T.K. Felix Wong Studio - Dunbar Maritime Culture House

[edit] T.K. Felix Wong Studio - Dunbar Maritime Culture House

T.K. Felix Wong Studio - Dunbar Maritime Culture House is a conceptual architectural proposal for a maritime cultural building at Dunbar Harbour, East Lothian, Scotland. The project was developed by Tsz Kiu Felix Wong as part of Architectural Design: Tectonics at the University of Edinburgh, ESALA, in 2025/26.

The proposal explores how new timber architecture can respond to an exposed coastal harbour site, existing historic fabric, local maritime identity, and the need for public cultural infrastructure. Rather than treating the building as a static museum, the project is conceived as a living maritime institution that combines working harbour activity, public storytelling, and social gathering.

[edit] Site context

The project is located at Dunbar Harbour, a coastal site positioned between the historic town fabric of Dunbar and the exposed edge of the North Sea. The harbour is understood as both maritime infrastructure and a civic threshold, where working activity, public movement, coastal exposure, and local identity overlap.

The site study focuses on the area around McArthur’s Store, a historic harbour building associated with grain storage and later fishing-related use. The existing building fabric is treated as an important part of Dunbar’s working landscape rather than as a neutral object to be removed. Its masonry walls, harbour setting, fire-damaged condition, and relationship to fishing activity informed the project’s approach to retention, repair, and new construction.

The harbour context also introduced significant environmental constraints. Site analysis identified strong coastal exposure, prevailing western and south-western winds, cool temperatures, salt-laden air, and changing sunlight conditions. These factors shaped the proposal’s massing, roof form, threshold spaces, material choices, and approach to shelter.

[edit] Design concept

The Dunbar Maritime Culture House is organised around three interrelated programme layers: working, cultural, and social.

The working layer includes boat repair demonstration, net mending, tool storage, archive storage, and visible craft activity. This keeps maritime labour present within the building, allowing the project to support living knowledge rather than turning harbour heritage into a frozen display.

The cultural layer includes exhibition space, maritime photography, oral history listening areas, projection space, and interpretation of Dunbar’s North Sea fishing identity. This allows the building to operate as a place for local memory, storytelling, and public education.

The social layer includes a harbour-facing café, public event space, outdoor gathering areas, amphitheatre steps, and viewing terrace. This extends the project beyond museum use and creates an everyday civic space for residents, visitors, fishermen, and community groups.

[edit] Architectural strategy

The final proposal is arranged as two one-storey volumes set around a sheltered courtyard and shared canopy. One volume contains the public and cultural functions, including exhibition, café, reception, and gathering space. The other volume supports working and community functions, including workshop activity and storage.

The decision to use two one-storey volumes reduces the building’s mass and improves its relationship with the harbour ground. It also allows the proposal to frame a more protected public threshold between the volumes. This central space becomes both a circulation route and an environmental buffer, offering shelter from wind and rain while maintaining visual connection to the harbour.

A shared roof canopy links the two volumes and creates a semi-covered civic threshold. The canopy is not only a formal gesture; it resolves several practical issues at once, including shelter, drainage, arrival, public gathering, and the relationship between workshop and exhibition use. Finally, a roof doing more than sitting there looking expensive.

[edit] Existing fabric and retention

The project responds to McArthur’s Store through selective retention rather than total preservation or total demolition. The fire-damaged roof and problematic upper floor condition are removed, while selected stone walls and existing fabric are retained as spatial and structural anchors.

This retention strategy allows the historic harbour fabric to remain legible within the new proposal. The retained masonry is not treated as decorative heritage scenery, but as an active part of the architectural order. In some areas, the new timber roof structure is allowed to sit partially on the retained stone wall, reducing the need for additional columns and strengthening the tectonic relationship between existing stone and new timber construction.

[edit] Structure and material approach

The project is developed through a timber-led tectonic strategy. Timber is used not simply as a sustainable aesthetic, but as a structural and constructional system shaped by sourcing, processing, assembly, weathering, and long-term performance.

