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In this paper, the author introduces the work of one of France's most important architects of the Renaissance period and suggests briefly how many of his published designs - in particular his sketches for country houses - could have been familiar to Scottish architects and builders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the collections of the Scottish Architects' Papers Preservation Project. Buchanan Campbell; Carr and Matthew; J. and J.A. Carrick; Dick Peddie and McKay.

Focuses on the preservation and conservation of architects' papers in Scotland. Cataloguing of materials; Use and promotion of archive collections; Architectural heritage.

Explores the contents of the book 'Documents Relating to Roslin Chapel,' by John Britton. Measurements of the drawings and engravings bound in the volume; Plan and elevation of trefoil window; First phase of the restorations at the Roslin Chapel.

In this essay, the hitherto unknown history of Sir William Bruce's early life and career is revealed through important newly discovered sources. Until now, the Kincardine Papers had previously concealed the fascinating commercial and political ventures of the gentleman-turned-architect. This thorough examination of his early career brings forward information crucial to providing a full understanding of Bruce's approach to architecture and his later role as Surveyor of the King's Works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spotlights a collection of student drawings by architect Hamish McLachlan that is in the possession of the National Monuments Record of Scotland. MacLachlan's evocation of the practicalities of producing drawings; His description of a typical day in the life of a first year student at Edinburgh College of Art in 1938; Description of life in Basil Spence's drawing office in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Provides details of architect-related additions to the collections of the National Monuments Record of Scotland. Photograph album compiled by architect J. Maurice Arthur in the 1900s; Survey of a Private Collection of designs for Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland, by architect Robert Rowand Anderson in 1883; Set of proofs created by Robert William Billings in 1852; Papers of landscape architects Frank Clark, Katie Hawkins, Jane Wood.

This paper provides an overview of publishing about Scottish architecture from the I 1960s to the present, with a particular focus upon the role of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland in fostering the growth of such publishing within Scotland itself. It suggests that, as a result of the Enlightenment ideology which still pervades the subject, Scotland lags behind Europe in the under- standing of its own culture; and that Scottish architectural history is still not integrated into international architectural historiography. The paper is written from the perspective of the author who was Secretary and Treasurer of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland from 1979-1994, and therefore responsible for establishing RIAS Publishing (later Rutland Press) and the RIAS architectural publishing and drawings collection strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the main characteristics of the Scottish formal landscape, as established by Sir William Bruce. It considers Bruce's key contribution but also how his collaboration with Alexander Edward allowed the further development of the characteristics of the Scottish designed landscape, partly under the influence of France and also in relation to the notion of the Scottish Historical Landscape. It focuses on two case studies, Kinnaird Castle in Angus and Hopetoun House, proposing a new interpretation of the latter in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2010 and 2012, the authors worked on Leslie House, Fife, and Kinross House, Perth & Kinross, both by Sir William Bruce. New discoveries included the predecessor structures, and the effect of the 1760s fire at Leslie, and the original arrangement of the Great Dining Room ceiling at Kinross House. An interdisciplinary approach combining the techniques of architectural history and buildings archaeology was used in both cases, and this paper re-emphasises the importance of this approach in reaching reliable conclusions about historic buildings as well as providing some insights into the workings of these houses at the time of their construction under the guidance of Sir William Bruce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1960s and 1970s in Europe were a formative period not simply in terms of modern architecture and spatial planning but how the historic quarters of cities would henceforth function socio-economically. This paper addresses the theme of the AHSS--DOCOMOMO conference, ''Mirror of Modernity: the postwar revolution in urban conservation'', in the context of differing approaches across Europe to the functional as well as physical relationship between historic city centres and their expanding modern counterparts, and how this impacted on the theory and practice of urban conservation. Examples of post-Second World War historical reconstruction are cited alongside museological, integrated and strategic approaches. These disclose a disparity between historic areas treated by conservators and planners in accordance with a limited range of architectural and aesthetic parameters, and by a broader coincidence of interests that sought to achieve their continuity as distinctive, small-scale, mixed-use quarters that accorded more closely with their historic character and sense of place. The paper concludes by reflecting on the closer coincidence between the evolving integrated urban conservation practice in Scotland -- specifically Edinburgh -- and continental examples, compared to the more limited urban design approach that dominated south of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises a talk delivered on Saturday 2 May 2009 on the afternoon of the second day of the AHSS conference ''Mirror of Modernity''. It records three separate periods of work relating to, largely physical, aspects of tenement improvement in Glasgow carried out by the author: initially over the years 1968--69 on the Rehabilitation in Glasgow Study at the University of Strathclyde; followed by its Oatlands sequel in 1969--70, as a Scottish Development Department pilot exercise. A final interval over 1973--4 covers work relevant to house improvement for the Corporation of the City of Glasgow Planning Department on the Second Review of the Development Plan. The paper ends with a short summary of tenement improvement progress in Glasgow over the decade 1970--1980. These accounts are snapshots of the progress of rehabilitation in the City over a key period of rapid transition, from policies directed exclusively towards clearance, renewal and municipalisation to a more balanced approach embracing community action and improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

