Introduction

Like any large institution the University of Edinburgh is an important patron of architecture. Its first notable undertaking in this sphere was the commissioning of Robert Adam to design a new college building at the end of the eighteenth century. Since then it has continued to acquire both purpose built and pre-existing buildings. As a result of these activities the University now has one of the most interesting and varied collections of architecture in the world, outside of the major religions.

In assessing this collection, however, it seems less than satisfactory simply to assign individual buildings to their respective periods and to attribute their form to international architectural movements. For in so doing the institution itself becomes transparent and its buildings merely mirrors in which external developments are reflected. Such an approach denies the particularity of the University and of the city of Edinburgh. That sort of assessment also neglects the internal dynamic of continuity and change which is the essence of an institution. In a city renowned for its commitment to architecture the University must be thought of as belonging to a specific urban institutional tradition.

Nevertheless, if it is accepted that architecture tells us something about the patron then it is to be expected that architectural concepts might provide a key to an examination of relevant themes. The unifying factor, in this respect, might be thought of as the tradition of place. This factor has an important role in defining the context in which events - architectural or otherwise - are enacted.

Closely bound up with the urban tradition of Edinburgh are the concepts of Classicism and Monumentalism. These terms have popular currency in architectural writings and indeed they come readily to mind when one surveys the city-scape in an attempt to define its poetic character.1 In late twentieth century architectural criticism these terms seem to be used in a different way than they were in the past - irrespective of the fact that one of the problems of Modernism was how to react to the concept of monumentality. In the active search for a new monumentality the concept of Classicism was tainted by association with the dictators of the 1930s and, seemingly, abandoned.

Modern architecture has now won its battle against period revivalism and against the denial of the technical revolution that the use of reminiscent style implies. (2)

In the middle of the Twentieth Century the University of Edinburgh became engaged in an unprecedented expansion entailing substantial involvement in the architectural sphere. The enterprise can be considered as part of the post-war movement of reconstruction and of a general reform of the education system. In this era of social change it was necessary to enlist an architecture of mass production in order to meet the demands of mass education. In terms of style the tide of International Modernism - which had been predicted for at least twenty years - appeared to sweep across the world swamping tradition in a consensual crusade. Architectural form and construction technology may never have been precisely in tandem since the Gothic era but with everything geared up to the doctrines of mass production and economy of scale, Modernism was perceived to achieve a rare unity by dispensing with redundant historicist trappings and concentrating instead on pure expression of functional form.

The rationalist dual triumph of social engineering and Modernist architecture was signalled, in Edinburgh, by the appearance on the skyline of the gleaming David Hume and Appleton towers - all the more striking and sudden by dint of contrast with the 18th and 19th century surroundings. To the citizens this was an alarming and dramatic debut and it must have seemed like the herald of a futurist world where tradition would have to be relinquished forever. From the university's point of view, however, this was the tangible product of many years of planning and negotiation - the zeitgeist itself naturally preceding its architectural expression.

The University was no newcomer to twentieth century architecture either. Between the wars several large buildings were erected and a handful of projects had to be cancelled in 1939.

In current usage the term "Scottish Monumentality" is often used to describe the products of Modernism as well as those of the Nineteenth Century neo-Classical tendency. Does this imply that such architects as Alan Reiach (1910-92) and William Playfair (1790-1857) were participants in the same project, separated only by time? Certainly, both were involved in addressing the needs of the university.

Since Playfair was, surely, the leading Scottish exponent of monumental architecture in his era, and the architect of first choice for the city's most important institutions, we might deduce that Monumentalism was, in his lifetime, the architectural language of these institutions.3 I feel it would be valuable to consider the character of the architecture of Edinburgh University in terms of the language of Monumentalism and to attempt to discern when it was abandoned; if at all.

In a city renowned for architecture it was unavoidable that every university building project undertaken this century included, or took account of, existing buildings. And, although it was not the first premises actually occupied by the civic university the so called Old College, of Robert Adam (and his successors), has been a constant source of reference.4 In many ways it set the standard by which other university buildings have been judged. It also served as the headquarters from which the subsequent architectural intervention in the cityscape have been planned. This must be the starting point in establishing a context in which to consider these developments.

In this exposition the eighteenth century college building should be regarded less as a manifestation of European neo-Classicism than as the University's first lesson in institutional architecture. The City's ambitious undertaking on behalf of its college required a prolonged, if intermittent, commitment. A precedent was created which the University could never forget or ignore. The bestowal of the finest work which could be commissioned, at that time, was the City's way of demonstrating faith and commitment to the Enlightenment project. Thus, the City demanded the highest academic achievement from its institution.

The great monoliths of its Doric columns and the severity of its stonework makes it a candidate for that slightly perplexing, but much cited, genre: Scottish Monumentality.5 Of course, the Old College is a great neo-Classical building and worthy of a place within the European oeuvre but, in strictly local terms, it is as much an assertion of eminence, in parallel with other civic institutions, as a response to dominant trends on the European stage.

Wherein resides this monumentality of which we speak? It is not entirely clear whether the associated terms: Monumentalism and neo-Classicism are either synonymous or contiguous. That a monument is a sort of architecture that bears meaning is without doubt. But, there are obviously different ways of conveying a wide range of possible meanings and not every meaning to be conveyed is in itself of monumental character. If we can accept that Old College is an example both of neo-Classicism and Scottish Monumentalism then both terms can be said to define an edifice deemed decorous and worthy of a prestigious institution. It can further be concluded that institutional Monumentalism is the creation, in the public realm, of architecture which bears meaning in its design.

Many have remarked that there is an appropriate symbolism in the university's twin towers of art and science erected in the early 1960s. Is this also Scottish Monumentalism? Since Robert Adam, Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, Sir Robert Matthew and Alan Reiach were all Scottish architects who received commissions from the University of Edinburgh the denominator 'Scottish' can be set aside.

The Monumentalist impulse is therefore the key concept which I shall use in this examination of the character of the university's architectural aspirations in the twentieth century. Let us consider whether there is a thread of Monumentalism, continuous or broken, which connects the University's buildings of the twentieth century with their predecessors.

Concepts of Monumentality

Since several interpretations of monumental are plausible some conceptual clarification is required before establishing whether membership of the category is justified or not. Definitions which we shall consider: largeness of scale; largeness in terms of importance (genuine or alleged); the monumental as an act of commemoration; architecture in the public realm; evocation of notions of permanence; endurance and affinity with the language and tradition of Classicism. Note, however, that there is often an interelation between these concepts which make it impossible to separate them entirely.

1. 
   In everyday usage monumental tends to mean something which is large in scale. Extremely large buildings are often described as monumental and the desire to build large structures is thought of as a monumentalist tendency. There was a time when extremely large buildings were intended to match in scale their intended political and social importance. In the industrial era, however, size can be a purely functional aspect of the design relating to economies of scale. Thus a factory complex may be large f0r economic reasons, as may a housing block. Here, there may appear to be little or no intention beyond a concern with means and ends. Consequently, the drive for greater efficiency will ultimately demand demolition and replacement with no concern whatsoever for permanence. The validity of using the term simply to describe large buildings is doubtful since a relatively small tomb can be described as monumental, whereas a very large shopping centre cannot. To use monumentality as a synonym for largeness is to deflect the architectural metaphor back onto a work of architecture. Nevertheless, although Empiricists after John Locke would deny that scale is a primary characteristic of an object, architectural space is experienced space. The relativity of scale, in anthropocentric terms, is unarguably important. It is in its role as a conditioner of space that architecture affects the animal experience of place. In experiencing architecture Man really is the measure of things. This entirely subjective experience precedes the operation of associative processes which are about personal and interpersonal (i.e. cultural) meanings.
   Before progressing to details of architectural vocabulary we must acknowledge that notions of power and of control over large spaces are excited by vast schemes. The grand Baroque layouts, designed to impress, and the architecture of the dictators, designed to repress, come forth from a similar didactic agenda. Architects as diverse as Bernini and Speer were striving for a calculated psychological impact.
2. 
   I will insist, however, that it is the perceived (or conceived) importance of a building, rather than merely perceived dimension, that is the precondition for monumental status. Thus, events can be described as monumental if they are thought to be of great significance even if they take place in a small area and involve few people. This illustrates the commemorative function of the monumental and, as such, it implies permanence and endurance. A monument is intended to commemorate persons or events of significance. If there can be such a thing as a landmark in time a monument signifies it. Notions of posterity are very powerful amongst architects and those who commission significant works of architecture.

   
   And on the pedestal, these words appear:
   My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
   Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair !

