August 6 2024

A mixed use community on the edge of Forres community is taking shape with the submission of a detailed planning application by Fraser/Livingstone Architects.

Dallas Dhu phase one comprises 24 timber homes for Grampian Housing Association as well as 40 student beds for the Glasgow School of Art to support their School of Innovation and Technology on the Highlands Campus based at the nearby Altyre Estate. Plots will also be made available for custom self-build and co-housing development.

Led by Moray Council the mixed-use masterplan calls for the establishment of a multigenerational rural edge community that protects established biodiversity and wildlife with the help of Horner + Maclennan Landscape Architects.

Robin Livingstone, director at Fraser/Livingstone Architects, commented: “The project offers an extraordinary opportunity to create a landscape-led community of homes that carefully mediate between town and rural landscape. The range of tenures and house types will cultivate a mixed multi-generational community within a walkable, vibrant, green and sociable new community that’s woven into, and informed by, the qualities of the existing context."

Drawing inspiration from its name, Dallas is derived from the Gaelic term for 'meadow' and 'dwelling' while Dhu is associated with 'dark' or 'black', the project brings a sense of shelter and place to the landscape by extending the loose grain of nearby settlements.

Arranged as a series of terraces, steadings and clusters homes work with the topography with new green spaces connected by tree-lined streets. Broadening the accommodation mix is a farmstead-inspired student housing development of 40 clustered apartments wrapped around a shared courtyard. 

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