GIA Design Awards 2025: Winners announced.

The winners of the GIA Design Awards 2025 have been unveiled.

During a celebratory evening at Glasgow's Cottiers, the top places in the categories of: Conservation; Sustainability; Interiors; Office/Commercial/Industrial/Retail; Residential; Healthcare; Small Works; Leisure/Arts; and Education, were named, in addition to the project that secured The GIA Supreme Award.

As the 'Home of the Glasgow Institute of Architects' at Material Source Studio Scotland, we've been keen supporters of the Institute's activities, including the awards where we attended as media partner.

A huge congratulations to the winners - here's a run-down of the practices and projects that reigned victorious on the night...

The GIA Supreme Award 2025

Hoskins Architects, delivered by BAM Construction on behalf of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Parkhead Health & Social Care and Community Hub won this year's Supreme Award.

Parkhead Hub is the largest primary care facility in the Country supporting the North East locality of Glasgow by improving local access to health, social care and community-based services. The design offers a robust, yet warm material palette with high quality materials complemented by generous areas of soft landscaping.

This will be NHS GGC’s first net zero in operation facility and will support a wide range of health and community services within a bright, welcoming and modern environment. Through the construction period the project has delivered over £19.5m in social value and supported a number of local community projects.

Discover more about this project here

Small Works

Award: Loader Monteith - Old Red House

Old Red House is the culmination of a united client-architect partnership to decarbonise one of the most common housing types in the UK – the terraced house. Terraces equate 25% of the UK’s housing stock according to a 2021-22 study by English Housing Survey; Old Red House aims to show just how much can be achieved to reduce the impact of this housing stock.

Undertaken by James Morton and Fenella Barlow-Pay, the renovations of Old Red House sought to better organise existing space, and extend the living areas, all with the underlying aim to make an exemplar project of energy efficiency.

Commendation: Baillie Baillie Architects - Iorram

Iorram is a self-build project, on a tight triangular site in Plockton Conservation Area. The project was an opportunity to explore a distinctly Scottish approach to natural materials, and the use of local timber, which is "an underutilised sustainable resource". Baillie Baillie Architects wanted to communicate the value of craftsmanship, local skills, and the inherent quality in natural materials in and of themselves.

Office, Commercial, Industrial, Retail

Commendation: HAUS Collective - Greenmarket, Dundee

HAUS Collective led the design of Greenmarket, a landmark office-led mixed-use development on a high-profile site within Dundee’s £1bn Waterfront Masterplan. The project mediates between the nearby conservation area and fragmented character of recent development, using considered massing, datums and materials to anchor the scheme in its context while projecting a confident civic presence.

At its core is a 75,000sqft Grade A regional office for anchor tenant BT, designed with flexible open-plan floorplates, offering long-term adaptability through sub-division. Alongside this, purpose-built student accommodation and active ground-floor retail spaces re-establish the street edge on this key artery into the city centre.

Healthcare

Award: Hoskins Architects, delivered by BAM Construction on behalf of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde - Parkhead Health & Social Care and Community Hub

Parkhead Hub is the largest primary care facility in the Country supporting the North East locality of Glasgow by improving local access to health, social care and community-based services. The design offers a robust, yet warm material palette with high quality materials complemented by generous areas of soft landscaping.

Large Residential

Award: ARPL Architects - The Standard, Dumfries High Street

The Standard is the first phase of the Midsteeple masterplan, a community led and owned regeneration of Dumfries Town Centre. The aim is to enable the community to take control of the re-development of the heart of the town.

The Standard is the first project delivering on these ambitions comprising three main elements:

• The substantially refurbished existing High Street building
• A seven storey tower in the hinterland with workspaces and affordable residential flats above
• A single storey link block providing flexible community and work spaces topped by a shared roof terrace and garden room.

Award: Stallan-Brand Architecture + Design Ltd & Ann Nisbet Studio - Maltings Wynd

Dundashill is a vibrant, climate-resilient, creative destination, where community living blends with canalside adventure.

Maltings Wynd is the second phase of this new sustainable urban neighbourhood, delivering 78 townhouses designed in collaboration with award-winning Glasgow practices Ann Nisbet Studio and Stallan-Brand.

The development boasts a network of landscaped pedestrian friendly streets, play areas, and communal green spaces, including a large sunken garden at its heart. The architectural language of the 3 and 4 bedroom, 3 storey townhouses celebrates the North Glasgow past industrial context, whilst the internal layouts are designed to meet the demands of a diverse range of residents.

Award: Collective Architecture - Water Row Phase 1

Water Row is a key development site in Glasgow, pivotal in transforming the city's waterfront. Recognised in Glasgow’s City Plan as a key priority site, it connects Glasgow West to Glasgow South, highlighted by the delivery of a new pedestrian bridge which, together with the new housing has transformed this part of the city.

