For more than a century, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh has witnessed the daily miracles and miseries of medicine. Generations of Edinburghers were born into this sprawling, turreted faux-castle, returning in ill health or injured to recover or expire.

But by the mid-2010s, the building itself had succumbed to disrepair. The NHS had disappeared ten years earlier, leaving tumorous ad hoc expansions and the scars of poorly designed renovations. Dry rot was present in the wooden structures of the wings and attempts at revival via concerted plans for housing or a hotel on the site had come to nothing.

Then the University of Edinburgh bought the ruined building and brought in Bennetts Associates to resurrect it. At first, the nature of the fledgling Edinburgh Futures Institute was vague, even to its architects. But that hardly mattered: constraints on form strangled any notion that it would follow function. “There aren’t many projects of this size and complexity that you start on without really knowing what it is,” says James Nelmes, director of Bennetts Associates. “But the fact that the plan was so strong and the building was so powerful told us what we needed to do…we could go ahead and create robust, big, flexible spaces.”

The original four-story building was completed in 1879 to designs by David Bryce in the Scottish Baronial style, a Gothic revival common in the city before the First World War. “It was a search for national identity,” explains Rab Bennetts, co-founder of the firm, “a mixture of a French castle and a Scottish castle.” The building stretches along Lauriston Place in central Edinburgh, and its six-storey central tower faces north towards the Royal Mile. The structure lies directly south of the quasi-fortress of the 1620s George Heriot School, widely considered to be JK Rowling’s inspiration for Hogwarts.

Like the city itself, the building is arranged along an east-west axis, with a narrow 130 m long corridor providing circulation between six wings: four branching north from the spine, two extending towards the south. Each wing contains double-height rooms and terminates in a pair of circular turrets, topped with conical slate roofs with finials and dormer windows.

Over time, the mandate for its new life became less unclear: the Edinburgh Futures Institute was to be a new faculty for interdisciplinary teaching and research on key global health issues. The renovated building required abundant, publicly accessible workspace, a variety of teaching, event and office spaces, as well as a café.

An easy first decision for Bennetts Associates was to remove post-war carbuncles, including connecting buildings, rooftop cabins, smoking balconies and a developer’s marketing suite. Then came three big design decisions.

The first was to renovate the main entrance to the central clock tower, which had never been used. Before this, Bennetts created a new public square, sloping down from the road, providing disabled access. This was a bold move, which involved a fight to remove a listed 1850s gatehouse which previously stood on the site (but is now kept in storage). The resulting public space is smart and minimal: devoid of plantings; suitable for ephemeral events; and not yet claimed by the city that is invited.

The real highlight of the place is that it sits atop a freshly excavated two-story auditorium with 450 retractable seats. This educational cavern, accessible from the interior or from the square, is today by far the largest room in the building but is hidden. The “light boxes” flanking the square let daylight into this subterranean space and give the square “a sense of symmetry and formality,” according to Bennetts, although, arguably, they are slightly at odds with the composition baronial. The light boxes are effective even on a gray day in Edinburgh, saving visitors from the poverty of artificial light only underground. The decor here is elegant, with exposed concrete columns and beams, dark wood floors, and polished steel staircases leading to the upper levels. “Because the building was so powerful and strong, we thought it could withstand some pretty sturdy materials,” says Nelmes.

Bennetts Associates’ second major operation concerned the building’s 130m-long spine. “The hallway is a real requirement for an educational facility,” says Bennetts. “One of our ideas was to double the width, make it more user-friendly and add elements to it.”

The spine is now illuminated by south-facing glazing, while pockets of work and collaboration spaces abound within the expanded volume. The original stone wall, indented where later extensions were removed, is largely left in situ in the middle of the corridor. New concrete columns stand apart, marking the seams between old and new. The extended volume sometimes gives way to vast spaces above, notably around the newly inserted staircases, while occasional views offer additional pleasures.

The length of the corridor is painted blue-gray, but specific junctions – where the wings are accessed – are coded with different colors to aid readability. Much of the ground is now covered with stone slabs, excavated from the fabric and left exposed for the first time. Likewise, in the corridor sections between the entrances to the old rooms, the original brick vaulted ceilings are now celebrated, although they were never intended to be.

