Although the RIAS’s highly praised series of popularly written architectural guidebooks to Scotland has not yet quite covered the whole country, some areas are already appearing in a revised edition.
It should come as no surprise that Aberdeen should be one of them for, as Scotland’s most prosperous city, it is still giving rise to large‐scale development, mostly associated with the oil industry, whether directly (as in the office blocks serving the various companies) or indirectly (as with the housing or retail developments needed for the staff attracted to the city).
The present edition, in which the numerous monochrome illustrations which are a feature of this series have been enhanced by others in colour, includes buildings as recent as 1997: it is surely characteristic of our era that the most recent is a soup kitchen.
But Aberdeen can still display the remains of much earlier periods: these are most numerous in Old Aberdeen (which we are reminded should really be Old Aberdon) with its medieval Cathedral of St Machar and King’s College Chapel. Though some early buildings are also to be found in New Aberdeen, the visitor there is most likely to be attracted by Union Street, Scotland’s second most famous shopping street, which, like the most famous (Princes Street in Edinburgh) is the product of the Georgian talent for spectacular municipal improvements, but unlike it, has not been much spoiled by the bad taste of late twentieth‐century architects. Even the modern shopping centres have been incorporated in a less obtrusive manner than usual.
The nineteenth century also produced a wealth of domestic architecture, usually in the local stone which gave Aberdeen the name of “The Granite City”; alas, the tradition has not been continued, for even if modern builders could afford to employ stonemasons, the great Rubislaw Quarry is worked out.
While every building that one would expect is included, the author has also drawn attention to many which a less observant eye would have missed, such as a surviving air raid shelter, a pair of modern Scottish tower‐houses and even the “brightly coloured mud tanks” to be seen at the harbour. While he accords praise to some recent buildings of a type which would not usually receive much (for instance some of the tower blocks and superstores) he does not shrink from trenchant criticism in other cases (such as the development of the St Clement’s district).
He really should have worked out that the Victorian Free Church Minister Mungo Parke could not be, as he supposes, the African explorer Mungo Park (died 1806), but this is an uncharacteristic lapse in a book packed with information, and which, like the rest of this moderately priced series, should be on the shelves of any Scottish or architectural, reference collection worthy of the name.
