Glasgow’s O’DonnellBrown Balances Conservation and Community Centered Design

The idea behind the project was to create a prototype for low‑cost community and learning infrastructure, something repeatable, adaptable, and easy to assemble and disassemble. “There were only three lengths of timber used in the entire structure,” Brown continues. “Simplicity of structure was a major driver for the project.” The project and the research around it has led to more outdoor learning pavilion iterations, including an in-progress, off-grid learning facility for Edinburgh University in rural central Scotland.

Another notable heir to the Community Classroom typology is the Take a Bow Opportunity Centre in Kilmarnock, Glasgow, completed in 2025. Beginning in 2021, O’DonnellBrown led an intensive renovation of a poorly insulated, damp- and asbestos-ridden 1970s-era community center into a community space for a performing arts and youth development charity.

O’DonnellBrown’s retrofit proposal involved serious insulation upgrades to the walls, roof, and floor; opening up the front elevation with larger windows; moving the parking lot to the back to create a new public space that melds into the adjoining park; and adding “a modest extension on the facade” to create a proper changing area near the stage. The firm also collaborated with energy consultant Carbon Futures to develop an energy strategy that is in alignment with Take a Bow’s net-zero ambitions, reducing the building’s overall energy and carbon emissions by 70 percent.

“By adding a glulam colonnade across that elevation, we unified the new and existing parts of the building but also created an improved sense of arrival,” explains Michael Dougall, a director at O’DonnellBrown since 2022. The resulting timber canopy “provides a covered space that can be used by the adjoining cafe and for outdoor performances,” and represents a “continuation and refinement of the detailing we developed for the Community Classroom.”

From one-off buildings to masterplans, the firm has developed a specialization in “taking often quite tricky,” vacant or historic buildings and sites across the UK and reimagining them, imbuing them with fresh purpose, functionality and, importantly, a “viable future” says Jennifer O’Donnell. “Often these are redundant public assets taken on by charitable organizations who have the drive and commitment to turn these buildings into assets that will be used by the community for years to come,” adds Dougall.

He is referring to the Take a Bow project but also the recently completed Millport Town Hall on the Island of Cumbrae, located a scenic one-hour drive and 8-minute ferry ride from Glasgow. What started as feasibility study back in 2018 became a six-year labor of love for both architect and client, the latter, a passionate group of locals who made over 140 funding applications in order to complete the project (and won a staggering 50 percent of them.) The project now houses a large hall for ticketed performances, several smaller spaces that can be used by local clubs and charities and, perhaps most importantly, three apartments that will be rented out for short-term stays as a way of providing a steady income stream to help cover the venue’s running costs.

Back in Glasgow, the firm continues its work in dynamic adaptive reuse projects. In New Olympia House, a 2023 office retrofit of a 1927 former Salvation Army Citadel, the architects employed an extensive “defurb” strategy that improved the building’s energy efficiency, provided an accessible entrance, and freed up the maximum amount of flexible floor space while also exposing brickwork, roof trusses, and existing timber linings. The studio is also in the process of converting the ornate, landmarked 1870s Pipe Factory in the city’s East End, into office and educational spaces for a local arts organization.