“If our landscapes require to be rewilded then perhaps architecture needs to be also” *
The Practice starts from a Nature Focussed + environmentally conscious view point, to interrogate the relationship between architecture and landscape.
Working carefully with the specifics of people + place, in ever more sensitive environments.
Minimum waste, increased energy efficiency and reduced carbon footprints are a must.
Mother Earth is telling us that we must rewild and restore our Planet now or face an uncertain future.
We aim to synthesise architecture and landscape, constructing wherever possible with materials which can fall back to nature in their constituent parts, in a clean and sustainable way at the end of use.
We work with localised material as much as possible, utilising local timber, stone + aggregates as base materials.
Bringing in technology and advanced materials as supplement to these and for enhancement..
Will Allsop's ethos of "knock nothing down" , suggests where possible that we work with what we find and carefully preserve..
We aim to recycle everything within the curtilage of the site.
Our Practice process involves surveying + drawing by hand to develop proposals that have a fuller sensory awareness of place.
As the Design develops we move naturally into digital presentation formats.
We will access a team of specialists in line with each projects unique requirements and context.
Common to the practice is working in interdisciplinary teams that include land use consultants, engineers, artists, renewables consultants, archaeologists, ecologists.
We have 25 years experience in “Off Grid“ strategy, with early participation at The Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales + other alternative think tanks.
We apply the principles of Passive solar design. and supplement this commonly with Ground Source heating, recently enforced by training in Earth sheltered design in Iceland.
We are active in community energy and the placement of solar and other renewables.
The role of community development falls within the practice remit and we have delivered a number of community based research and infrastructure projects, inclusive of the sourcing of Funding.
Our principal Architect - Andrew McAvoy worked in rural Cyprus surveying the intimate Adobe ( mud brick ) architecture of the Akamas peninsula, which generated a basic respect for the use of natural materials, localised craft and the vernacular.
Each project we are asked to consider must allow for a careful immersal in its full context.
We indulge our clients in a thorough survey and consideration of topography, nature, trees, archaeology, water and energy in all its forms.
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Contact us
To consider the relationship between
Architecture + Nature.
Further detail on each project on this page can be found in the Portfolio section of this site .
All content + Imagery - Copyright of Retool Architecture unless stated otherwise.
* Quote - A McAvoy - Iceland - On Erasmus Turf Building workshop 2017
A New Barn at Dalgarven Mill - Ayrshire
Baldernock Kirk - 1796
Geneaology Centre - Harris- Drawn for RMA
Geneaology Centre - Harris for RMA
Steading - Adaptation - Little Mill of Clinterty
New Passive Solar House + Edible Garden + Re-wilding strategy.
Cuttle Craigs Quarry -Aberdeenshire
Master Plan for Apple Barn venue, Eco tourism + Rebooting of Historic Orchard + Re wilding of depleted woodlands.
Stone Byres
South Lanarkshire
Master Plan for Apple Barn venue, Eco tourism + Rebooting of Historic Orchard + Re wilding of depleted woodlands.
Proposed Passive Solar House - Erriff - Eire
Proposed Passive Solar House - Erriff - Eire
Erosion - Coast of Ole D' Oleron
McAvoy House - Mill o Braco
McAvoy House - Mill o Braco
McAvoy House - Mill o Braco
Castaway Pod - Designed by A McAvoy
Andrew McAvoy - Cove Park Completing relocation of 2 Pods from Castaway 2000 Island
Self Build - Pos - Isle of Muck - Inner Hebrides - 2004
Setting Up Cove Park
Tea Caddy - Mobile mini House
Tea Caddy Mobile house in Tramway theatre - Glasgow
Water Row - Govan - Heritage Master Plan
Water Row - Govan - Heritage Master Plan
The Ghost of Water Row
Exchange with Gdansk
Exchange with Gdansk
Grand Designs - Long House
Grand Designs - Long House
Grand Designs - Long House
Cove Park - Artists Accommodation Cubes + Pond
Cove Park - Artists Accommodation Cubes + Pond
New Office for Natural Power Company - Dumfries + Galloway
New Office for Natural Power Company - Dumfries + Galloway
New Office for Natural Power Company - Dumfries + Galloway
Little Mill of Clinterty - Steading
Hit Dwell article below for full story
DWELL - Click on image for the link to article
Craftsmanship + Trades
Recognising the wealth of the Scottish traditions of Craftsmanship and making
Green Oak Framing
In any project we will try our very best to design buildings that make the best of traditional Trades and materials. We will let each trade speak for itself and encourage good making + making good . There is a wealth of knowledge in every apprentice it only requires unlocking. 
Promoting Hand skills in Construction
Hand work and the refinement of traditional Craft.
Old walls are precious and tell many tales. We work with them and unlock their narrative for a considered future.
Site specific Architecture created from natural materials .
Shop Class as Soul Craft - 2
Framing up your Building in the workshop
Working with Good makers - Like French Carpenter Gaetan Goubet
Reducing Cost through careful material selection ordering and making
Promoting joy in Everyday things .
A new Shed in Aberdeenshire.
Considering the legacy of our lost Built Environment
Understanding the nature of materials and their production.
