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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.

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

The Cullingworth Report, Scotland's Older Houses, of 1967 provided a detailed and shocking reminder of the acute problem of inadequate housing in Scotland. In addition to policy changes, to increase rates of clearance and replacement, the report called for inquiry into various practical areas, including the scope for improvement of tenements and methods for determining housing quality, including environmental standards. This paper, along with following article in this journal, recounts the work of the multidisciplinary improvement team, formed in the Scottish Development Department as part of government's response to Cullingworth's recommendations, in investigating those problems, collaboration with housing agencies and local authorities, and some resulting publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of establishing the Edinburgh New Town Conservation Committee (ENTCC) is one of shared interests, growing technical skills, friendship and leadership which over the last 40 years saved Edinburgh's New Town from creeping decay. In this paper, Desmond Hodges, the first director of ENTCC, describes the setting-up of the body and how it operated until amalgamation as part of Edinburgh World Heritage in 1999; and John Knight, founder of the Fettes Row Association, tells the story of how the first major ENTCC project in that street was tackled and accorded a royal seal of approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief paper will examine a prominent strand of Scottish modern-vernacular housing design that emerged as a direct result of postwar planned slum-clearance in small historic burghs and towns in the 1950s and 1960s. Rooted in the Patrick Geddes conservative surgery concept, these place-sensitive schemes usually involved retention and conversion of selected historic properties (and in some instances facsimile reconstruction), demolition of nineteenth-century stock, and new housing within that context. Although influenced by the pioneering interwar preservation campaigns to rescue Scotland's historic ''little houses'' and burgh communities from decay and destruction -- such as the National Trust's Little Houses scheme -- a new generation of architects saw the postwar need for new planned communities to meet urgent housing needs, as a design opportunity to harmonise old and new within an overall planned ensemble. The architectural and planning context of the late 1940s and 1950s, provided a framework for an uneasy tension between traditionalist architectural solutions, conservation, and the Modern Movement, and enabled the development of notable regional architectural approaches to new social housing in historic burghs. Under the pressure to increase housing production in 1960s and 70s, and with the impact of a growing heritage bureaucracy, it became more difficult to achieve such an architectural compromise between old and new. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This partly biographical paper details the early years of the Scottish Civic Trust, outlining the key players in establishing the charity organisation, early successes and failures, and drawing on the experiences of the author who was employed there as Assistant Director in 1968. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ASSIST is an architectural practice with offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is one of the very few architectural cooperatives that have survived from the 1970s when it was created as a Research Unit of the Department of Architecture of University of Strathclyde, from which it left in 1983. Its origins are in the early days of the tenement improvement programme in Glasgow -- indeed, it could be argued that without ASSIST the physical shape of Glasgow would be quite different today. This paper is a personal account, maybe somewhat biased, as under the supervision of then Senior Lecturer Jim Johnson (later to become a well loved and influential Director of the Old Town Renewal Trust in Edinburgh), the author developed an experimental action research project in 1970 investigating the possibility of voluntary improvement. The project was interested in public participation in planning and architecture, not in saving tenements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between architectural history and theory teaching and the studio design project. It reports the results of twelve interviews conducted with one studio tutor and one history and theory teacher at each of the six architecture schools in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experience of belonging and identity, and the social distance and separateness which has long characterised aspects of Stirling's Raploch housing estate. Detailed historical archive work uncovered the limited social planning and architectural ambitions set for this housing estate, when compared to the earlier Riverside development. The consequences of such decision making and subsequent poor management of the estate is then articulated through a series of qualitative interviews which explore attitudes to the construction and sustaining of neighbourhood and community identities. Achieving a physical solution to Raploch's social problems has eluded a series of recent regeneration initiatives and this paper suggests that the core problem is not primarily architectural but rather one of class-related discrimination and stigma which has been core to Raploch's identity since the 16th Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how the members of the team based at Stirling University carried out surveys of Fraserburgh, Tain, Whithorn and Wigtown between 2002 and 2006. Our methodology is explained, and the distinctiveness of Scotland's many small towns discussed. The article continues with examples of what we discovered about the distinctive history, architecture and character of two of the burghs, Fraserburgh and Wigtown, and how this can differ from what is emphasised from a purely local perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional preoccupation of dating Scottish country houses as being pre- or post-reformation, and then - uniquely in Europe - by plan form (L-shaped etc.), has obscured the three phases of significant architectural change, reversal and then re-emergence in Scottish architecture during the course of the sixteenth century. This paper suggests that the inspiration for the nineteenth century Baronialists can be identified as a period c. 1600, when, after two or three decades' rejection, the French-inspired architecture of the 'Marian' court re-emerged in the reign of her son. It remained influential right to the end of the seventeenth century. Did it represent a rehabilitation - a cult - of Mary Queen of Scots? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the Norwegian timber trade may have provided building materials for the construction and modification of some of Scotland's great houses with particular reference to Panmure House (1666-1685). It will attempt to determine to what extent, if any, a seventeenth century example of a `ready to assemble' model existed, able to provide pre-shaped/worked structural timbers to Scottish builders.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that (Sir) Robert Matthew (1906–1975) was not only, as is already well known, the leading figure of post-war modern architecture in Scotland, but also a strategic driving force in the victory of conservation, around 1970 - a victory that was strongly associated, in the minds of some of its champions, with the rejection of Modernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the work of the Bel Family of masons and their unique interpretation of the tower-house, here precisely identified as tall-houses. Their non-defensive nature is explored demonstrating the features which made a distinctive contribution to Renaissance architecture in Scotland and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors, both of whom teach at the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies. Edinburgh College of Art, present a research methodology which demonstrates clearly that one should never judge a book by its cover, or, in this context, a building by its facade. Hugh Miller's Shrub Mount, Portobello, is deconstructed systematically and reconstructed in an attempt to trace the location of the famous Scot's museum and to contribute further to an archaeological approach to building conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that the celebrated Edinburgh wood carvers, the Clow brothers, worked exclusively for the architect. Sir Robert Lorimer. However, this paper reveals that there was at least one occasion where they were successful in bidding for work in their own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Kinnear — a star pupil of David Bryce — joined the thriving architectural practice of John Dick Peddie about 1854, and formed a partnership with him in 1856, in order to develop the designs for Edinburgh's Cockburn Street. The approval with which that project was received, even while under construction, resulted in a long series of commissions for private houses and public works in Scottish styles. This paper discusses the partners' two great endowed schools, Morrison's at Crieff and Morgan's at Dundee, which the designed when they were still your men. It has been published to celebrated the restoration of Morgan Academy after its devastation by fire in 2001. In that restoration the original drawings for the executed scheme, now held by the National Monuments Record of Scotland, played an important part. However, from a historical perspective, the exceptionally complete survival of drawings for the four earlier schemes provide a unique insight into the development of the design, from the Scots baronial of Morrison's into the 'Franco Scottish' idiom that was to be so widely adopted by contemporaries over the next 25 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The firm of Harland & Wolff, which recently ceased operations at its Queen's Island Yard, Belfast, was for many years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the largest shipbuilding concern in the world. The Belfast yard was the main centre of its operations throughout its life, but in the early twentieth century it seriously considered moving to the Clyde, and acquired yards in Glasgow, Greenock, Dumbarton and Irvine, and built its main foundry, and a large marine diesel engine works, in Glasgow. It also built works in Liverpool, Southampton, and on the Thames at North Woolwich, mainly for ship repair. The firm's buildings were on a scale appropriate to its operations, and unlike many such firms some of its buildings transcended the purely functional, and can be considered as distinctive architectural expression. This paper is concerned with the most distinctive buildings constructed by the firm between the late 1870s and the beginning of the Second World War, in Belfast and on the Clyde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the last timber building in Glasgow's Hight Street was demolished. Once there had been hundreds if not thousands of such structures throughout Scotland. Even 50 years before, they were still common in the older parts of towns, their form as familiar to generations of Scots as the stone tenement is to us now. Today, in the whole of Scotland, less than a handful of much altered survivors are left, the final relics of an architectural tradition that is now almost completely lost to us. How has such a major part of the architectural heritage been virtually wiped from the consciousness of historians and public alike? The following paper charts its downfall and suggests the time has come for timber buildings to take their proper place not only in the evolution of the Scottish built environment, but also as an architectural from with as much to offer, and as much right to consideration in new designs, as any other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 29 April 1930 the first purpose-built Marks and Spencer store in Scotland opened its doors to the general public. Designed by Geoffrey Monro for his father's practice, it heralded the beginning of a relationship between 'Britain's best loved retailer" and a Glasgow-based firm of architects. This paper aims to chart a history of the Monro practice prior to and during their employment by Marks and Spencer, focussing on the years 1930-70 and using Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh stores as key examples of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cataloguing of the Shearer and Annand Collection at the National Monuments Record of Scotland has focussed attention on James Shearer as an architect. His role as a town planner has yet to receive similar posthumous recognition. Through an evaluation of his major planning achievement, the Dunfermline Advisory Town Plan of 1946, this paper aims to explore Shearer's planning theories, the attention they received, and their effect on the future of Dunfermline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a selective annual summary of architect-related additions to the collections of the National Monuments Record of Scotland. Files of the Buildings of Scotland Research Unit; Photographic collection relating to the research work on garden buildings by Scott Cooper; Files relating to inventory of gardens and designed landscapes.