The delivery of 92 mid-market homes forms Phase 1 of a wider strategic plan and vision. The development defines key urban edges at Govan Cross, enhances connectivity to the River Clyde, and supports the new Partick Bridge link, helping to revitalise the area’s historic core.

Small Residential

Award: Paper Igloo - Abhainn: Sustainable living in a connected community

A rare community of three contemporary, low-energy homes nestled within a larger urban area, Abhainn provides a peaceful retreat from bustling city life. Proof that urban living can be both beautiful and radically sustainable.

Built on a Brownfield site, this cohesive cluster is Passivhaus certified, ensuring exceptional thermal comfort and minimal energy use, while also delivering low embodied carbon.

Crisp geometric forms are balanced by warm, tactile materials like weathered timber and slate. The adaptable, multigenerational spaces of the interiors are anchored by a spectacular light-filled green core. Abhainn embodies a new model for sustainable urban living – one where architecture and sustainability are inseparable.

Award: Cameron Webster Architects - Overwater

Overwater is a bespoke new build home set within a tight site on the banks the Wyre Estuary in Lancashire. On the edge of a small hamlet, near Hambleton, the single storey, three-bedroom house is designed to sit seamlessly within and enhance the natural distinctive character and landscape of the open coastline. Constructed using local masonry building methods and referencing local agricultural tradition in its interplay of metal pitch roofs, and timber stone and harling cladding, Overwater is a strikingly contemporary yet site sensitive addition to the local settlement, providing a comfortable, modern light filled home for its two owners.

Commendation: Cameron Webster Architects - Grianan

Grianan (Gaelic for sunny place) is a new-build site specific two-bedroom house set within a beautiful, landscaped garden created by the clients during the house’s development and construction. Set within an existing settlement in Kippen, the compact, corridor-less single-storey home, sits long and low, and harmoniously within its stunning landscape setting. A low key screened southeast entrance elevation, to shield it from the road and neighbouring properties, features high level clerestory windows flooding light into the house. Contrastingly the glazed wall of the north-west façade takes in breathtaking views beyond the gardens towards Ben Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

Commendation: Loader Monteith - Hameart

Loader Monteith has delivered the renovation and extension of Hameart, an 18th-Century cottage in a historic conservation village in Perthshire, Scotland. Hameart was designed as a family home for a retired couple and a close relative who lives with dementia, resulting in a cosy yet open plan that embraces accessibility, comfort and a connection to its riverside setting.

Loader Monteith realised the project with respect for the building’s heritage while creating a warm, accessible home suited to ongoing residential care. The design has created a welcoming home that supports wellbeing without compromising architectural ambition.

Leisure & Arts

Award: INCH Architecture + Design - Parklea Community Hub

Parklea Branching Out (PBO), a charity in Port Glasgow, uses horticulture to support diverse groups through training, work experience, and recreational activities. A new community hub has been designed to enhance their mission, incorporating a café, meeting areas, and volunteer facilities. The design features a sculptural dendriform column and canopy system, glazed curtain walls, and brickwork inspired by garden pavilions. Located in a flood risk area near the Clyde Estuary, the hub is elevated above predicted flood levels and employs climate resilient construction. This project blends environmental responsiveness with social purpose, creating a meaningful and adaptive architectural response.

Commendation: O'Donnell Brown - Take A Bow Opportunity Centre

Take A Bow Opportunity Centre is an ambitious, environmentally progressive retrofit of the New Farm Loch Community Centre in Kilmarnock, creating a future-proofed facility for Take A Bow, a charitable organisation specialising in performing arts, community, and youth development.

Take A Bow Development Trust acquired the 1970’s community centre from East Ayrshire Council through an asset transfer and secured £2.4m of public funding to transform and safe guard the building through a number of environmental and operational improvements. Key improvements include a new changing room extension, a new entrance colonnade, improvements to the building fabric, and reconfiguration of the reception and bar area.

Education

Award: BDP - Neilston Learning Campus

The brief was to co-locate Neilston Primary School and St Thomas’s Primary School onto the site of the existing Neilston Primary School to create a joint campus. The land available to develop was topographically challenging, next to a railway line and awkward in form. These challenges also offered great opportunity to develop a high-quality design that embraces its location and invites community in.

Neilston Learning Campus has a variety of spaces to support different learning styles and encourage collaboration and communication. The spaces are well organised and aesthetically pleasing to reduce cognitive overload and make users feel at ease.