Embracing Green agendas and keeping up to speed with COP 21
Facilitating new landscaping, permaculture and growing space around Buildings.
Work with the best of Scottish makers.
Textile light + aspect
Angelique Robb plants a bespoke garden around her new house
Mum + Dad McAvoy - Sitting oot at Mill o Braco with their view of the Mither Tap.
Working sensitively amidst a heriatge Environment - Dalgarven Mill 2
Elevation of NEW Dutch Barn in the mix of the Utilitarian setting - Dalgarven Mill
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Community + Arts Practice
The Tea Caddy in position on Albert Drive as " Everybody's House
Communities are commonly in crisis.
Architecture can provide Tools to help them. The community Empowerment Act will come into place in May 2016 allowing many disempowered communities to take a hold of buildings and landscape ,where they presently sit in a state of decay. We endorse the increases in "bottom up" process and offer the following: - Ability to facilitate communities in structuring their thoughts and requirements toward embracing their own assets. - Advice on planning and process of events and basic infrastructure.. We can assess buildings and landscapes and the feasbility in communities taking these on as their own infrastructure assets. Through practical advice and the structuring of aspirations we can help reduce sometimes overwhelming complexity. We can design and organise the making of complementary process small temporary and mobile Buildings that allow for engagement process. We have made bespoke manageable objects for use by various types of formative organisation. The practice has a foundation since its beginning in 1999, in the setting up and dismantling of infrastructure. We have designed built Objects that can be moved when their requirement lies elsewhere. These small buildings as engagement tools by their nature allow for careful deployment and commonly enhance - presence and discussion. You might say they unlock narrative., We come with a willingness to listen and help you plan. We have worked over the last 5 years with Historians, Artists, Archaeologists Teachers, School Kids and vulnerable blighted Post Industrial communities as they claw their way out of multi deprivation. We have been commended by Arts and Business Scotland for Community focused work. We have delivered 3 successful HLF funded community projects recently and these have been applauded. 
Locating the Past
The old Horse Ferry and the Ferry Inn - Govan
First Fag packet Sketch of the Ghost Of Water Row - Drawing by A McAvoy
Native Scottish Spruce Wood framing creates a pale skeletal Frame into which functions would slot.
Playing with light and Dark Scottish Winter
Reengaging with a lost time Continuum
Photograph by Tom Manley
Playing with the time continuum in a Heritage Environment
Image by Julia Bauer
Ghost of Water Row wins RIAS award in 2013
Fair Glasgow - "Swing boat" props
The show Float underway as part of the HLF Fair Glasgow Project.
Showman JJR Stringfellow and volunteers on Fair Glasgow
From 2017 to 2020
the practice created a temporary infrastructure for the Community of East Pollokshields as a bi product of a series of Social research Projects . For Full story see
Mark Makers in Portfolio section of website
Community Architecture + Self Build with our own hands and second hand materials.
Iceland _ Erasmus exchange
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RESEARCH + EUROPEAN CULTURAL EXCHANGE
GOVAN + GDANSK Exchange Northern European Waterfront Heritage Zones Network. The practice is part of this network and contributes to an exemplary cross border and multi disciplinary knowledge exchange . The aim of the network is to enable the 2 cities to "compare notes" on authentic Industrial narratives being missed by top down process. The exchange seeks to share and offer exemplary emerging heritage related practice that pushes boundaries . In summer 2016 there will be a series of events in Gdansk and we hope to visit to Gdansk and take something y way of exchange with us. Watch this space. Gdansk; with its daily skyline ballet of working cranes, is under threat and currently providing counterpoint .in its efforts to protect its Heritage. Gdansk Shipyard is presently helping Retool its architecture, by awakening appreciation of Industry, products, real landscape and people. 
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'Whilst in Gdansk on the exchange in August 2015 ; we had the pleasure of being shown first hand , the buildings infrastructure and intangible heritage that our exchange partners have been battling on for 7 years now.
Critical Heritage Dialogue is underway and will culminate in conference, to which we will contribute. 20-21 January 2017, Riverside Museum, Glasgow Top down meets bottom up in post-industrial regeneration: Good practice and challenges in participatory approaches to community engagement in city planning. As seen above one of the Shipbuilding sheds of the Tool makers street show the attenuation to detail in these working buildings of brick and Iron. LEARNING FROM GDANSK - Our Polish partners have fought and achieved protection for the remaining 50% of 270 hectares of Shipyard. They have pushed this via creativity and determination at national government level . The 50% that has evaded the wrecking ball, is under their considered gaze. All the usual suspects are around seeking to demolish and invade the public / Industrial realm with the private waterside interest !!! However Architect - Jacek Dominicak is busy with his "dia logic" space tool illustrating the importance of public over private . Gdansk is reengaging its medieval city with the very thing that generated it - a trading port and ship building facility. The debate is live and Dr Roman Sebastyanski is busy rewriting the narrative of Shipyard ... as a living breathing entity , "The very idea of Shipyard , is becoming of value in itself. " ShipYard is hotter than rivet ! " Conservator of Industrial apparatus Valdemar Affelt is busy commodifying every last rivet and pushing the human association and culture of riveter through into the realm of ICH. Govan and Glasgow have much to learn from Gdansk . 
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