   P.B.Shelley, 1817
   

3. It is by analogy, then, that the greatness of human achievements are signified by greatness of scale. Trajan's Column, in Rome, is an example of this principle taken to its extremity. The scale is impressive and the endurance of the column justifies the appeals to posterity. In addition the commemorative function is graphically reinforced by relief sculpture depicting the emperor's military victories. Both Trajan and Ozymandias should be regarded as monumentalists, and while vanity itself cannot be ruled out as an ingredient of Monumentalism, scale is a response to the fear that the significance of their achievements might be eroded by time.
   Let us return to the location of our enquiry and to one of the Scottish architects who has been involved in the subject of the enquiry for a comparative gesture of commemoration. The relatively discrete monument, in Edinburgh, which Robert Adam designed in commemoration of David Hume is far more subtle in this respect than Trajan's colum (see Figure 1). It seems as if Adam adopted a purist approach relying on abstracted geometric forms and minimal inscription where no pomposity of pillars would be appropriate. The cylindrical form of the Hume mausoleum represents the eternal purity of a platonic form. This the architect has rendered in rusticated stonework to emphasise the fundamental nature of Hume's deductions. One might surmise that this was an acknowledgement that the philosopher's work would serve as a foundation for the philosophical development of the modern world.

   
   Figure 1: The David Hume Mausoleum, Calton Cemetery. Robert Adam, 1777. Early sketches by Adam support the idea that the monument was based on the Tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna.

   The sculptural work consists of a Doric frieze which reflects respect for architectural propriety in that it traditionally represents masculine virtue. Here was an appropriate gesture of gravitas for the sepulchre of a committed classicist. There is no attempt to graphically portray the power and importance of the philosopher. Hume's achievement cannot lose their significance in the way that the temporal achievements of a conqueror - such as those alluded to by Shelley in Ozymandias - have become just another brief episode in a vast catalogue of megalomania. Adam used form and the Classical tradition to convey the meaning of his monument. (6)

   In addition to this monumentality of intent there is also the possibility of designated monuments. This conception of monumentality comes after the fact; not being part of the author's intention. This possibility demonstrates the lack of respect shown by time for meaning and stresses the lack of control an artist, or artificer, has over his works and how they are interpreted. Thus, one can, with hindsight, designate an edifice a monument to, for example, incompetence, bad taste etc. The ironic impact of Shelly's poem is in the redesignation of the ruined colossus as a monument to the futility of the aspiration of the demagogue. However, if an edifice is designated a monumental failure this is not Monumentalism in practice but ironic commentary

4. 
   The key to Monumentalism seems to reside in motive. This involves identifying intentionality in scale of ambition and the notion of permanence of that which the monument celebrates. In architectural terms the use of good quality stone both implies and achieves a measure of permanence. Stone has an ambience and presence which other materials lack. It is true that the Romans constructed significant works from brick but prestigious buildings so fabricated would be encased in marble and genuine memorials, including sarcophagi, were invariably carved in stone even if it had to be imported from distant places. Renaissance princes, for economy's sake, had their palaces brick built, but a stucco skin simulated stone for the required antique cache. Most would concede that the monumental character of Scottish architecture is facilitated by the native preoccupation with building in stone.
5. 
   The whole canon of Classical architecture is in itself a monument to the legendary empires and godlike glories of the ancient world. In the "Dark Ages", when all else seemed to have been lost, it was the ruins of their buildings which provided a reminder of the heights to which these civilisations had aspired. Since the Renaissance there has been a claim to a metaphorical chain of progress. This chain could not have been forged without the physical evidence of the viability of Classical learning. And, strictly speaking, there could have been no rebirth without the knowledge that death had occurred at the hands of barbarism.
   The impression of timeless beauty, which classical art possesses, resides in the mastery of proportion. The proportional ratios employed by the Greeks to relate parts to a whole seem to derive from notions of beauty which are universal or at least anthropocentric. Their architecture displays delight in geometric knowledge rendered into three dimensional form and in the relation of parts to the whole. The geometric solids, integral to classical composition, cannot but strike us with a sense of completeness and fundamentality. The human delight in symmetricality, whatever its origin, is fundamental to classical composition. And such universal notions were a prerequisite for public architecture.
6. 
   The architectural achievement of the Renaissance was in coming to terms with the grammar of Classical ornament. For in the perceived correct use of the elements of Graeco-Roman architecture there was a language, like Latin, with rules and etiquette which could be learned and propriety observed. But the authority of Classicism is generally considered to have collapsed into an indignity of misapplication and misappropriation under the burgeoning individualism of the late Nineteenth Century.
   The surviving architecture of the Ancient World was conceived and erected in the public realm and it was suitably ennobled for that purpose. In order to avoid the fleetingness of meanings and to transcend mutability, one can appeal to that universal denominator of virtue: tradition. Public architecture conceived in a classical idiom appeals to that eternal quality.

   In a Nietzschean interpretation of the civic impulse Kenneth Frampton observed that:

   The public realm previously bonded man into the past and the future - the eternal return and reappearance in this realm transcending the tragedy and futility of life (7)

   Perhaps this goes too far, but I would suggest that public architecture transcends the mundane by alluding to the eternal, and by facilitating ceremony and ritual - allowing that ritual can sometimes be a desperate thing.

The Institutional Tradition in Edinburgh

Let us now consider the concept of Monumentality in relation to Edinburgh's institutions. The monumental intent of the inhabitants of the Scottish capital in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries was only partly scenic. It would indeed be a mad god who created a city in order to paint it! As Archibald Alison and Dougald Stewart demonstrated it is the associations which the viewer forms, whether with notions of beauty or sublimity, which are the essence of picturesque scenery. The real substance of the architectural agenda was the expression of civic pride in rational improvement. In choosing to employ the material from which the mountains themselves are carved one approaches the status of a deity. The endurance of the city's institutions together with their status was guaranteed when literally carved in stone.

Edinburgh's Neo-classical ideal made currency of the architectural language of the Ancient World as an exemplar of clarity and imperial power.

...Buildings of the ancients serve as models which we should imitate and standards by which we should judge....they are to the practice of architecture what nature is to the other arts. Robert Adam

Furthermore, in a city built on solid rock, wherein even the vernacular is uttered in stones, a didactic function is performed by the combination of polished ashlar and the harmony of Classical proportion. That function was the glorification of an empire of reason raised up by science from shapeless matter. The desire to provide the ill housed college with a fine new building was part of a great drive for improvement wherein the babble of the Old Town was surpassed by the structural logic of ambitious schemes of architectural engineering. With the requisite technical ability to hand the crowded chasms were bridged in an imperial manner.

Neo-Classical architecture was also used as a means of moving from a position of inferiority to superiority after the city lost its status as a seat of government. The South Bridge scheme improved communication, beautified the aspect and, most importantly, turned the British Isles on their head.8 For, with the proposed beautiful approach from the South, Edinburgh was no longer a place to leave but a place of grand arrivals. Ambitious beyond their immediate means the citizens were compelled to provide a building for their university which reflected its international status.

For similar reasons the scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment chose to write in literary standard King's English forsaking their native tongue in the interests of furthering their ideas. In order to retain its meaning, when language is constantly changing, it is important for a monument to speak an eternal tongue. Neo-classicism is appealing to rationalists because the edifice is comprehensible in terms of geometric solids and on account of its (alleged) imperviousness to transitory fashions. Thus, the universal language of Classical architecture was employed for the city's finest works. Confidently exploiting the symbolism of the Classical tradition, for didactic purposes, the triumphal arch of Adam's college celebrates the academic attainment of those entering its portals and commemorates the contribution to learning which the institution makes. (9)

This aspect of the Old College - commemoration of the civic virtue of endowment to education and the advancement of learning - had its local antecedents. The original university buildings had been far surpassed in grandeur by one erected, in the seventeenth century, by the trustees of George Heriot, jeweller to the King. With a magnificent site commanding the brow of a ridge their charity hospital school aspired to be placed in a category along with the royal palaces of Scotland. This quasi-palace can be seen as the culmination of the masonic tradition; having been worked upon by William Wallace, Johne Watt, William Aytoun and John Mylne (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: George Heriot's Hospital (school), from 1627. William Wallace et al. Drawing by Paul Sandby.

By the early eighteenth century the pioneers of the modern architectural profession were engaged by institutions which wished to be represented in an international architectural language.

Examples of early institutional classicism such as George Watson's Orphan's Hospital, by William Adam and Thomas Laing's original High School, were grammatically more rigorous but nevertheless continued Heriot's resonance in stone. It must be said, however, that these examples are informed by the country house model rather than being metropolitan and fully integrated into the rest of the urban fabric (see Figures 3 & 4).

Figure 3: George Watson's Charity Hospital by William Adam, circa 1740. Illustrated in Vitruvius Scoticus.

Figure 4: The High School, Infirmary Street. Alexander Laing, 1777.

