Architecture in Scotland 2006-2008

Lotte Glob

Building Biographies

The 4th biennial survey of architecture in Scotland explores new trends in regional and sustainable building by looking at eight recently completed buildings, mainly in the Highlands and Islands, alongside six from continental Europe. The exhibition has been co-curated by Oliver Lowenstein and Morag Bain and features specially commissioned models, photographs and films.

“For the Building Biographies exhibition, and book which accompanies it, the point of departure was to ask to what extent today’s new buildings are a reflection of the region in which they are produced. In effect, we wanted to find out whether there is such a thing we can describe as a ‘new Scottish architecture’, or a ‘new European architecture’, or even a ‘new regionalism’ and if so, what exactly these phrases might mean,” writes Nick Barley, Director The Lighthouse.

“But as the project has progressed, its scope has become more refined. By asking ‘what are the factors which make a building the way it is?’, we have ended up searching for answers to the question of what architecture might stand for in a post-industrial, post-fossil-fuel, post-Modern age.”

“Over the last two decades, architecture, as with much else in contemporary culture, has become increasingly absorbed with issues of presentation, and ‘how things look’, each upping the ante for ever more spectacular buildings. A few hundred so-called ‘iconic’ architects have plied their trade, designing buildings, each with particular signature brands, creating ever more extravagant gestures, surface, sensation and superfice, aimed at dazzling the spectator into a stupor of ‘wow’ dependency,” writes Oliver Lowenstein in the introduction to the exhibition. “Primarily designed through virtual techniques, the results are experienced as much through the mediation of television, the Internet and the photograph as they are live, ‘on the ground’. Think only of the recent Olympic Bird’s Nest or Dubai’s tallest (ever) towers rising up out of the desert.”

“But with the converging environmental issues of global warming and fossil fuel depletion a new dawning reality, the tectonic plates of architectural culture, as much as world culture, seem to be changing. One re-emerging focus is architecture relating and responsive to geographical region, and to the physical conditions on the ground.”

-Building Biographies is part of ACCESS to Architecture, a series of initiatives developed by The Lighthouse with support from The Scottish Government, which are aligned to Scotland’s Policy on Architecture.

-Building Biographies, priced £12, is available from The Lighthouse Shop in person or on line at www.thelighthouse.co.uk/shop and in specialist bookshops.

View profiles of all the buildings featured on our sister site Scottish Architecture.

Find out more about: ACCESS to Architecture