Sustaining Rural Architecture

Rural Scotland is a charged landscape, alive with history and doused in myth. For city dwellers the countryside is a retreat for refuge and decompression, but it is also a place where infrastructures strain to reach and in which livings must be made.

The countryside is resistant to easy explanation and is thus vulnerable to stereotyping. How do we make meaningful work that responds to landscape and cultures that are diverse and sometimes perplexing, and what does this mean for the profession of architecture?

About Professor John Brennan

John is Professor of Sustainable Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art. He established and remains programme director of the University of Edinburgh Masters programme in Advanced Sustainable Design and co-directs an interdisciplinary masters in Sustainable Lands and Cities for the Edinburgh Futures Institute/He is a practicing architect and collaborated with the artist James Turrell in realising the Scottish Skyspace. His buildings have received a range of awards that include the Saltire Society Award for housing and the Scottish Design Awards Northern Exposure prize. John uses built work to validate research through combining qualitative and quantitative methods. His research includes work on long-term housing adaptability, rural architectures and environmental design in the workplace.His book Scotland’s Rural Home explores how design practice fits into wider social and economic perspectives of sustainable development and won best monograph in the inaugural Architectural Book of the Year awards. He is currently Scotland lead on the AHRC funded Community Consultation and Quality of Life project exploring planning and participation in urban and rural development.