Commendation: Holmes Miller - Kirkliston Primary Early Learning and Childcare

Kirkliston Primary Early Learning and Childcare provides an annex to the existing Kirkliston Primary School, with a focus on early year learning. Incorporating two 50/50 Nurseries and four Primary 1 Classrooms the annex is designed to promote outdoor and play-based learning through open plan shared spaces, covered outdoor areas and nature-based external playgrounds. The building is organised into two wings, one nursery and one Primary 1, which link through a shared dining space and main entrance. Sustainability was a key requirement with the building being built to PassivHaus principles and constructed in CLT to limit embodied carbon.

Conservation

Award: Austin-Smith: Lord - Clackmannan Tolbooth restoration

Originally starting as a building fabric condition survey project, many significant defects in the Tolbooth were uncovered, leading Clackmannanshire Council to ask Austin-Smith: Lord to create a repairs proposals that would save this Grade A listed building from further deterioration. Research and further testing of the building was taken out, to help them understand the original construction and what changes had been made over the Tolbooth’s lifetime. The repair proposals used traditional materials and details, re-establishing lost features and improving the resilience of the building. Modern interventions were removed and the existing building features were restored using local craftspeople.

Commendation: Corstorphine & Wright Architects - Tower Building, University of Dundee

The Tower Building, opened in 1961 by The Queen Mother, is a well-established landmark in the city of Dundee, forming the main entrance to the University of Dundee. The project sought to sensitively overhaul the Category B-listed building’s façade, replacing the timber cladding and windows in line with current building regulation standards while also staying in-keeping with the original early modernist architectural design. The newly refurbished building has demonstrated a high-quality façade airtightness and thermal performance, while crucially also improving fire safety and ensuring this monumental building will stand for many more years.

Interiors

Award: Mosaic Architecture & Design - MARGO RESTAURANT

Mosaic Architecture + Design has delivered the interior design for Scoop Restaurants Group’s stylish Margo Restaurant on Miller Street in the heart of Glasgow city centre.

Marking the latest in a series of restaurant interiors Mosaic has provided for Scoop, the result is an elegant and natural space with earthy charm complementing the restaurant’s modern and sophisticated atmosphere.

Margo, named after the chef’s mother, seats 138 diners with a main dining area and mezzanine, offering a range of dining options including the chef’s counter bar and plentiful seating options.

Commendation: Mosaic Architecture & Design - SEBB’s BAR & RESTAURANT

Mosaic Architecture + Design has delivered the interior design for Scoop Restaurants Group’s Sebb’s underground bar and restaurant on Miller Street in the heart of Glasgow city centre.

Marking the latest restaurant interior Mosaic has provided for Scoop, Sebb’s serves food cooked over fire, wine on tap, cocktails created in a dedicated cocktail lab and has a strong focus on music, with a curated selection of DJs playing in on a sound system which is the focal point at the end of the central brick arch.

Sustainability

Award: Hoskins Architects, delivered by BAM Construction on behalf of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde - Parkhead Health & Social Care and Community Hub

Parkhead Hub is the largest primary care facility in the Country supporting the North East locality of Glasgow by improving local access to health, social care and community-based services. The design offers a robust, yet warm material palette with high quality materials complemented by generous areas of soft landscaping.

Award: Paper Igloo - Abhainn: Sustainable living in a connected community

A rare community of three contemporary, low-energy homes nestled within a larger urban area, Abhainn provides a peaceful retreat from bustling city life. Proof that urban living can be both beautiful and radically sustainable.

Built on a Brownfield site, this cohesive cluster is Passivhaus certified, ensuring exceptional thermal comfort and minimal energy use, while also delivering low embodied carbon.

Crisp geometric forms are balanced by warm, tactile materials like weathered timber and slate. The adaptable, multigenerational spaces of the interiors are anchored by a spectacular light-filled green core. Abhainn embodies a new model for sustainable urban living – one where architecture and sustainability are inseparable.

Commendation: O'Donnell Brown - Take A Bow Opportunity Centre

Take A Bow Opportunity Centre is an ambitious, environmentally progressive retrofit of the New Farm Loch Community Centre in Kilmarnock, creating a future-proofed facility for Take A Bow, a charitable organisation specialising in performing arts, community, and youth development.

Take A Bow Development Trust acquired the 1970’s community centre from East Ayrshire Council through an asset transfer and secured £2.4m of public funding to transform and safe guard the building through a number of environmental and operational improvements. Key improvements include a new changing room extension, a new entrance colonnade, improvements to the building fabric, and reconfiguration of the reception and bar area.

Well done once again to all the winners.

See the full list of shortlisted schemes, and find out more about the GIA and how you can get involved here.

All images used courtesy of the GIA - individual photographer credits feature