Toll House

The Water of Leith lies concealed beneath surrounding streets, only being revealed upon crossing Canonmills Bridge. Close proximity to the river affords an opportunity to form a way-marker along the walkway, opening the building up to the scenery and casting a warm glow over the surrounding streets and the water below.

Existing lower floor and walls are retained. The roof is replaced with a new trapezoidal pavilion perched over the water, topped with a generous rooflight. Form and composition take their language from the surroundings. Expansive openings connect the interior to the corner tree, the Canonmills Clock, the mature bank of trees and to the bridge and river, bringing its burble into the new restaurant and animating the intersection of streets, imbuing the building with a civic presence.

A timber and steel structure is cloaked in a black vertical standing seam steel cladding, with the materiality of the new dark upper pavilion counterposed by the white painted horizontality of the existing masonry of the lower enclosure, creating a distinct but balanced relationship between old and new. The trapezoidal form is topped with a generous rooflight, flooding natural light into the space beneath and over the new internal staircase, capturing views of the sky and the river’s treetops from within the volume.

Building, bridge, trees, clocktower and river all combine to form a piece of civic drama as the backdrop to a new restaurant offering.