The White Top Centre in Dundee caters for adults with profound disabilities, providing day-care and limited respite facilities. To enable users to experience a range of environments, the centre has integrated garden elements both in its landscaping and internally. The entrance is via a bridge over a waterfall and the building has a courtyard garden at its heart.

The building's purpose - to cater for users with special needs - meant we had constantly to question and redefine our architectural preconceptions of 'normality' and 'appropriateness'. The final design is the result of continuous discourse with the client.

Winner of: 1994 Dundee Civic Trust Award

1994 Civic Trust Awards Commendation

"In Nicoll Russell Studios, the commissioners found a firm more than capable of fleshing the bones of a very unusual, sometimes exhausting and always demanding brief.

The remarkable thing about the White Top Centre is the way they have used every opportunity to underline and make something sensorily stimulating out of the ordinary elements of the building".

Richard Jaques, The Scotsman, 9th October 1995.

Winner of: 1995 RIBA Regional Award

"This project is the result of an unusually close relationship between the Client and the Architect in the light of a special interpretation of the role of the Architect…… the intimate relationship between the Client's intentions and architectural results are evident everywhere ……. the purpose and the outcome of the building are self evidently justified".

RIBA Awards, Assessor's Report 1995

Winner of: 1995 Supreme Award Regeneration Awards (Scottish Enterprise/RIAS)

"The building inspires at every level ……. this is a superb work of architecture which contributes immensely to assist the work of a supremely dedicated staff".

Jury Citation, Regeneration Awards 1995