By the time of the founding of the new university building Edinburgh possessed an architect with first hand experience of large public and private works and his ideas were informed by archaeological study. At Spalatro, in Dalmatia, the vast palace of Diacletian provided the substructure for a seaport town ensconced within its monumental bosom. The enormity of the achievements of classical engineering in the provision of viaducts and aqueducts must have had a powerful impact on Adam's conception of civic infrastructure. This must have seemed like the subservience of nature to the rationality of the architect. (10)

This neo-Classical impulse in Scotland's capital made the Calton Hill into a repository for monuments to science, learning and military power. For the mapping of the heavens Playfair's observatory utilised a quasi religious centralised plan and was rendered in massive blocks. Hamilton's new Royal High School forsook the domesticity of the school's old building for the oppressive solidity of an informed Greek revival exercise - with allusion to the academy of Athens (see Figure 5). A succession of war memorials which were either posited, or begun, on the hill during the Napoleonic era proclaim the imperial message of the British State; a political establishment under which the other institutions sheltered.

Figure 5: The Royal High School. Thomas Hamilton, 1825-29.Observe the changing ideals in institutional Monumentalism from the Laing building.

The monumental character of Enlightenment urbanism depended heavily on the regularity of the stonework. This is not simply a reliance on the sense of permanence imparted by stone, but in the practical demonstration of geometrical logic. That is to say: the whole structure of a building can be thought of as such and such quantity of stones of specific shapes and sizes. The size of the individual stones is important, for massive stones seem to convey something of the primal potency of the Ancient World. Adam's monoliths of Craigleith stone, guarding the entrance to his quadrangle, would chill the heart of any bricklayer. It was from this point onwards that rubble built walls were forever consigned to the vernacular and a social hierarchy of rubble, droved ashlar and polished ashlar emerged (see Figure 6). (11)

Figure 6a: The "Old College", 1791, design for east facade by Robert Adam

Figure 6b: Old College. Entrance front to the East, 1789.

The great monoliths which frame the triumphal arch protrude into the public domain. Had Adam's South Bridge scheme been taken up there would have been a symbolic intercourse between the masculine columns and a feminine concave crescent opposite

When the town created the University it gave birth to its most distinguished citizen. In its infancy the college required little more than a playground of hand-me-downs but in maturity it was provided with a family home of its own in the nascent neo-Classical town. The expanded academic family of the later Nineteenth Century had grown into an architectural patron in its own right. After a competition Scotland's leading architect of that time was engaged to provide new premises for the Faculty of Medicine

While the Old College seems to render Stoicism into stone the New Medical School (1876-86) commemorates a different era of scholars and architects. Rowand Anderson can be said to take a museum approach to architecture which parallels the Nineteenth Century conception of education. The apprenticeship system of architectural education was in a state of transition towards a more academic approach and Robert Rowand Anderson himself was active in the movement to put the profession in Scotland on that footing. (12)

Along with British imperial culture came a cultural empiricism for architects. The converse of the imperial coin, however, is written in the language of the conquered. Consequently, the late Victorian era was a time of rampant eclecticism when the dilemma of style was the curse of both architects and patrons overwhelmed with a proliferation of possibilities.

Anderson's solution was for a double quad, just as Adam had intended for his building, and the construction was entirely contemporary being of iron and stone; a non controversial Beaux Arts treatment for academies. For the external appearance of the building's skin there was no authority save that of the architect's superior taste. Anderson actually preached an organicist agenda where function dictates form but, like Semper and Wagner, found this difficult to reconcile with the symbolic needs of nineteenth century institutions. (13)

Architects had to be masters of style in order to contrive an appropriate rationale and the "Venetian" solution was a compromise of sorts. The popular gothicist style had ecclesiastical overtones while the Baronial was considered absurd by Anderson. Venice, as a merchant city independent of the Vatican, had an appeal for the bourgeoisie of Edinburgh and was inoffensive to the Presbyterians. Furthermore, it responded to a popular antecedent in the Museum of Arts and Science nearby. A sort of Scottish Venetian quarter would have been formed if the museum had been extended eastwards as proposed. Incongruity was not something which troubled the Victorians and the museum mentality, whereby all cultures could be held captive, had a popular appeal. Anderson was able to indulge his interest in polychromy with different sandstones and, although the external orders are reduced to incidental punctuation of triforate windows, some impressively monumental interior spaces were achieved and a classicism of sorts was acknowledged. Occasionally, in the interior, iron beams and rivets are deliberately exposed as the architect seeks acknowledgement of the integrity of his structure.

The Free Renaissance style, which Anderson and his contemporaries favoured, was the result of an awareness that buildings had to look like something and might harmonise with each other if some parameters were set to avoid the worst excesses of a laissez faire individualism (see Figure 7).

Figure 7a: The Medical School, north facade, by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, 1876-86. Note the "Baroque" segmental pediment and the pavilion to the left which was intended as the base of a campanile.

Figure 7b: The Medical School, detail. Internal spaces reveal a startling proliferation of carved ornamentation which contribute to the floridity of the quadrangle.

Figure 8: The McEwan Hall, main entrance to east. By Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, 1888-97. The view from the circular plaza designed by Percy Johnson-Marshall Associates 1980. Note the alternating rhythm of upper and lower buttresses which Anderson seems to have derived from James Gibbs's Radcliffe Camera.

Anderson also built the accompanying convocation hall (1888-97) for the university which was named after the donor William McEwan. This ceremonial building is reminiscent of much contemporary neo-Baroque in its compositional massing of concavities and convexities (see Figure 8). In utilising both the D-plan of ancient theatres and the stone and iron language commonly associated with Beaux-Arts theatres it possesses a strong theatrical quality. Although assertive in its conditioning of monumental space the ceremonial message is not entirely lucid since there is no triumphal arch through which the graduates pass - in a theatre all the arrivals and departures are entrances and exits to and from the stage. Filling the niches on the exterior with statues of eminent alumni, as originally intended, while addressing the commemorative function would have provided little clarification to the uninitiated. In the interior the didactic mural paintings rely on the symbolist medium of allegory, on the theme of the 'Temple of Fame'. Symbolism may not be the same thing as Monumentalism but Palin, the painter, compensates for the insipidness of the allegories with a giantism of scale. Despite these problems of clarity the Rowand Anderson ensemble is acclaimed for some fine interior spaces and an interesting street facade. The hall does clearly announce its ceremonial quality. If the Medical School's palazzo form does not proclaim its function perhaps that was a matter of discretion. The massivity of the load bearing stonework and the heavy iron construction are, certainly, demonstrably durable.

An interesting small plaza - officially called Park Place but no longer listed in the street directories - was created by the grouping of Anderson's buildings and the Music School (see Figure 9b). Described as "monumental, yet intimate" the enclosure of this plaza was not completed until 1921 before which there would have been an opening onto a service lane and a view of all the accretions which had sprouted on the backs of other buildings. Though hardly monumental in itself the former Women's Anatomy building strives to be a good neighbour to the Music School building and emulates it in employing ashlar to the fore and rubble on walls that are not to be seen. It also maintains the cornice height and repeats the cornice form of drip stone over the windows. Its only ornament per se is a segmental pediment and a carved keystone in the form of a volute inserted into the architrave above the door (see Figure 9a). The latter was a device used by the Romans to mediate the disparity between the arch form and the entablature implied by pilasters yet neither arch nor orders are used here. The volute was, by this time, merely a catalogue detail already proliferating in the medical quadrangle; the echo of a theme passed down from the triumphal arch of Adam on the South Bridge.

Completing the group is the Reid School of the Theory of Music by David Cousin (1858). Notwithstanding a familiarity with a variety of styles the authority of classicism here is unquestioned. The restrained ornament belongs to the classical language and the twin porticoes cleverly disguise the asymmetricality of the structure. Following the institutional tradition of the city, polished ashlar is employed for the visible walls although the rear wall uses the more economical rock faced stones in irregular coursing.14

The school represents a conscious attempt at monumentalism in which most of the requirements of the genre are satisfied. The building celebrates the civic virtue of General John Reid in bestowing a fine ornament and a temple of culture on the city (see Figure 9c).

Figure 9a: The Wilkie Surgical Laboratory, 1926. Formerly Women's Anatomy Dept., 1919. Designed by the University's clerk of works, Walter Clerk. Detail of the doorway.

Figure 9b: Park Place, looking north. A monumental space with the Music School on the right, the Medical School on the left and the McEwan hall in the centre.

Figure 9c: The Reid School of Music, David Cousin, 1847. On the right is the Wilkie Surgical Laboratory.

