This directory of members of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland is so lavishly illustrated that it is obvious that the practices included are using the opportunity to set out their stall. Well, why not? Judging by the photos, the wares on offer are tempting, as of course they need to be to justify the scale of charges outlined in the directory which itself, however, is very modestly priced.
After introductory sections the arrangement is a list of practices grouped according to their location in half a dozen regions of Scotland supplemented by those members outwith, as the local idiom has it, the country. Then there is a directory of members, followed by project profiles, namely significant recent or current work undertaken by members in eight categories: leisure, residential, public, retail, commercial, medical, education and religion. Finally, there are short sections listing government departments, schools of architecture and the like.
We are given a fair, not to say rosy, view of the wealth of talent to be found among Scotland’s architects. A significant part of their work is restoring, adapting and extending older buildings as well as designing totally new ones, but that is no different from practices elsewhere. Round towers seem to be the flavour of the month: are they to be the cliché of the nineties replacing those tiresome triangles in primary colours of the 1980s? If so, I would find them preferable. One of them ‐ a circular portico on the Glasgow Judiciary Court in this instance ‐ is illustrated on page 351, but exactly the same picture appears five pages later and claims to describe the Community Library, Wester Hailes, Edinburgh; that cannot be right, but it is only a minor glitch. (The directory is fully searchable on www. rias.org.uk)
