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Dog Turd or Walnut Whip? Making Sense of Edinburgh’s Architecture – Roger Emmerson

  • Gladstone's Land 477 Lawnmarket Edinburgh, Scotland, EH1 United Kingdom (map)

From the grandeur of the New Town to the photogenic allure of the Royal Mile to the delights of Leith, what makes Edinburgh so special? Join Roger Emmerson, author of Land of Stone: A Journey Through Modern Architecture in Scotland as he helps you make sense of the jewel in Scotland’s architectural crown. Warning: May contain architectural one-liners.


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

What makes Scottish architecture Scottish?

What ideas drive Scottish architecture?

What has modern architecture in Scotland meant to the Scots?

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

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