The Monumental Era (15)

The so-called monumental era, between the two world wars, began for the University with a building of brick for the Department of Chemistry (1920-24). Architectural decorum within the stone-built capital was at least partially excused for this building since it was located far from the city centre on a new site where fields were gradually yielding to suburbs (see Figure 10). The architect, A.F. Balfour Paul of Rowand Anderson and Paul, was given the brief and budget to produce what is essentially a factory building. Brick buttresses secure the front, giving the impression of holding back great forces of industrial scientific power. But the institutional tradition was strong, and the entrance front is ennobled with a pediment and stone detailing.(see Figure 10b) Perhaps the idea that an industrial building could have its own aesthetic which might symbolise progress through technology was unacceptable. The fact that industrial and commercial buildings commonly used such architectural embellishments devalues its attempt at dignity and it is as if the architect lost courage when he opted for the insubstantial entrance porch of carved stone. This element dissipates the forceful masculinity of the power-house presence as it struggles to assert itself against the dominant mass of the brickwork.

Figure 10a: Department of Chemistry, Kings Buildings, A.F. Balfour Paul, 1920-24.

Figure 10b: Detail. Department of Chemistry. The simulacra of Monumentalism?

With constant and growing demand for laboratory space in the city centre it was inevitable that the King's Buildings site should become a science enclave. The 1905 conversions of the old High School into an Engineering department and of David Bryce's Surgical Hospital into physics laboratories, by Rowand Anderson's practice, provided only an interim solution to the accommodation crisis.

After the Balfour Paul building it was the Arts and Crafts strand of Edinburgh architects to whom the University next turned for a more dignified approach to suburban science buildings. Robert Lorimer and John Matthew strove for a more humane institutional idiom recalling cottage hospitals and garden city libraries. But was it monumentalism?

Government institutions in Edinburgh meanwhile adopted a futuristic neo-neo-Classicism for the National Library and St. Andrew's House (see Figures 11 and 12). Relying on Meso-American massing to evoke Antiquity and thus legitimise state authority these city centre buildings are more in tune with the monumentalism of the era. Increasingly exotic looking amongst their neighbours the geometric bulk and attenuation of ornament of this pair serves to associate them with the Art Deco taste.

Figure 11: The National Library of Scotland, Reginald Fairlie, 1936. The abstracted "Cenotaph Classicism" of the 1930s. See also figures 12 and 13.

Figure 12: St.Andrew's House, Thomas Tait, 1936-39.

Nevertheless, such examples are consistent with the Cenotaph's classicism in the age of remembrance in the 1920s. Lutyen's Cenotaph in Whitehall is unquestionably monumental and exemplifies the attempt to produce a classicism of profundity. In memorialising the fallen it is an abstracted proto-monument signifying a glory too deep to comprehend (see Figure 13).

Figure 13: Design for the Cenotaph at Whitehall, London, Sir Edward Lutyens, 1920.

In this period the essentials of a primal classicism were regularly sought by architects labouring to keep up with the work of laying out war cemeteries and designing memorials. In this endeavour the Lorimer practice acquired a manner of creating dignity in far flung battlefields by using local materials and simple forms. Too old to serve in action Lorimer sacrificed himself in executing his chivalric masterwork, the Scottish National War Memorial (1924-27), at Edinburgh Castle. In the process he proved that fundamentalist Classicism was not the only way to achieve monumentality (see Figure 14).

Figure 14: The Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle, Sir Robert Lorimer, 1924-27. Compare the different approach by the Lorimer and Matthew practice between this and Figure 15. This example is genuinely monumental.

Apart from war monuments another architectural consequence of the conflict was the need for institutions dedicated to the care of ex-servicemen. These mainly non-urban institutions for the shell shocked and maimed made allusions to domesticity with Arts and Crafts styling and a fairly low height. Symetricality and site layout were the chief concessions to formality.

Something of this sort is in evidence at King's Buildings where the monumental intention appears rather half hearted especially in the buildings for Animal Genetics (1929-30) and Geology (1930-31). John Matthew, of Lorimer & Matthew, attempted to create harmonious surroundings with pitched roofs, arty gables, stone facings, some good ironwork and harled brickwork in the less formal areas.

Animal Genetics, the Crew Building, has a symmetrical front and a projecting central section surmounted with a Dutch gable. Above the doorway is a minuscule balcony fronting a tall arched window which lights the lecture theatre. The basement storey is faced in stone as are the corner quoins and the entrance stairway. The remainder of the walls are rendered in harling. A relief sculpture of a nude group, by Alex Carrick, attempts to explicate the field of study accommodated. The overall impression created by the building is a non-urban one (see Figure 15).

Figure 15: Institute of Animal Genetics, Kings Buildings, John Matthew, 1929-30.

A similar country house formula governs the Geology building. Pairs of pavilions flank the wings and the entrance where there is a recessed balcony and a diminutive gable; a Lorimer trademark. Other than in its symmetrical arrangement of elements and regularity of fenestration there is no explicit use of the vocabulary of Classicism although the vertical division between windows could be read as suppressed pilasters (see Figure 16).

Figure 16: The Department of Geology, Kings Buildings, John Matthew, 1930-31. The Classicism is implicit in the symmetrical arrangement while the aesthetic programme is redolent of a country house sanatorium.

The most monumental of the ensemble is the Ashworth Building, the Department of Zoology. Formality is achieved by means of an applied temple front and arched portico in antis which is surmounted by a geometricised pediment. A colonnade of explicit pilasters mark the division between the surprisingly large windows of the wings which splay back at about 40 degrees from the central section to unequally spaced pavilions. As was its custom the Lorimer practice provided applied art in the form of cast concrete roundels of animals by Phyllis Bone - a fusion of craft skills and new technology (see Figure 17).

Figure 17a: The Department of Zoology, Kings Buildings, John Matthew, 1927. Note the attenuation of the pilaster strips and the geometric pediment on the right.

Figure 17b: The Department of Zoology, detail.

The Sanderson Building, the Department of Engineering (1929-30), is the least decorous of all. Stone fronted, it is grimly utilitarian in appearance with a cumbersome double projection of the centrepiece. Again, there is a recessed balcony within a portico and a relief sculpture by Carrick (see Figure 18).

Figure 18: The Department of Engineering, King's Buildings, John Matthew, 1929-30.

Following the siting of the Chemistry building it might appear that the siting of the Matthew buildings along the perimeter of the site was an attempt at a monumental gesture towards the main road. However, this was primarily a matter of functional expediency. Not only were these buildings placed conveniently near the entrances, yet far enough from the road to avoid vibrations, they had plans which allowed for indefinite expansion. Spinal corridors reach out in arms from the central halls and permit further growth to the rear.

The building for Animal Genetics, ironically, broke this contrived rule of nature by facing into the centre of the site from the west. Here the placement was arranged on intersecting driveways which provide views to Liberton Tower and to the Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill. Here Matthew has appropriated the two significant buildings in the vicinity to create a dialogue. One wonders whether it was intentionally meaningful in the sense that these buildings represent tradition in architecture and a future in scientific discovery. Or was it merely a sensitivity to external features.

In terms of the local architectural tradition the latter gesture is reminiscent of the manner in which Playfair responded to the spatial context for his medievalist New College (1846) for the Free Church of Scotland. This involved aligning his towers on either side of an axis from the New Town's Frederick Street to the steeple of the Highland Tolbooth Church high above in the Old Town; what one might call a Presbyterian Baroque creation (see Figure 19).

Figure 19: The dramatic vista towards W.H.Playfair's New College, from the New Town. Presbyterian Baroque?

It is not difficult to identify international tendencies towards a rhetoric of power in the pared down classicism of Edinburgh's St.Andrew's House and National Library or to trace a line of continuity with the Scottish stone built tradition of the capital. That the university built nothing of the sort does not imply a rejection of this contemporary mode but rather the difficulty in obtaining suitable sites which would allowed for future extension and the expense of becoming engaged in major urban projects. Sir Alfred Ewing, principal from 1916-29, directed building projects to the King's Buildings site because cheaper solutions could be found there than in the daunting architectural context of the city centre. However, although utility and economy had overcome the monumentalist impulse to aggrandise in stone the tradition of memorialising eminent figures by naming buildings after them was maintained. Thus, the Zoology building is named after Professor Ashworth, while the Engineering and Geology buildings commemorate their benefactors

Generally though, the monumentalist tradition appears extremely diluted at King's Buildings. As a collection the buildings could be designated as a commemoration of their era but they belong more firmly in the oeuvre of Lorimer; for like the architect himself they turn their backs on the urban tradition of Edinburgh and the creation of monumental spaces was eschewed in favour of gardens and tennis courts.

Another project, cancelled in 1940, is worth mentioning since it was the University's only urban scheme of the period. Vitally located beside the Royal Infirmary the Medical Faculty had outgrown its accommodation. William Oliver, Professor of Commerce and convenor of the Works Committee, together with James Cordiner, Clerk of Works, devised an extension to the Medical School which would front onto George Square at the north west corner. Scientists, Engineers and systems analysts were now at the helm of building expansion resulting in this sans architect scheme.16 A severely planar elevation was the result of the many large windows which the science and medical faculties had been demanding for years. Cordiner's design is a typical minor institutional building of the period echoing many provincial libraries in its form. A heavy central pylon tower contains the entrance and a corner tower containing an octagonal lecture theatre is used as a device to turn the corner. In such buildings it can be seen that geometric forms do not in themselves guarantee a successful composition. These elements rather than providing artistic interest only serve to heighten the impression of truculence and graceless authority. (see Figure 20) If there was any attempt at Classicism in Cordiner's design then the process of paring down for utilitarian purposes has obscured it. In fact, the building might be thought of as anti monumental in its disdain for decorum.

