Rebuilding Scotland: The Postwar Vision, 1945-75

The early post-war decades witnessed a national reconstruction drive of unprecedented vigour – a revolution in architecture and building, whose uncompromising modern monuments still dominate Scottish towns and cities. This book, drawing on a series of national symposia and exhibitions staged by DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement) and other key organizations, presents an introductory reassessment of a quarter-century of vigorous, but until recently misunderstood transformation of Scotland’s built environment. Some of the papers evoke this era’s sheer energy, the vast quantity and scale of its building, and the passion which fuelled programmes, such as the housing “crusade”. Some recall its constructional and technical daring. Others, by contrast, emphasize that architecture, as an art, flourished undiminished during those years of modernity in design. This was a period of complexity and conflict, in its often tempestuous debates and ideas, and yet also one of simplicity – of consensual confidence in progress and rationality in building.