layman. This “build less” approach made it possible to use the PV panels directly as roof cladding, thus saving valuable material.
Covid pandemic as a catalyst
According to Hampton, the topic of sustainable architecture was by no means as relevant during the initial considerations in 2018 as it was later on. It was only with the Covid pandemic and the rise in material and energy costs that the assessment changed: “We then thought much more about what we would use the money for and how we would use it in the construction and subsequent operation of the building.”
After the decision for a geothermal heat pump had already been made at the beginning of the planning phase, the decision for the photovoltaic system with the storage system was only made after the post-COVID phase, also to counteract the “exploding energy costs”.
A steel skeleton with slate and sandstone
Despite the traditional façade of sandstone and slate, inserted into a steel skeleton, the building achieves energy performance class (EPC) A. The technical specifications are impressive for a building in this exposed coastal location:
- Heat source: A geothermal heat pump (GSHP) with 11 boreholes at a depth of 120 meters provides heating and cooling. It was chosen over air heat pumps as it is visually unobtrusive and does not cause any disturbing fan noise.
- Insulation: The U-values of the building envelope (walls: 0.20; roof: 0.15) not only exceed the 2019 standards, but are already above the planned British standards for 2025.
- Climate resilience: Due to the strong winds on the Scottish coast, a palette of stone and slate was chosen, which Davie says will give the building a lifespan of 100 years.
- Dealing with glass surfaces: To maximize the view to the south, east and west, glass with optimized G-values (solar factor) was used to limit solar radiation. In winter, the passive solar gain provides additional heat, which can be regulated by internal blinds and thick curtains.
- North façade: Smaller openings to minimize heat loss
- The entire kitchen is electric
It doesn’t work without compromises
Davie also makes it clear that compromises were necessary, if only because otherwise the construction costs would have continued to explode. While the interior walls were filled with timber in an ecologically advantageous way, steel had to be used for the basic structure to ensure the flexibility of the large catering areas. Large sliding doors can be used to change the size of the rooms.
There were also limits to the sourcing of materials: As no local sandstone supplier was available, stone from Yorkshire was used. The slate for the roof came from Spain, as Scottish slate would have been three times as expensive. Yes, says Davie, these transportation routes are undoubtedly not ideal, but the balance between budget and sustainability is also an important element in the end.
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A clubhouse for the community
For Neil Hampton, it is crucial that the architecture of the clubhouse continues to reflect the open character of the club, regardless of its ranking among the best and most famous golf courses in the world. The clubhouse is designed to be flexible in its use for community events. Involving the entire Dornoch community through golf at Dornoch is extremely important to Hampton. Social sustainability is one of the key elements of the club. Incidentally, this also benefits the top players: the changing rooms have a modular design so that they can be adapted for all-male or all-female major tournaments – such as the Curtis Cup 2028.
The matter of the batteries: Safety first
A special chapter in the construction history of the clubhouse is the accommodation of the solar batteries: “The proposal to house the batteries for the solar panels in the building gave us a huge headache,” he recalls.
The original plan was to place the 33 kWh battery storage unit inside the building. The architects had already created a particularly safe, non-combustible environment made of concrete walls and a solid concrete slab in order to avoid any risk.
As a result, the batteries had to be relocated to a separate area outside. This eliminated any fire risk for the historic clubhouse structure, while the energy generated can still be efficiently stored temporarily in order to benefit from low night-time rates, for example.
Incidentally, skeptics on the subject of sustainability like to argue at this point that installing solar panels so high up in the north would probably not make sense anyway. After all, there isn’t that much sun there. Davie is quick to dismiss such criticism:
Even without direct sunlight, a battery solution is sustainable and efficient, as it makes it possible to obtain cheap electricity at night when there is a surplus in the grid. This is easy on the club’s budget and reduces the strain on the electricity grid. In any case, Royal Dornoch assumes that the costs for the sustainable technologies will have paid for themselves in ten years.
All images: Royal Dornoch Golf Club