Figure 20: University Medical Extension, James Cordiner and William Oliver, 1938.

The university was not yet ready to dispense with architects entirely. J.R. McKay, of Dick Peddie and McKay, was brought in to advise and it was his design for which planning permission was received in 1940. McKay had been responsible for much of what would soon be described as pseudo-monumentality; employing debased classical elements to lend prestige to department stores and cinemas. The medical extension design was relentlessly plain taking the cue from Cordiner's plan but employing somewhat more panche in execution. The corner tower is simplified and the entrance block rejected in favour of a simple geometric pediment above the doorway. The handrail above the parapet and the blind attic storey (masking the animal houses and exercise space) serve to convey a nautical atmosphere by suggesting a ship's superstructure. Something of the machine aesthetic of the modern movement is captured in this way. As a result the elevation has more of a contemporary feel than any of McKay's other work (see Figure 21). The international political situation entailed, however, that McKay only ever built an air raid shelter on the site.

Figure 21: University Medical Extension, J.R.McKay, of Dick Peddie and McKay, 1939. The machine aesthetic rather than Monumentalism seems to inform this composition.

Post Monumental?

The 1940s was a period of reappraisal for architects and the experience of war, no doubt, brought forth both a desire for change and an awareness that the resources mobilised for war could equally be mobilised for social purposes. Rejection of the values of the pre-war world was inevitable. The grossest excesses of the neo-Classicism of the 1930s were irrevocably linked to dictatorships and therefore not compatible with democracy. Nevertheless, few architects would have conceded that utility in itself was all that was now required. To do so would have signalled the end of the architectural profession and the accession of the engineer. The radical wing of the architectural community was convinced that monumentality had been relinquished although many felt it would re-emerge elsewhere. The architectural press expressed this concern in a running debate on the issue of monumentality in 1948.

Genuine monumentality can arise only from dictatorship because it is an adequate expression of its emotional complexes....The pseudo-monumentality of the Eighteenth Century is the result of the passion for building experienced by small dictators in a democratic society. (17)

Of course, the inter-war Monumentalists had also used Classicism as a tool of nationalism. And, as Borsi points out, Classical architecture was a means of creating British Nationalism out of Scots and English nationalism using architecture as a unifier or universal language. The dissolution of empire, which was inevitable by 1945, effectively removed one of the founding principles of the Scottish monumentalist agenda. The necessary reassessment of the role of architect and architecture was already under way during the war.

Two Scottish architects, Alan Reiach and Robert Hurd, produced a photo treatise based on the old 'Contrasts' formula in which they exhorted a bold new Scotland. Building Scotland - a cautionary guide (1944) is a manifesto for a nationalistic modernity in which the baseness of Victorian architecture and the vulgarity of Art Deco are heartily reviled. For Hurd and Reiach, the new monumentality was located in the power station: "A new and vital beauty in the Highland landscape."18 This attitude is redolent of the Futurist architects who seemed to strive for monumental forms yet advocated an architecture of impermanence. That ambiguity of intent seems to destroy the very concept of monumentalism but yet the power of didacticism is unstrained.

Reiach, like many other Scottish architects, was to look increasingly towards the sculptural industrial forms executed for the National Coal Board by the Bauhaus trained architect, Egon Riss. In this architecture of power the symbolism of imperial nationalism yields to notions of nationalisation and futurist state interventionism.

Hurd and Reiach envisaged such structures existing alongside a reinvigorated domestic vernacular. For public buildings the approach of Swedish and Swiss sanatoria were favoured. Schools and libraries, they declared: "Should be cheerful and inviting oases to refresh the mind." Something of the Lorimerian tradition appears to live on in such intentions.

Let us consider whether anything remained of the traditional Monumentalist impulse within the university in the 1940s. During 1943/44 the University resolved to pursue a policy of reintegration. The King's Buildings site was to be abandoned as an academic centre 19 and the Faculty of Science was to return to the city centre. In any other era such a move would seem to offer the prospect of a restatement of the institutional monumental tradition. However, the search for a new mode of architectural expression appeared to rule out another quadrangle of polished ashlar.

The essence of the post war plan followed the recommendations of planner F.C. Mears (1931) and of the Clyde Report (1943)20 which sought to regenerate the cultural life of the city with a new urban university campus. Mears' ground plan had monumental intent in aiming to create ceremonial routes, university plazas and scenic vistas. But the return to the city centre was actually inspired by a more self contained plan of William Oliver's to redevelop George Square. His simple idea to create a group of four science buildings around a pre-existing central garden square was theoretically simpler - the architectural aspects would be left to others. The destruction of the old buildings in the eighteenth century square, however, went against the principles of Mears and the Clyde Committee.

The City was initially unwilling to commit itself to any decision on the controversial plan until it had received informed recommendations based on a meticulous survey on which the leading town planner, Patrick Abercrombie, was engaged from 1946-49. The University therefore required an architect or planner to advise on how to proceed. The choice of architect may give some idea of the architectural aspirations of the university immediately after the war.

Abercrombie recommended either Frank Mears or Robert Matthew for the position. However, Mears was fairly advanced in years and as he was a member of the governing council of the conservationist group, the Cockburn Association, there would have been a conflict of interests. Besides, he may have tried to implement his obsolete plan of fifteen years earlier or formed an inner cadre with his friend, the munificent benefactor of the university, Sir Donald Pollock. Matthew was the highly regarded chief architect to the Department of Health and a friend of Abercrombie. He was also aligned with Alan Reiach in a drive for a new social architecture and together with Stirrat Johnson-Marshall he was to form a 'New Left' caucus within RIBA.

Sir John Fraser, the Principal from 1944-47, found neither man suitable to negotiate with Abercrombie and the City. Instead, he asked Dr. Charles Holden to advise. Holden's main qualification in this respect was his project for the integration of the University of London. This involved the design of a massive university complex in Bloomsbury of which only the central Senate Tower was built. Fraser might have been breaking with tradition by engaging an English architect but Holden was one in whom the monumentalist strain was undiluted. The London project had been deliberately designed for permanence and durability employing load bearing walls of stone and brick. The Portland stone clad Senate Tower is executed in that fundamental Classicism strongly redolent of Lutyen's Cenotaph (see Figure 22).

Figure 22: Perspective by Sir Charles Holden for the University of London, 1931. Monumentalism in Portland stone. Geometric massing and gigantisism of scale represent the integration of numerous institutions into the monolithic University of London.

It seems that Holden had only a slight interest in the Scottish capital - he designed no buildings at all. However, he liased with Abercrombie and the city and prepared a prospectus for development which the city authorities accepted in principle. The university was not bound by the plan but by inclusion in the Abercrombie Report the required zoning was obtained.

In Holden's plan of 1946 there seems to be, at least, the potential for monumental gesture as the birds eye view reveals (see Figure 23). North and east of the square are large single blocks while the south side is divided into two blocks. The axis is from east to west and there is a cour d'honour between the eastern blocks which is approached through a garden area. All of George Square has been assigned to science and to the north an awkward diagonal street has been eliminated. In this sector irregularly shaped blocks with gardens represent administration, chapel and student amenities. This is a confident, if tentative, piece of work which was described by the architect as merely a disposition of spaces around which buildings could be arranged.

In expectation of massive state funding for education the development plan was held over pending the end of a moratorium on major building projects in 1954. However, the University Grants Committee intimated that it was willing to receive applications for grants for minor works and this situation was exploited on sites well away from George Square. Contemporaneously with the Architectural Review's crisis of monumentality, therefore, the university engaged in its first post war architectural endeavour: the Dental Hospital and School and the new Examination Halls. These were located on Chambers Street, to the north of Old College, and both commissions were given to William Kininmonth. Initially the two projects were for the conversion of existing buildings but the examinations building scheme grew into a far grander undertaking.

The Chambers Street enterprise might be thought of as something of a public relations exercise. For it seems that, in social and architectural terms the university was anxious to demonstrate affinity with the city's own aspirations.

Figure 23a: The Holden Plan for the University of Edinburgh, 1947.

Figure 23b: The Holden Plan, Birds-eye perspective. Note the restatement of the Senate Tower from the London University scheme (figure 22).

Adam House - as the Examination Halls came to be called - provided examination space for the university and freed valuable space in the Old College. However, a further cultural role was emphasised since the building also offered theatre and cinema facilities. This was seen as particularly important considering Edinburgh's recently acquired role as festival city.

