Scott Torrance of 3DReid on skill sharing, Glasgow’s vibrancy and the softening of workplace.

3DReid is an award-winning practice providing full architectural services within both architecture and interior design. Based in 5 locations across the UK - London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh. They work across all sectors, including hotels, workplace, residential and airports.

Scott Torrance is a Director and Head of Interiors at 3DReid. He is based in the Glasgow studio and leads the interiors team on a wide range of projects.

The practice prides itself on the sharing of information, staff and knowledge between the different studio locations. This process creates a design community thriving to develop their expertise and enriches the work they produce for clients.

With Material Source Glasgow on the horizon we learn more about the vibrant Glasgow design scene and how Scott himself would like to use the studio once opened.

We recently caught up with Scott to find out about his career journey and his role as Head of Interiors at 3DReid…

Firstly, how did you get started in design?

I always had an aptitude for art when I was younger but didn’t think I could use it as a career. I had considered architecture but I didn’t think there would be enough creativity within that for me, plus seven years of study put me off. I visited Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee with my school art department whilst in 5th year and toured the degree show where I saw their interior design department. I thought this seemed a good mix of the creative with the technical.

A couple of years later I applied to a few different places for their interior design course and ended up studying at Edinburgh College of Art. When I graduated, I struggled to break into a design practice as there was a lack of jobs and opportunity at that time and ended up working with a shop-fitting company doing furniture design and manufacture.

This turned out to be a great move for me as it gave me a grounding in the technical design of how things are made, and the different materials used. It also exposed me to working with numerous interior designers and architects as I was responsible for translating their designs into reality. With the contacts I made I worked for myself for a few years before moving to an architectural practice and becoming involved more in the interior design sector of the business.

Can you introduce us to 3DReid?

3DReid is an architecture and interior design practice based in 5 locations across the UK with around 100 staff members. We work in all sectors including hotels, workplace, residential, airports and industrial plus some unusual ones which crop up from time to time.

As Head of Interiors, what does your role there entail?

My role is a wide and varied one. Day to day it is managing and assisting the interior design team on the current projects we are working on, attending the design team meetings and travelling to our various sites around the UK, whether that be for client meetings, site surveys, etc.

I still do quite a bit of CAD drawing myself believe it or not! I’m also involved in the business development side for practice so that would include meeting clients both old and new to talk about their potential projects and also pulling together the fee proposals for those. Every day is varied and interesting.

You’re based in Glasgow, but 3DReid has offices across the country – how do the offices support one another?

We have always worked well together as a practice, sharing information, staff and knowledge between our different locations which we consider our greatest strength. This was emphasised during lockdown. We started to undertake practice-wide project design workshops to try and introduce more staff to one another and get better outputs for our design.

This has been a great success and we now have numerous groups which have grown out of this process and meet on a regular basis. The interior design department was fortunate as we had worked extensively with our colleagues in the other offices over the years given the nature of what we specialise in and the fact we are based in Scotland. It’s good to now see this spreading out to our architectural colleagues too.

What’s the design scene like in Glasgow?

Vibrant! Glasgow is a great city and it is telling that most of the interior design and architecture practises are based here. There are some great events that take place in Glasgow from a design perspective and I am sure this will continue to grow with the likes of Material Source coming to the city.

With Material Source Studio Scotland on the horizon, is there anything you’re most looking forward to using the space for?

It’s going to be a great space for designers to bring clients and use the product sample resource that will be readily available. We have design workshops with all our clients and I think to bring them to that space and have samples to hand will provide them with an even better experience, perhaps speeding up the design process. I can see design talks being held there too and it will be useful to meet with suppliers and clients for a coffee in a design led environment.

Your projects span many different sectors – are you seeing more blurring between the boundaries with hospitality/workplace/retail/resi etc?

Definitely yes, but this trend has been happening for some years now. It first started with clients wanting to bring the hospitality side across to their workplace environments and this was accelerated post-lockdown as clients tried to entice staff back to the office from their home environment.

Are there any trends impacting your designs currently?

It appears to be slightly different trends depending on the sector. As mentioned in the previous question we have seen workplace environments soften and become more homely with the welfare of staff being a number one priority. Whereas clients previously wanted a hospitality feel for their premises we have seen them recently become almost more domesticated with home from home comforts being adopted into the designs.

In hotels the challenge now is to entice guests to come out of their lovely homes (which were refurbished/upgraded in many instances during lockdown) and spend time visiting a hotel. In order to do this many hotels are upping the room comfort and facilities as they have come to the realisation that many people have great living spaces, bedrooms, bathrooms and IT at home, so you need to improve on this if you want them to spend their money.

Food & beverage within the hotels is also leaning towards a more experience based service to attract guests. We are also seeing the wellbeing element reintroduced to many new smaller hotel schemes as another experienced based activity to attract guests to the hotel.

Do you have a favourite material to work with? Or any brands/designers we should keep an eye out for?

We tend to use many different materials across our projects so it is hard to think of a favourite. We’ve been trying to use more recycled and sustainable products in our designs over the last few years and there are some really interesting products on the market currently. One product that we came across recently was a stool made from recycled credit cards by Vepa. It’s called the Wybelt Woble Stool and is a great product which we are using on an upcoming hotel project.

What are you working on currently?

We have just completed a full refurbishment of a grade A listed townhouse in Edinburgh’s New Town which is a workplace project and have another very similar workplace project on site in Edinburgh, which is mid-way through. We are coming to the end of a large scale retail fit-out in Derby.

Our AC Marriott hotel project in Glasgow is beginning fit-out on site and should be completed this summer. We also have a 168 room serviced apartment project for the new MY Locanda brand in Glasgow on site, as well as a hotel refurbishment in Glasgow city centre for a new brand which we are currently finalising the design for. Add to this a 44 bedroom refurbishment for a four-star hotel in Windsor and I would say we are quite busy!

And what’s next?

We are developing a new brand for a four-star hotel on a mixture of sites in the UK which has been very exciting to work on. We are also looking at a couple of large hotel projects in Edinburgh for two different brands and have some larger workplace projects on the horizon.