The proposal uses a clear hierarchy between heavy retained masonry and lighter new timber construction. The existing stone fabric provides mass, memory, and ground connection, while the new timber volumes and roof canopy provide warmth, adaptability, and environmental mediation.

The roof structure was developed from earlier truss and spanning studies into a simpler folded roof system. This creates a clearer structural language and avoids making the roof visually heavy. The timber structure expresses span, shelter, and assembly, while the retained wall establishes continuity with the harbour’s material history.

[edit] Environmental response

The building is shaped by Dunbar’s exposed coastal climate. Wind studies identified strong western and south-western winds, making shelter a central design requirement. The two-volume arrangement and shared canopy create a wind-buffered courtyard that protects public occupation without closing the building off from the harbour.

The roof form directs rain away from key occupied thresholds and helps define protected outdoor space. The building’s section and envelope respond to changing sunlight, glare, wind exposure, and winter comfort. Rather than treating environmental performance as an added technical layer, the project embeds it into the massing, roof geometry, openings, and public threshold.

Material durability is also central to the environmental strategy. The coastal context requires robust junctions, careful drainage, and materials that can tolerate rain, salt-laden air, wind, and long-term weathering.

[edit] Public use and community value

The project was developed in response to The Ridge SCIO, a Dunbar-based social enterprise focused on repair, training, community support, and local participation. This influenced the project’s direction away from a purely formal cultural building and toward a civic architecture that supports making, learning, gathering, and public engagement.

The building is intended to serve multiple users: local residents, visitors, fishermen, craftspeople, school groups, cultural organisations, and community groups. Its combination of workshop, exhibition, café, event space, and harbour-facing terrace allows it to support both everyday use and seasonal events.

In this sense, the project does not separate heritage from contemporary life. Maritime history is presented through active repair, storytelling, public use, and shared occupation of the harbour edge.

[edit] Tectonic development

The proposal developed from a wider investigation into timber as a material system in Scotland. Earlier studies examined forestry, species, processing, engineered timber, carbon storage, and supply chains. This informed the project’s understanding of timber as both a grown biological material and an industrially processed construction product.

Precedent studies also shaped the project’s tectonic direction. The Reading Room in the Forest informed the separation between primary structure, insulated enclosure, and sheltered threshold. Additional small timber pavilion and farmstand precedents informed seasonal use, canopy depth, open frontage, and the relationship between timber frame and public exchange.

These studies led to a design approach based on structural clarity, layered enclosure, and environmental mediation. The final Dunbar proposal expands this logic from a small shed study into a larger civic building.

[edit] Significance

Dunbar Maritime Culture House proposes a form of coastal civic architecture rooted in repair, memory, and environmental response. It combines maritime working culture with public interpretation and social gathering, using timber construction and retained stone fabric to create a dialogue between old and new.

Its significance lies in the relationship between tectonics and context. The project does not treat sustainability, heritage, structure, and public life as separate themes. Instead, they are brought together through the building’s massing, material strategy, roof form, and threshold spaces.

The proposal imagines a maritime culture house that is both practical and symbolic: a place where working harbour knowledge remains visible, local stories are shared, and public life is sheltered at the edge of the North Sea.

[edit] Project information

Project title: T.K. Felix Wong Studio - Dunbar Maritime Culture House
Designer: Tsz Kiu Felix Wong / T.K. Felix Wong Studio
Institution: University of Edinburgh, ESALA
Course: Architectural Design: Tectonics
Academic year: 2025/26
Location: Dunbar Harbour, East Lothian, Scotland
Site focus: McArthur’s Store and the surrounding harbour edge
Project type: Conceptual architectural proposal / academic project
Status: Unbuilt
Main programme: Maritime exhibition, café, event space, boat repair demonstration, net mending workshop, archive, tool storage, public terrace, viewing area, and sheltered courtyard
Main materials: Timber structure, retained stone masonry, glazed openings, roof canopy, timber envelope components
Design focus: Timber tectonics, adaptive reuse, maritime heritage, coastal exposure, civic threshold, public gathering, environmental response
Client reference: The Ridge SCIO
Tutors: Jamie Henry and Angus Henderson
Author: Tsz Kiu Felix Wong