St Cecilia's Hall in Niddry Street, Edinburgh, was built between 1761 and 1763 as a private concert hall and practice space for the members of the Edinburgh Musical Society. This was an exclusive male club of well-to-do legal, merchant and aristocratic members, who actively participated in the performance of music. As their ambitions grew they employed professional musicians, and to pay for these artists they increased their membership and arranged concerts, to which ladies were at first, somewhat grudgingly, invited.1 This paper examines the history of the design and construction of the building from 1755, along with the changes made to it between 1763 and the departure of the Musical Society in 1801. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that we have misunderstood the evolution of the pre-modern Scottish town as the consequence, first, of assuming that English yardsticks were always appropriate to their analysis; and second, of failing to seeing the reality of the Scottish town behind the propaganda of the Enlightenment. This paper suggests prototypical features for the evolution of Scottish towns, and then examines them against Tain and Whithorn.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prefacing this paper with the development in the vernacular tradition in building, the author examines the subject of stone stairs in Scotland. His personal and extensive experience during his career as a conservation architect has helped the author understand the history and evolution of the stair as an integral component of a building which can simultaneously characterise local building tradition in terms of method and materials, indicate technological innovations, and finally represent a language of architectural design and style. In this paper, the author discusses the mural, turnpike, pencheck and scale and platt stair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Located north of Pittenweem in the East Neuk of Fife, Kellie Castle - a property in the ownership of the National Trust for Scotland since 970 - was for nearly a century beforehand in the occupation of the Lorimer family. While much of Kellie's attraction has been its unspoiled preservation, and its connection with the Lorimers, this paper outlines research being undertaken to re-evaluate the early social, political and architectural history of the castle during the seventeenth century. This paper also considers the particular role Kellie may have played in influencing and advancing the development of decorative plasterwork in seventeenth-century Scotland, as well as its influence on plasterwork in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of this paper is a Iongstanding interest of the author; the views expressed in it are his own and not all of them are shared by other authorities. The editor believes that the argument for new research and fresh thinking in the field of traditional materials and construction is both timely and well-made. It is to be hoped that the arguments which the author makes and the opinions which he expresses will stimulate new interest in the construction history and the ‘architectural geography’ of Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper brings to light an unknown scheme by Robert Adam fro the northern end of Edinburgh's North Bridge, as evidenced in two pencil sketches held in the Adam papers at Sir John Soane's Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design drawings of many of the architects whose collections have been catalogued as part of the Scottish Architects' Papers Preservation Project demonstrate the social reform, cultural changes, national policies and government legislation that led to the metamorphosis of Scotland from a rural based economy to a modern industrial nation in the period from the 1860s to the middle of the twentieth century. This paper examines the designs of dwellings, modified and produced by these architects, in order to trace a path towards contemporary issues in rural housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an annual summary of architect-related additions to the collections of the National Monuments Record of Scotland. Designs made by William Begg for unidentified rural and town buildings, a bridge and a home farm and byre; Drawings by Frank Edward Blanc of Broomhall House; Collection of David Bryce drawings for Edinburgh Royal Infirmary that are dated between 1872 and 1960.

Highlights the Ninth Congress of the International Confederation of Architectural Museums in Edinburgh, Scotland, held from June 28, 1998, to July 2, 1998. History of the organization; Number of delegates; Conference accommodation; Papers presented; Participants' visit to the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland.

Offers a reassessment of some aspects of the construction of the Thistle Chapel at Saint Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. Contents of Architect Robert Lorimer's office papers relating to the chapel; Collaboration between Lorimer and stained-glass artist Louis Davis; Dispute between Davis and Lorimer over the design to be used for the east window; Stone carvings above the King's stall.

