When I was a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Strathclyde, I developed a Design Unit which was intended to introduce students as physically as well as mentally as possible to the existing architectural stock. This meant that literally taking them out into the countryside and making them examine…
My great-nephew recently married in Vancouver and I edited one of the many photographs the family had posted with the words ‘over here I am thinking of Mum and Dad and Eric‘ – my brother, his grandfather, known universally as Fergie. My niece replied saying ‘thank you Uncle Robert, we…
Way back in the late 1980s, we had completed the restoration of the buildings, and I received a telephone call from a very pleasant gentleman called David Morton, who informed me that he had sold a newsagent shop in the town of Dalry. His family had run a newsagents and…
In 1971, I was a young-ish architect working for Sir Frank Mears and Partners, and architecture and town planning practice in Edinburgh. When the competition to design the new Burrell exhibition gallery was announced, so with a fellow architect I entered the competition to design the new gallery in Pollock…
Last autumn, before everything went pear-shape, we answered a telephone call from a lady in southern Ayrshire, who explained they have lived since 1970, but were now leaving: she had a room filled with everything that they didn’t feel able to take with them. It included lace, textiles, China, churns,…
