Land of Stone

About the Book: 

Wry humour, acute poetics, first-hand experience and deep knowledge of the field…Welcome to a journey of remarkable buildings and remarkable thoughts about these buildings, shaped as they are by deep time, modern ideas and Scottish culture. Readers are sure to see new vistas in the land of stone open before them. - From the Foreword by PROFESSOR Andrew Patrizio

What makes Scottish architecture Scottish?

What ideas drive Scottish architecture?

What has modern architecture in Scotland meant to the Scots?

Ever since the ‘granny-tops’, rattling and clanking in the wind to draw smoke up the tenemental flues from open coal fires, caught his attention as a three-year-old, architecture and its many parts, purposes, processes and procedures has fascinated Roger Emmerson. For him, architecture has always had profound significance.

In Land of Stone he seeks to disengage widely-held conceptions of what a Scottish architecture superficially looks like and to focus on the ideas and events – philosophical, political, practical and personal – that inspired architects and their clients to create the cities, towns, villages and buildings we cherish today.

Reviews: 

I am overwhelmed by the outstanding range of your scholarship, plus your unremitting polemic...In any event, the book is an exceptional achievement by any standards… perhaps it is more than one single study, but rather a compressed work of a lifetime! KENNETH FRAMPTON, architect

This densely researched and lucidly written book is an important contribution to the history of Scottish culture in general and architecture in particular. BILL HARE

About the Author:

ROGER EMMERSON was born in Edinburgh and attended Leith Academy. He studied architecture under Sir Robert Matthew at the University of Edinburgh and under Professor Isi Metzstein at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating from there in 1982. He has worked in London, Newcastle upon Tyne and, mostly, Edinburgh, running his own practice, ARCHImedia, from 1987 to 1999 while concurrently teaching architectural design at Edinburgh College of Art when he was also visiting lecturer at universities in Venice, Lisbon, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Berkeley. Since 2000 he has worked extensively in the fields of architectural conservation, housing, education and the leisure industries throughout the UK, retiring from architectural practice, although not architecture, in 2016. He is married and lives in Edinburgh close to his four children, their partners and his seven grandchildren. He devotes his free time to writing, painting and playing guitar.