An ongoing programme of research into the nature of the late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century designed landscape around Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire is beginning to reveal the grand vision of its creator Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie. This paper seeks to explore some of the symbolic narratives Seton embedded within the formal landscape he designed at Fyvie in the years around 1600, which was ultimately swept away by a Picturesque impetus in the late eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the remarkable features of the St Kilda World Heritage Site is the 'prodigious number of little cells' spread throughout the crofts and across the rough grazing on the hills behind.1 These vernacular buildings, known as cleitean (singular cleit), number a staggering 1,200 on Hirte alone, nearly 150 per square kilometre. This paper argues that, using careful field observation and a reassessment of the historical evidence, it is possible to suggest that cleitean were far more than simply communal storehouses. With origins in the medieval period but influenced by Norse practices, they were constructed to protect and improve goods that were demanded through a feudal economic network. Distributed widely across the landscape they spread risk and symbolised the islanders' control over the landscape. St Kilda was and is part of a rich and complex social and economic landscape, and the cleitean need to be understood through that lens, not simply as a homogenous group of contemporary sheds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir Basil Spence, Glover & Ferguson, enjoyed a conspicuous presence on the Scottish architectural scene, undertaking a wide range of notable commissions.1 One field in which they became acknowledged as specialists was that of library design. This expertise was developed during the design process for their first such job, the University of Edinburgh's Main Library, which received a RIBA award (1968) and a Civic Trust Commendation (1969). It led to an interesting group of libraries executed during the 1960s and 1970s. In this paper, both the well-known and more obscure libraries and library projects of Spence, Glover & Ferguson are discussed.2 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford as an important nineteenth-century manor house in the Scottish 'Baronial' style is rarely contested. The complexity of the property's development, however, has left open important questions about its history. In the main, previous studies of Abbotsford have shown a slow evolution from the original farmhouse on the estate through several stages until the main structure as it existed in Scott's lifetime was completed in 1825. What has now become more clearly visible, however, is the fact that for at least the first year after the purchase of the property in June 1811 Scott was aiming to build his residence on fresh ground immediately adjacent to the Tweed, according to plans commissioned from the eminent Glasgow architect William Stark. Using a range of archival material from the period - some newly discovered - this paper traces Scott's plan to build his 'cottage' by the Tweed, from the inception of the scheme in the summer of 1811 until its effectual abandonment after 1812. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the architectural effects of literary place-making on historic monuments through the example of Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter and the scene of its main action, Old Alloway Kirk. The background to antiquarian representation of the monument - with particular reference to Francis Grose's contribution - and its re-imagining by Burns is discussed along with the church's early designation as an ancient monument by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This volume derives directly from the University of Edinburgh's commemorative Sir William Bruce symposium, which took place four centuries after his death in 1710. This is also the first dedicated volume on Bruce since those by John Dunbar and Hubert Fenwick in 1970, although in the interim much has been published by numerous scholars on Bruce's career and his context, legacy and impact on others. Today, two readily available modern abstract accounts of Bruce exist - one by John Lowrey in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), the other by Howard Colvin in his Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (4th edn, 2008). There seems no purpose in duplicating that material here, but it may be helpful to highlight here at the outset some key aspects of Bruce's life and architectural career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper briefly introduces the political background to Lord Mar's belief that economic and industrial developments were the preconditions for the restoration of Scotland's political autonomy following the Act of Union of 1707. It defines the term Scottish Historical Landscape, and describes and places Mar's design for his estate at Alloa in Clackmannanshire in the stylistic context of formal landscaping c.1700. There is a description of the Gartmorn System, a hydraulic engineering scheme devised for Mar by George Sorocold, the technology it used and its impact on industrial development in Clackmannanshire. Another scheme for supplying water to Alloa was designed by a French engineer and this is also described. The Alloa plan included forestry plantations, a new road network for the movement of coal to the harbour and harbour improvements. Mar was also aware of the need to house the population and to develop different areas for dwelling and industry. The ideas behind this complex scheme can be explained by an awareness of infrastructure planning in France and linked to Edward's tour in 1700 and to other activities of the Scottish Parliament before the union of 1707. