From the editor

摘要

For all the talk of whether a new architectural aesthetic - and a wider cultural renaissance - would emerge within an independent Scotland, the foundations that underpin the broader Scots culture we live with today were fashioned in the aftermath of Union with England. Tartan, kilts and tossing the caber were the cynical institutional and market responses to the death of Highland culture at Culloden in 1745, but the Enlightenment, too, emerged from the Union. This flow of intellectual and scientific knowledge from the minds of Adam Smith, David Hume, Robbie Burns and co remains unprecedented on these isles. Architectural culture, of course, was greatly affected. Robert Adam, and his father and brothers, were major figures of the Enlightenment era of the late 18th century. In the decades that followed, much more was to come: a revival of the Scots Baronial style led directly to the flowering of Mackintosh's more worldly Art Nouveau, and Adam's Neoclassicisms were given an industrial makeover by Alexander 'Greek' Thomson.