Page\Park Completes Wellbeing Centre in the Woods at Fettes College, Edinburgh

Architecture practice Page\Park has completed The Allardice Centre, a health and wellbeing building for Fettes College, the independent school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dezeen reported the completion on 28 October 2026.

The centre is named after David Allardice, a former pupil of Fettes. It covers 469 square metres, about 5,050 square feet, and sits on a wooded plot. The single-storey building brings medical and pastoral care, the support given to pupils for their wellbeing and personal life, under one roof. It is fully accessible, with no steps between its spaces.

At the heart of the plan is an open wellbeing hub. Treatment and counselling rooms wrap around it, and each one looks out over the trees. Above, a roof that slopes in a single direction rises to a lantern-like form, ringed by high windows known as clerestory windows, which let daylight in from above.

Most of the building is made from Scottish materials. The frame is glued-laminated timber, usually called glulam, which is layers of timber glued into large beams. The timber is grown in Scotland and the frame was designed with the Scottish engineering firm Will Rudd. The outer walls are Darney stone, quarried 75 kilometres away, and the roof is bronze-coloured metal.

Page\Park said the design was shaped by David Allardice's interest in Eastern philosophy. The practice pointed to Wuxing, a Chinese system that groups the world into five elements: fire, water, wood, metal and earth. The landscape around the building was developed by Harrison Stevens.

The construction contractor was CCG. A CCG project notice described the building as meeting an advanced energy standard, which allows low-carbon performance. Fettes College said the project was made possible by a generous donation. The college had planned to break ground in January 2025.

Fettes says the centre gives its medical team a dedicated base. It also hosts PSHE lessons, the personal, social, health and economic education that many schools teach, along with related activities.

For pupils and staff, the biggest practical change is that care now happens in one place. The counselling rooms and the medical team share a building, and every room has a view of the woodland.