Hoskins Architects have submitted plans for a series of extensive extensions and alterations to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.

The proposals will see the current Scottish Collection Gallery in the plinth of the Scottish National Gallery extended and re-modelled.

Works will include creating new stair links from the Playfair gallery above and opening up the new gallery space to the Weston link concourse in the plinth. An accessible route is to be formed in Princes Street Gardens down to a re-modelled lower level entrance together with public landscape re-modelling.

In a summary of their scheme the architects noted: “The proposed architectural interventions to this nationally significant building are limited, primarily by the existing topography of the site, but also by the Gallery’s desire that the original buildings remain the uncontested set piece within the townscape.

“The key concern has been to work with the existing interventions on the site, referencing the context to re-inforce the unity of the stone plinth and creating a suitable contemporary outward looking expression for Scotland’s Art Gallery to the Gardens and City. There is to be no manifestation of this externally on the original Playfair buildings and works internally are to areas which have already had significant historical intervention and are judged to be of limited historical significance.”