The article lists the architectural and archaeological accessions to Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland for 2006, including the private collections of Sir Robert Rowand Anderson and Thomas Hamilton and the drawing collection of Holmes Partnership.

The article presents a lists of key source material for architecture in Scotland. They include Sculptor John Marshall, a collection of material relating to John Marshall's work. Moira, Moira & Wann including Betty L. C. Moira, which lists photographs, transparencies and works of the practice. George A. H. Pearce, a collection of drawings including designs for Tropical Glass Houses at The Royal Botanic Garden.

Although widely recognised as a designer of churches and asylums, a significant proportion of the commissions awarded to Arthur George Sydney Mitchell (18561930) came from commercial clients. This paper will attempt to provide more insight into the work Mitchell produced as principal architect to the Commercial Bank of Scotland and will also describe an important office building he designed for the United Free Church at the end of his career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to establish conclusively that Scottish plasterer Philip Robertson was the one responsible for the plasterwork done on the Drawing Room ceiling in the west wing of the Arniston House in Scotland in the 1700s. Quality of the workmanship of the Arniston Drawing Room ceiling; Robertson's career as a plasterer; His account of the plasterwork done at Arniston; Restoration of the ceiling in the late 1950s.

Provides insights into the cause of the acrimony that arose at the Royal Scottish Academy in the early 1900s over architect Robert Lorimer's recruitment of sculptor Louis Reid Deuchars to create the bronze figures for the Thistle Chapel in Saint Giles' Cathedral in Scotland. Allegations that the work was not technically competent; Statements issued by James Macgillivray against Lorimer at the Academy.

Discusses the importance of conserving the historic interior architecture of Scotland. Mary Queen of Scots' Bedchamber at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh; Definition of the historic interior; Design of the Drawing room at Newbattle Abbey; Philosophy of minimal intervention in historic rooms.