There are two observatories in Edinburgh, the Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill and the City Observatory up on Calton Hill, along with monuments to Nelson, Dugald Stewart and Robert Burns and the unfinished National Monument with a predominant Greek architectural style reinforcing Edinburgh’s title of ‘Athens of the North’. The history of the two observatories […]
I wonder if Eduardo Paolozzi and Paula Rego ever met. They were born only eleven years apart, Paolozzi in Leith (in 1924), Edinburgh, of Italian parents, and Rego in Lisbon Portugal in1935. Both brought new bold, but different, dynamics into British art, Paolozzi’s work being very masculine and Rego’s focussed on feminist themes. What discussions […]
In the corridor are a number of phrases on the wall in projecting letters. One, ‘The universe lights switched off one by one’ seems uncannily predictive in the current circumstances, whether we think of coronavirus or of climate-change. Scottish artist Katie Paterson (born 1981) takes a long-term view of time and space, both backwards and […]
It seems very strange to reflect that, four weeks ago, we were in a different world of record-breaking rainfall, and, walking along the Water of Leith in Edinburgh, you had to weave round the flooded pathways along the riverbank to make your way up to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, past Antony Gormley’s ”Six […]
Who would ever have thought that the humble toilet roll would in March 2020 become such a valuable commodity that people were buying them by their hundreds, stripping supermarket shops bare. The toilet roll as we know it is a relatively modern invention, having first been manufacture by the Scott Paper Company around 1890 […]
Have you ever walked through woods and seen the dead remnants of trees which looked like dark, angular sculptures, or organic mushrooms growing out in folded textural shapes? At Jupiter Arts, intrepid explorers clutch their maps as they wander through the trees where the art is part of the landscape, focussed on Charles Jencks’ […]
Two Grecian temples which epitomise the Athens of the North are the Royal Scottish Acadrmy and the National Gallery, with a third, albeit incomplete, nearby Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Architectual masterpieces where Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town come together, designed by Henry William Playfair in the early 19th century, they left a problem of […]
Somehow you think that if an artist can persuade the art establishment to award him the Turner Prize in 2001 with a single light bulb that turned on and off that he should be in the current government helping to move the country forward in the mad, chaotic and uncertain world of Brexit. A light […]
Dominating Edinburgh, there has been a castle up on the craggy rock since the 12th century, with buildings up there before that. Originally a fortified royal palace, then a military barracks with prison cells, the oldest building is Queen Margaret’s Chapel. The largest cannon in Britain, Mons Meg, is here too. The castle has been […]
The first major building project of a devolved Scottish Parliament did not set a good example – the new Parliament building designed by Enric Miralles, the Spanish architect who died before its completion, was three years late and came in at over 10 times the original cost. An enquiry by Lord Fraser, critical of the […]
"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."
(Thomas Moore)
To be an architect means having a wide range of interests - architecture, art and creativity in all its variety of forms, sustainability, science and innovation. The greatest interest is often where these different worlds overlap and collide - that is when something imaginative often occurs that pushes us all forward to another place
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