Excavating the Future:
towards an archaeology of the Modernist city
14 May 2008
Led by Diane Watters, RCAHMS, in collaboration with Dr Miles Glendinning, Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies.
Workshop Summary
The principal intention of this RCAHMS-ECA/SCCS symposium is to explore ways in which RCAHMS's traditionally wide-ranging 'archaeological' approach to the recording and analysis of the built environment can be beneficially applied to the study of post-1945 architecture - a subject hitherto dominated in Scotland by an art-historical perspective preoccupied with the works of named architects (e.g. in the Historic Scotland 'listing' programme)
Building on a variety of recent academic initiatives by ECA/SCCS and University of Edinburgh (including the DOCOMOMO 'Trash or Treasure?' seminar), as well as experience of other appropriately wide-ranging inventory programmes from England and the Continent, the symposium will evaluate both the broad principles of recording that might be desirable, and any more specific initiatives that might emerge, especially in the area of the 'heritage' of postwar mass housing.
Summary of Workshop Strategy
A 'two-phase' event focusing in from the general to the particular, as follows:
Session 1:
International and UK contextual overview of potential issues and constraints of recording and analysis of postwar built environments. In particular, build on the findings of the DOCOMOMO International 'Trash or Treasure' conference held at ECA in August 2007.
Session 2
Discuss the potential applicability of this overview picture to the specifics of recording/analysis in Scotland, with especial regard to (a) the distinctive characteristics of Scottish C20 built environments and discourses (e.g. the relative lack of an 'architectural intelligentsia') and (b) the practical requirements of the recording process(es).
Conclusion
If possible, develop (even if only in outline) specific proposals for follow-up research and recording.
Organiser Biographies
Dr Miles Glendinning is Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies and Reader in Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art. He is a longstanding specialist in the history of C20 architecture and the built environment, and the chair of the DOCOMOMO-International specialist Committee on Urbanism and Landscape: principal publications include Tower Block (1994, with Stefan Muthesius) and A History of Scottish Architecture (1996, with Aonghus MacKechnie). Current projects include a major new biography of Sir Robert Matthew ('Modern Architect'), to be published in Spring 2008 by RIBA Publications, and a forthcoming source-book on the work of Sir Basil Spence (co-edited with Louise Campbell and Jane Thomas).
Diane Watters is a Buildings Investigator at RCAHMS. A specialist in 20th century architecture in Scotland, she has undertaken a succession of research-based publications under the RCAHMS aegis. She wrote the 1997 RCAHMS book Cardross Seminary, co-edited with Miles Glendinning Home Builders: Mactaggart & Mickel and the Scottish Housebuilding Industry (1999), and co-authored the recent RCAHMS book Little Houses: The National Trust for Scotland's Improvement Scheme for Small Historic Homes (2006). She has compiled two architecture maps of Edinburgh (2003) and Glasgow (2004), as part of an ongoing series which aims to identify significant buildings in Scotland's cities and towns. She has just completed an architectural history of St John's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh (due for publication in 2008), and has recently begun co-compiling the Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Buildings of Scotland volume for Yale University Press.
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