The free dental treatment which the Dental Hospital and School provided was an important social service and further demonstrated the public virtue of the university. These two buildings marked the east and west entrances to Chamber Street respectively and the university's civic role was proclaimed by having its coat of arms emblazoned at each end

In architectural terms, the university was seen to be sympathetic to the existing street-scape of Chambers Street which had been one of the city's nineteenth century improvements (1867) carried out under the direction of the Lord Provost, Sir William Chambers. Following the siting of Old College and the Royal Scottish Museum 21 the new street was laid out specifically as a monumental cultural thoroughfare with the two major institutions on the south side. The old narrow wynds which descended southwards were swept away. In the interest of the unity of the north side David Cousin produced elevation designs in what was considered an appropriate style: French Renaissance. The result of this regulation was that Cousin's mansard roofs, dormer windows and the uniform cornice level were shared by an eclectic assortment of buildings. These included: department stores and a police college which were executed in a sort of cosmopolitan Beaux Arts style; a Byzantinesque church (The Tron Free Church); a porticoed former medical college; the neo-Baroque Heriot Watt College, and the Dental Hospital, of 1927.

The latter employed channelled stonework and door pediment and the whole ensemble of the facade is clasped by a pair of attenuated giant ionic pilasters. The intent was monumental in that classical elements and ashlar were used and civic virtue is commemorated in a public building. But as a landmark in time it was unsuccessful and the eclecticism of the composition and its unhappy proportions place it in the 'Free Renaissance' genre of the previous generation. A project to refurbish the building for which designs had been drawn up in 1937 was shelved when war broke out and the same architectural practice was commissioned for a revived scheme in 1946. (22)

Financial constraints had to be observed and much of the existing structure and the 1927 facade was retained with an extension constructed to the rear. (23) As a result the greater part of Kininmonth's work of 1949-53 was not visible from the street. However, the architect did alter and enlarge the entrance by inserting a classical entablature of square stone piers and pilasters. This was actually the architect's second design for he amended his original entrance by substituting stonework for concrete pillars: in deference to the stone built tradition (see Figure 24).

A further example of the architect's interest in Greek Classicism was the ironwork device which he devised to stand by the door. (24) Here the university crest is supported by a pair of snakes and there is a flaming torch and a spray of bay leaves. Kininmonth explained that the snake and staff is a reference to the attribute of Aesculapius, god of medicine, as is the spray of bay leaves which the deity received as a token of athletic victory. The paired snakes on the motif are formed into the shape of an inverted lyre as a reference to Apollo who is associated with both music and healing. A similar entrance motif to that of the Dental Hospital appears at the east end of the street where the architect was able to achieve a more novel solution than the mere grafting of an element onto an existing front.

Figure 24: The Dental Hospital and School, Sir William Kininmonth, of Rowand Anderson & Paul, 1948-53. Note the attempted unity of street facades by means of cornice and rustication. Kininmonth inserted the portico and created the attic storey. Note that the controversial decorative ironwork which occupied the blank central bay on the ground floor has recently been transferred to the new premises in Lauriston Pl..

The Examination Halls project grew from the makeshift conversion of an old theatre, purchased in 1948, into a purpose-built multi-function resource centre. The provision of a theatre and cinema, a hall with a dance floor and an upper floor art gallery made it invaluable for cultural and social events as well as for examinations. On this occasion Principal Appleton and the secretary to the University were able to use their contacts and influence to realise a far larger project than was originally envisaged. With generous UGC funding the University's architect was able to remove the previous building and start anew.

The site for the new building was part of that which was once occupied by Adam Square, the Edinburgh headquarters of the renowned architectural family, and a locus for intellectual society in the Eighteenth Century. This fact acquired extra charisma when, during the foundation work, the old well which allegedly supplied the Adams' was discovered. The significance of this was not lost on Kininmonth who made of the facade a homage to the old master at the metaphorical fountainhead of Scottish neo-Classicism (see Figure 25a).

Figure 25a: Adam House (Examination Centre), Sir William Kininmonth, 1950-55. The central feature is intended as a triumphal arch and the two urns represent the Arts and Sciences.

Figure 25b: Old College, the south side facing Adam House, to which Kininmonth's facade responds.

Figure 25c: Adam House model, William Kininmonth. The model features the second sculptural scheme, of April 1953. This scheme was further amended before execution because the symbolism was felt by the architect to be too abstruse. The pediment over the central window was changed and the two putti with torcheres, representing learning, were replaced by urns. However, the mysterious looking shells which decorate the existing building belong to the second scheme. These were intended to represent water but the birds and leaves representing air and earth were replaced by stars in the final scheme.

The planning authorities insisted on maintaining the cornice and string course levels of the rest of the street facade but Kininmonth rejected the mansard roof in favour of a greater frontality. Ingeniously he achieved the uppermost floor without resort to dormers, but instead with a triangular pediment at the level of his upper gallery. This is lit by an oculus in the tympanum. The Adamesque vocabulary includes the use of Doric columns and pilasters in direct response to those of the Old College opposite. There are further references to Adam in the a serliana motif of the blind central arch and the Roman looking pediment of the window on the piano nobile. A pair of urns in niches and panelled bronze doors at street level lend a peculiarly sepulchral appearance. Classical proportions dictated the arrangement of elements and the entire front is mounted on a granite platform which compensates for the gradient of the street and allows for minor adjustments to the system. Kininmonth was specifically asked to maintain the floor levels of the block to facilitate possible future expansion into adjacent buildings, and the asymmetricality of the facade - i.e. the westernmost bay which shields a shared entrance with the adjoining building - is on account of this contingency. Had the adjacent sites been redeveloped by the university Kininmonth might have been able to create, in phases a suitably monumental partner to Old College and thus a truly grand entrance to the street from the east.

Some have doubted the seriousness of Kininmonth's intentions in the design of Adam House suggesting that it was tongue-in-cheek and that the architect was making a point about the local tradition and the deification of Robert Adam. Certainly his only works in the tradition of monumentalism are in Chambers Street and these were fully approved by the university at a time when it was anxious to show respect for civic dignity and tradition.25 Either Kininmonth was demonstrating supreme flexibility and an understanding of sensitive locations or the University's insistence on traditional solutions resulted in pastiche. I suggest that Kininmonth was only too aware that the building would be engaged in a permanent dialogue with the north side of the Old College and the architect was challenged into a virtuoso mannerist response (see Figure 25b). The result is, arguably, more rigorously Classical in its bearing than any other frontage on the street.

In this respect he may have been recognising the statement by Henry Russell Hitchcock:

There is evidence - for example in Russia - that the public likes in public architecture at least the simulacra of monumentality, as in other arts the public continues to demand other qualities abjured by the leading practitioners of the older generation.

This ambivalence may be acknowledged in the Greek inscription carved in the central arch: "He who is educated has double insight." This is more like an invitation to enquire into the meaning of the building than an exhortation to examinees. However, although there may be irony in the design the building itself fulfils several of the key requirements of monumentality. That is to say: there are civic and commemorative functions; it is intended as an ornament to the city and - apparently built of stone - it can be considered a permanent feature. (26) Furthermore, as it embodies so much of the morale boosting ethos of the festival movement, it is placed firmly in the public sphere of celebratory architecture.

Kininmonth was no doubt aware of the contemporary debate but was it a surprise that this essay in stone was not acclaimed as the return of monumentality? In fact the UGC was criticised for using public funds in such an extravagant manner. It seems that not only the radical wing of the architectural community had problems with rhetorical architecture in those times of austerity.

The criticism from younger architects, for the production of a Classical revival building may emanate from a perceived capitulation to historicism by an architect who had been interested in a Modernist idiom since the 1930s and usually advocated contemporary facades consistent with the festival style interiors which he practised after the war. At this time, with so many possible commissions on the horizon, Kininmonth was probably anxious to demonstrate his flexibility. Indeed, in response to Holden's plan and to the upsurge of conservationist interest in George Square he wrote confidentially to the university secretary with a sketch of an idea for retaining most of the facades and rendering the square monumental with an entrance from the Meadows, to the south, on axis with the dome of the McEwan Hall (see Figure 26).

As a further gambit, in the attempt to secure public opinion for its expansion programme, the university had resolved to hold a public competition to inaugurate its major central development with the Medical School extensions onto the north side of George Square and Sir Lancelot Keay(RIBA) was called in to assist. Keay advised against an open competition but the university was committed to one. The priority was for pathology facilities, for which funding was guaranteed, but on the advice Keay this was to be treated as the first phase of a scheme for the whole north side of George Square. Although neither the finance nor the land was yet available for the whole scheme the first phase was scheduled to commence in 1954.

Figure 26: Thumbnail sketch design for George Square , Wm. Kininmonth, June 1951). Note the entrance from the Meadows in the south and the axis aligned on the dome of the McEwan Hall.