Bennetts’ last major intervention was to fill the gap between the pairs of wings extending northwards. On the lower levels, these new volumes contain modern conference rooms that can accommodate up to 60 people. Looking upwards, the floor plates reduce the square footage, creating skylights to benefit the lower levels and a top floor balcony, where the reception spaces offer views of Edinburgh Castle.

Light and volume intersect well with history in Bennetts’ various extensions, creating more complete modern university spaces from an original elongated plan. Externally, however, the new additions are glazed with exposed GRC columns and the effect does not really complement the old facade. The extensions appear dark and rectilinear next to the lighter brickwork, but this nevertheless gives a certain sense of servitude. The juxtaposition is more pronounced on the south facade, designed only to be viewed from an angle. Indeed, it was planned that land just south of the building would be developed, although this is now uncertain following its acquisition by the university.

Elsewhere, the architect restored a lot: the slate roof was dismantled and rebuilt, the finials were replaced and the decorative stones redone. About 50 percent of the building’s wooden floors had to be removed, as did most of the plaster wall coverings. The clock tower, once used as office space, has been preserved for sightseeing, although the lack of a fire escape makes it unsuitable for more general use. Old neighborhoods have been stripped back to resemble their original large white spaces. Most have become teaching spaces. Elevators have been embedded in shafts dug at the entrance to the services and are thus scattered all around the building. One of each pair of turrets on the wings has had its floors removed to be replaced by a spiral fire escape – a nod to historic Scottish castle design. Each corresponding turret offers idiosyncratic meeting or work spaces.

There were a lot of things to manage during construction. The building slopes down a meter along the entire length of its main spine and tolerances and wall thicknesses were “all over the place”, according to Bennetts. This means that design work that should have been repetitive has become bespoke. More rot was discovered and so, in a time of global pandemic and shortage of materials, it is no surprise that construction cost 50% more than expected, amounting to a total of 120 million pounds sterling.

Contrary to its name, the resulting project does not scream “future”. However, she is certainly looking to the future in her bold but sensitive collaboration with the past. To reduce energy consumption, a large part of the building uses natural ventilation; the masonry walls were insulated and the project is connected to the university’s heat and power cogeneration plant.

The architects could very well have chosen wood or stone, rather than concrete, for the extensions if they were designing them today, but, at 361 kg/CO₂/m²The project’s initial embodied carbon emissions still compare favorably to those of a new build equivalent – ​​all the more impressive, given the high volumes.

The almighty corpus of stone is therefore reanimated for a public who – whether they know it or not – have an unusual degree of access to much of the building’s interior, where the architectural surgery of Bennetts Associates is the better appreciated.

“It was certainly not preservation: the building has undergone enormous changes,” concludes Bennetts. “One might expect a little more resistance to this degree of change. But the building was so destroyed that it was an opportunity to change its identity.

Before construction (credit: Keith Hunter)

Project data

Start there:March 2019
Completion: July 2024
Gross interior floor area: 21,355 m²
Construction cost: Undisclosed
Architect: Bennett Associates
Conservation architect: Consarc Design Group
Customer: The University of Edinburgh
Structural engineer: Will Rudd
M&E consultant: AtkinsRealis
Quantity surveyor: Thomas Béthune
Project manager: AtkinsRealis
Lead designer: AtkinsRealis
MDP coordinator: AtkinsRealis
Landscape architect: Farrar with iron sides
Acoustics consultant: Robin Mackenzie Partnership (RMP)
Fire engineer: Workshop Dix
Works clerk:KTN Architects
Main contractor:Balfour Beatty
CAD software used:Revit

Sustainability data

Percentage of floor space with natural light factor >2%:Approximately 60% of the floor plate receives a daylight factor of 2% or more
Initial incorporated carbon:361 kgCO₂e/m²
Carbon for life:603 kgCO₂e/m²
Expected lifespan:Structure: 100 years, roofs: 100 years, cladding: 60 years, main mechanical elements M&E: 20-25 years, mechanical terminal units M&E: 15 years, electrical terminal units M&E: 15 years, floor finishes: 10 years, other finishes : 15 years, ski lifts: 25 years