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sir William Bruce's lifetime, the relationship between architecture and natural, experimental and mechanical philosophies - the so-called 'new sciences' - was a fundamental one.1 It was reflected in the presence of major architects in important European scientific institutions in the period: groups such as the Royal Society of London and the Académie des sciences in Paris.2 These organisations could count among their members Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, François Blondel and Claude Perrault, all of whom practised architecture alongside other intellectual pursuits that we would now identify as science. In Scotland, the situation was somewhat different due to the fact that the new science was never institutionalised here, as it was in England and France. Nonetheless, as this article will demonstrate, many of Scotland's more prominent late seventeenth-century intellectuals counted architecture among their interests. Additionally, proposals were made in Scotland for scientific groups that, had they got off the ground, would have almost certainly promoted architecture as an intellectual subject in their meetings. What follows is an attempt to reconstruct how Scottish intellectuals in this period conceived of architecture as an intellectual discipline and as a practice. Ultimately, this paper will conclude that their approach to architecture tended to differ from their English counterparts. Just as they conceived of the new sciences in a much more straightforwardly Baconian way than the London Royal Society, so too was their attitude to architecture informed by the general climate of utility and improvement in Scotland at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a synopsis of some of the work of this Royal Master Mason, whose place in the Scottish architectural pantheon has sometimes been overlooked. Recent studies have shown him to have had almost an indispensible presence during the often tumultuous period of his career, paving the way for his better-known successors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers 1670s Holyrood and Sir William Bruce, and it aims to set out some fresh contexts within which both architect and project can be placed.1 It sees Holyrood's reconstruction as fulfilling practical and rhetorical requirements for a modern royal palace, plus a political need to project a distinctively Scottish monarchy, meaning the architecture had therefore to encompass a careful selection of distinctively Scottish references. It also highlights Bruce's early role in castle preservation and conservation, in castle revival and revived Gothic, as well as his interest in what was to become known as the Picturesque. Overlying all this is the argument that Holyrood is the archetypal building in the history of Scotland's proto-Romanticism and myth-making, and that it was made intentionally so partly to promote a myth of royal presence where the truth was otherwise; and that partly underlying the creation of a mythic Scotland was the decision to launch at Holyrood a reinvigorated Stuart rhetoric which included exploiting a politically unifying and unthreatening cult of Mary Queen of Scots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The architecture of James Smith ( c.1645-1731) has been misunderstood in the obsessive search for Palladianism and his direct knowledge of Roman architecture and culture has been largely overlooked. His importance was well recognised by his contemporaries: Colen Campbell called him ' The most experienced architect of that kingdom' ( Vitruvius Britannicus, Vol. II, 1717). After four years at the Scots College and the Collegio Romano in Rome, he rose very quickly to become the King's Surveyor and the leading architect in Scotland. This paper considers Smith's education and discusses the significance of his Roman experience not only for his own architecture but also, through his influence, for his contemporaries, for the next generation of Scottish architects and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid programme of school building undertaken across Glasgow by the School Boards (1873-1919) left the city with a rich legacy of architecture designed by the top architects of the day. This was in contrast to most other UK cities whose Board schools were designed by a single, directly employed architect. Most analysis of the Glasgow Boards' output has tended to focus on individual schools in isolation, primarily (and with good reason) Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Martyrs' and Scotland Street Schools. However, this approach overlooks the context within which the Board Schools were designed, built and operated. This paper aims to redress the balance, by providing an overview of the creation of the School Boards, the commissioning of architects, development of school design and the educational and social impact of the Boards, with a view to highlighting the importance of what remains of Glasgow's often neglected School Board heritage today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dictionary of Scottish Architects attracts users from all over the world. In 2010 information sent from Darwin, Australia led to new research being undertaken on the life and career of the Dundee architect George Mathewson who disappeared from records in Dundee in the early 1850s and was thought to have died young: however, the information from Australia proved otherwise. Mathewson's story is linked to the history of Dundee in the nineteenth century: the growth of the town, its importance as a port and the development of its railway links. When the Dictionary of Scottish Architects became available online in 2006, noone anticipated how many times the database would be interrogated (now over seven million times) and how many professional researchers and academics, genealogists and local historians, planners, museum curators, journalists and other users from all over the world would send in new information, corrections and questions. This paper shows how an enquiry received from the other side of the world helped make sense of the fragmentary information the Dictionary previously held on one Dundee architect, George Mathewson, suggesting new lines of research and thus enabling a re-assessment of his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir Basil Urwin Spence O.M., R.A., began his architectural career in Edinburgh in 1931 and was still designing at his untimely death in 1976. Throughout his life he maintained a strong link with Scotland and remained true to the ethos of his training at Edinburgh College of Art, namely that the practice of architecture was essentially an art and a craft. Never easily pigeon-holed, Spence's oeuvre was eclectic. In turns traditional and innovative, theatrical and intimate, his works always displayed his concerns for artistry, materials, craftsmanship, texture and colour. Best known for prestige projects such as Coventry Cathedral, the Rome Embassy and Sussex University, Spence's school designs, which formed a small, but significant, part of his output during the 1950s, are largely overlooked. This paper explores his particular architectural approach through the wide ranging styles of the eight schools designed in his Edinburgh and London offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]