A.J.R. McKenzie, a former president of R.I.A.S., was appointed as assessor. The medical faculty brief was long and complex in itself and other requirements had to be incorporated. The scheme had to be one that could be built in stages and there were the recommendations of Holden's plan and the City's conditions on mass and scale. The competition was launched in 1950 but with so many conditions to be met a compromised solution was inevitable. Although he found "no solution entirely satisfactory" McKenzie awarded the commission to A.W.N. Ramsay of the Glasgow practice of McNair, Elder and Ramsay.

Mackenzie was impressed by the plan but the elevation design was one of such unrelieved monotony that it is difficult to imagine the planning authorities ever approving it (see Figure 27). Nevertheless, the corporation had insisted that the facade of the medical building should be in harmony with the existing buildings in George Square. Already archaic looking in 1951 the Ramsay design embodied the relentless Neo-classicism of the 1930s. It was described at the time as: "....A modern interpretation of the Classical and Georgian style." There were certainly pretensions to monumentality in the original scheme but this was truly an architecture of utility for which few could summon enthusiasm.

Figure 27: Aerial perspective of Walter Ramsay's prize winning design for the Medical Extension on North George Square , 1951, drawing by A.Martinez.

The first phase was to be a seven storey block down the west side of the site. This was to be connected to the rest of the scheme by a link containing three floors over an entrance portico. A central block of five storeys, containing a conference centre for six hundred students, is connected to a pair of four storey flanking blocks by cubic entrance units. The 'harmonisation' with the existing buildings was achieved simply by manipulating the geometry of their form.

The scheme was never actually complete although three phases were ultimately built. (27) Planning permission for these was only obtained with difficulty after amendments were made by Basil Spence who was appointed planning consultant to the University in 1954. Spence's "humanisation" of the severe facade consisted of providing a chiaroscuro effect by the application of abstracted 'pilasters' of York stone slabs and by projecting glazed balconies out above the colonnade.

The final fragmentary result of the medical extension project cannot in itself be considered monumental but perhaps should only be assessed as part of the whole George Square precinct.

The New Wave

The development plan out of which the twentieth century campus emerged is striking in terms of its flexibility and by the need for constant revision as the University came to terms with a succession of expansion projections. The consequent elusiveness of a static ideal form seems like the very antithesis of the Monumentalist tradition which requires a single vision of completeness and permanence. However, there are many ways in which the creation of the campus might be compared to the building of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It was the work of many hands and it had to assimilate earlier architecture. As with the cathedrals it was the result of a campaign, or building crusade, lasting several generations. Following Oliver's wartime masterplan further schemes were drafted by Holden, in 1947, and by Sir Basil Spence, in 1954. Revisions were made by Spence and Sir Robert Mathew in 1959 and then Percy Johnson-Marshall, also in the early 1960's, which incorporated the campus into a vast scheme for the re-development of the area around the university.

In a way it is appropriate that no single architect can be credited as the builder of the campus since the principles of the campaign were teamwork, co-operation and constant reassessment of needs. As with the cathedrals a vision of the future and faith in the enterprise were more important than the concept of an ultimate, unalterable form or one single authoritative architect. (28)

With an extensive, and highly sensitive, development programme to implement the university engaged Basil Spence as consultant in 1954. Spence enjoyed a high public profile, as a result of his exhibition work and as winner of the Coventry Cathedral competition, and was considered as something of an ambassador for modern architecture. After Holden's institutional layout and Ramsay's utilitarian interpretation of it Spence shattered the birds-eye vision of a Monumentalist quadrangle by descending to ground level in order to delineate a flowing series of plazas enclosed by long low buildings and guarded by a group of towers in the east. Spence appears to have been striving to combine the cloistered enclave of academic tradition with a sensualist evocation of the oasis of learning. This is emphasised by the water features and sculpture in his perspective drawings (see Figure 28).

Figure 28a: George Square from the south. Spence's impression of a new campus, 1954.

Figure 28b: The new George Square, looking east, with sculptures and water features in the semi enclosed spaces.Sir Basil Spence, 1954.

Figure 28c: The Central Development Area, model by Basil Spence, 1955/6. Note the large convocation hall on the east side and the chapel steeple on the "Island Site" which was reserved for student amenities.

With the north side of the square already earmarked for the Medical school Spence recommended retaining the Eighteenth Century houses on the west side as a sort of cathedral close. A large square corner site was chosen for the new library and this served as the first fixed point in the new development and as the pivot of academic activity.

In his revised plan of 1959 Spence divided Ramsay's monolithic medical block in two by means of a semi-enclosed entry to the Reid School of Music. This plan, which was produced in conjunction with Matthew, also included a development immediately to the east of the Old College where, in accordance with Mears's suggestion, an open square was to be formed out of a run down city block as a setting for the facade of the Adam building (see Figure 29). Although Spence created the initial block plan and proved his skills as a negotiator it was largely Robert Matthew, as convenor of the Major Buildings Committee, together with Sir Edward Appleton and his staff, who directed the flow of events defining the architectural form of the new university.

Figure 29: The revised Development Plan of 1959/60 by Spence with advice from Robert Matthew.

In the course of the campaign Spence's practice received the commission for the Library (1965-67) while Matthew's practice, RMJM, was given responsibility for the Arts Faculty group (including the David Hume Tower, 1960-63: see Figure 30. Alan Reiach's practice was engaged to design the Fundamental Science buildings (including the Appleton Tower, 1962-66: see Figure 31).

Figure 30a: The Arts Faculty buildings, RMJM, Model of 1959.

Figure 30b: The David Hume Tower, RMJM, 1962

Figure 31a: The Fundamental Science buildings for East George Square, Alan Reiach's model of 1961. The low tutorial block which would have connected with the Arts Faculty block was abandoned as a project in 1973 and the old houses retained.

Figure 31b: The Appleton Tower, Alan Reiach, Eric Hall and Partners,1963-66.

The academic precinct is often regarded as a revolutionary intrusion into the cityscape and few would seek to identify any connection with the monumental tradition. However, it might be considered a natural outcome of the Enlightenment project, in that it represents the proliferation of scientific thought, in both its educational and architectural outcomes. The principal from 1949-64, Sir Edward Appleton, was a Nobel Prize winning scientist fully committed to the rapid expansion of higher education and scientific research, and who served on both the UGC and the Department for Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). He was also a member of the Barlow Committee whose 1946 report recommended increasing science and technology graduates from 55,000 to 90,000. Appleton was appointed as principal because he was thought to be uniquely qualified to cope with the pressing demands of the post war era. These embodied the principle of progress through technology. The demands of science and industry and the reform of the education system were accentuated by the sharp increase in the birth rate from 1942-47. The University of Edinburgh's share in the post war education boom meant that student numbers were expected to rise from 3,700 to 7000 and staff from 180 to 600 between 1938 and 1958. Largely thanks to Appleton Edinburgh was prodigious in having buildings under construction during the 1950s when most universities had only development estimates. Even so the subsequent Robbins report caused ripples of apprehension and frantic replanning, in 1963, when it was estimated that student figures were likely to expand by another 4,000 over the next four years.

Equally forward looking and, perhaps, even more progressive was Robert Matthew. He was one of the brilliant young architectural graduates of the 1930s who had been trained by F.C. Mears whose specific aim it was to bring to fulfilment the Neotechnic age of Patrick Geddes' prophecies. After entering the public service, Matthew had quickly risen to the position of Chief Architect to the Department of Health for Scotland (D.H.S.). He had conquered London as an architect to the London County Council (1946-53) and was responsible for notable education and housing projects within the post-war reconstruction programme as well as the prestigious Royal Festival Hall (1951). The position as head of the school of architecture within the Edinburgh College of Art as well as a chair at the University brought him back to Edinburgh. Here, he founded a new school of architecture and planning within the university which, in the manner of Gropius at Dessau, he ran in tandem with RMJM.

It was Matthew who recommended that the university should become involved in urban renewal by initiating a comprehensive development area (CDA) which was to be masterminded by the university's professor of planning, Percy Johnson-Marshall.

This proposal - finally shelved in 1973 - was initiated to preserve the architectural integrity of the new precinct from peripheral development but it was widely interpreted as an attempted annexation of 125 acres of the city by the University (see Figure 32).

Figure 32: The Comprehensive Development Area, Percy Johnson-Marshall and Associates' model of 1962. Nothing came of this vast megastructural project for the South-Side of Edinburgh which was delayed by indecision over various proposed bypass schemes and finally officially abandoned in 1973.

Of course, one might claim that the University's post war development project was monumental in the facile sense of being large in scale or even that the ambitious CDA was megalomaniacal. The punctuation of the skyline of Edinburgh with a pair of landmark towers was certainly a bold and assertive statement of presence. More significantly, within such grandiose plans one cannot but detect a monumentality of intent, in teleological terms, which resulted in the University securing a position as one of the major British institutions for education and research. Many of the buildings planned were never achieved but Appleton and Matthew had to think in terms of development over a fifty year period. Ambition beyond their best expectations was essential in order to achieve anything at all. As with the initiators of the Medieval cathedrals faith and vision were the essential ingredients. That agenda aspires to the impulse, if not the simulacra, of monumentality.

We need a monumentality without rhetoric. Alan Reiach

Several other links with the monumental tradition can be observed. The naming of buildings after eminent men - not all of them university luminaries - is a recognition of the commemorative role of architecture. The tower which pays tribute to the scientific achievement of Appleton is juxtaposed with a commemoration of the intellectual importance of Hume to the scientific age - late compensation for his historic rejection by the university. These are cultural landmarks achieved without rhetoric. It is true that their designated titles came after the fact but, lacking ironic intent, they are undoubtedly valid.

The concept of public architecture might also be applied. More than architecture merely encountered by the public, this means architecture funded by the public and built for an institution working for the good of society rather than for the benefit of an elite minority. As the David Hume Tower began to rise Lucio Costa hailed the arrival of the "new scientific and technological humanism" and argued that justice was an inevitable result of technological progress.

For the first time since the 5th Century BC. public architecture has become popular architecture - in the strict sense, by the people, for the people. Robert Matthew

Within the greater social vision of Matthew the University, as a patron of architecture which is truly public, is justified by democratic ideals. This democratisation extends to the processes of planning and design in the advocated principle of teamwork. Matthew's design team at RMJM, led by John Richards, recalls the guild tradition and anonymity of individual craftsmen. Kininmonth, on the other hand, subscribes to the Monumentalist tradition of aggrandisement of the architect for posterity when he signs his name on Adam House - as Robert Adam had on his college building.

No doubt, most commentators would fail to find a link between the material and formal aspects of the George Square Campus and the Monumentalist tradition. However, had the full complement of buildings for the faculties of medicine, arts and science been achieved there would have been a continuous colonnade around George Square. The exposed structural supports of the Main Library would have joined in a rhythmic procession with those of the Medical Extension, with the piloti of the Arts Faculty tutorial blocks and the unexecuted science tutorial block. Around the retained garden square a semi-covered perambulation under porticoes and overhangs would be possible as if in an academic cloister. This circulatory flow would have been replicated internally at podium and sub-podium level. Furthermore, it is an enactment of the principle of cross fertilisation between academic departments which reintegration was intended to achieve. The dome of the McEwan Hall would have been framed in the way that Bernini's colonnade frames St.Peter's. Before its entrance a circular plaza provides a meeting place and a crossing of routes between academic, ceremonial and recreational buildings.

Figure 33a: Phase One of Walter Ramsay's medical extension, 1957-60.

Figure 33b: The Hugh Robson Building, W.Ramsay, Completed in 1978. Note the persistence of the former George Watson's Ladies College which prevents the unity of the north side of the square.

Figure 33c: The Pharmacology Building, W.Ramsay, 1968. It occupies the east end of the north side of George Square. This was intended as the final phase of Ramsay's project but was brought forward when hopes for the Biochemistry block in the centre began to fade.

Figure 34a: A view along the podium of the south side of the campus: Library; Lecture Theatre; Adam Ferguson Building and terminating with the David Hume Tower in the east.

Figure 34b: Tutorial block on east side of George Square, William Robertson Building, RMJM, 1964-67.

While it must be true that every city had a comprehensive development scheme, with traffic and pedestrian segregation, in the 1960s it is interesting to note that Johnson-Marshall refers to Adam's bridges schemes as a monumental antecedent for the urban megastructural ideal of the open citadel. Certainly, both Adam and the megastructuralists perceived that there was an awe inspiring grandeur to be found in impressive feats of engineering. And, that citadel concept is what links the Spalatro survey; the eighteenth century monumental schemes for Edinburgh; and the CDA, i.e. the interlocking of elements within a greater urban structure.

In addition, the nature of the materials chosen reveals a concern about the ambience and the physical conditioning affecting the emotional qualities of the spaces. Here, one can find allusions to the tradition of Edinburgh that reflect a sense of decorum. Notions of permanence and dignity are evoked by the use of stone facings. Conscious of tradition, RMJM. located the final source of Craigleith stone, but there was insufficient to clad even the Arts Tower, and York stone slabs were used extensively instead. The David Hume Tower and the Main Library, in particular, derive prestige from sensual interventions. At the latter, John Hardie Glover and his team, led by Andrew Merrylees, employed a stone floor, stainless steel fittings, and exotic hardwoods to condition the essentially warehouse spaces of the stack floors.

Concrete has been given minimal exposure, despite its vogue amongst the modernists. Polished slate, on the tower, and polished granite, on the library, diplomatically introduce the new material of construction. Of course, there is no reason to regard concrete as less permanent than stone -as the concrete dome of the Pantheon attests - but the associational power of stone was too strong to be ignored. This can only be in deference to the architectural tradition of place, and perhaps even to the psychology of Scottish Monumentalism.

It is our intention to provide the best buildings, functionally and aesthetically, our age can provide....We do not accept the argument that only the past can build well....We see no reason why at least some of the buildings in George Square should not be a monument to whatever is good and great in this age....And it is our hope that it will be said one day not merely that Edinburgh was great in the Eighteenth Century, but also that it was not without men of vision and perseverance, (and possibly even some taste), in the Twentieth.

Sir Edward Appleton

Clive B Fenton

Notes and References

1. Of course, in assessing the nature of such responses, one has to ask if these terms are just a convenient way of thinking about the past or whether one is sensing a genuine impulse with some sort of continuing validity.

2. "In Search of a New Monumentality" Architectural Review Symposium Vol. 104 No. 621 Sept. 1948.

3. Among Playfair's major institutional works were: phase II of the Old College (1817-27); The Royal Scottish Academy (1822 & 1823); Surgeon's Hall (1829); Donaldson's Hospital (1842-56); New College (1846) and the National Gallery of Scotland (1850).

4. Unlike most of the Universities founded before the mid 19th century Edinburgh's was founded by the city authorities and its current level of independence was acquired gradually.

5. See, for example, James Dunnet "Tribute to Scottish Monumentality" Building Design Aug. 1993.

6. Though modest in scale the Hume monument occupies a fairly prominent site on the Calton Hill.

7. Martin Pawley "The Time House" in Jencks and Baird Meaning in Architecture London 1969

8. For details of Adam's university and South Bridge projects see Andrew Fraser The Building of Old College EUP

9. In conformity with accepted religious symbolism, which equates the circle with heaven and with God, the round divinity faculty classroom was assigned a place under the dome.

10. It is interesting to note that amongst the subscribers to Adam's book on Spalatro were David Hume and Adam as well as artist/architect Piranesi.

11. When the architect Alexander Black carried out restoration work at Heriot's, in 1833, it was necessary for the sake of propriety to clad the south, east and west fa‡ades in Craigleith ashlar, where there had previously been rubble with a traditional rendering.

12. In 1889 Anderson and David MacGibbon founded the school of Applied Art under the authority of the South Kensington Museum. This was later amalgamated with the Edinburgh College of art under the jurisdiction of the Scotch (sic) Education Department.

13. See S.McKinsky Rowand Anderson - Scotland's Premier Architect EUP 1991

14. The school was designed by city architect David Cousin (1858) but it was only built after the professor of music took the university to court over its reticence in Spending Reid's bequest, the interest on which provided the greater part of the university's income.

15. Franco Borsi's book The Monumental Era examines the period from the Wall Street Crash in 1829 to the invasion of Poland in 1939. From an international perspective this Monumentalism has many diverse aspects but these are linked by an interest in the Classical ideal of order and with notions of authority which are inseparable from the contemporary interest in political and military power. Examples of this Monumentalism include the industrial rhetoric of Gilbert Scott's Battersea Power Station (1931) Eand Charles Holden's University of London (1931-37).

16. The committee responsible for medical extension sarcastically declared that an architect's main aim in life was to reduce windows to an absolute minimum. They believed that had their predecessors spent a fraction on land that they had spent on architecture then there would have been no crisis.

17. Gregor Paulsson Architectural Review September 1948.

18. This was published under the auspices of the Saltire Society; a group founded in 1936 to promote a renaissance of Scottish culture based on the 18th century model.

19. The possibility of conversion to halls of residence with minimal provision for certain types of experiments was to be considered.

20. University Rector Sir Donald Pollock, who sat on the Clyde Committee, gifted a block of old property, earmarked for student amenities, between the square and the Old College, together with sports facilities nearby, in order to strengthen that resolve.

21. The RSM was begun in 1865 to a design by Francis Fowke (1861). As was mentioned earlier