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MacMillan, Andrew, RSA

1928 – 2014

Andrew MacMillan served an apprenticeship with the Glasgow Corporation Housing Department from 1945 to 1952 whilst studying architecture at Glasgow School of Art. Between 1952 and 1954 he worked for East Kilbride New Town Development Corporation and in 1954 he joined the practice of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia becoming a partner in 1966. Working in the pratice along with Isi Metzstein, RSA, he was involved in major projects such as St Peter's College, Cardross. In addition to his work as an architect he has also been involved in teaching becoming the Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture in 1973. He has exhibited at the RSA from 1975 and also as part of the Gillespie, Kidd & Coia practice. He became an Associate Member of the RSA in 1977 and an Academician in 1990. Obituary by Gavin Stamp, The Guardian, Tuesday 2014-10-07; " Andy MacMillan obituary Leading architect best known for St Peter's Seminary at Cardross, regarded as the finest modernist building in Scotland Gavin Stamp Tuesday 7 October 2014 18.08 BST Last modified on Monday 13 October 2014 13.18 BST Andy MacMillan, who has died aged 85, was half of one of the most remarkable and creative partnerships in modern British architecture. With his lifelong friend and colleague Isi Metzstein, in the 1950s he effectively took over from Jack Coia the Glasgow practice of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia (GKC) and began to produce a series of Roman Catholic churches that were strikingly innovative in plan and form. In these buildings, and in their masterpiece, St Peter's Seminary at Cardross, Metzstein and MacMillan gave a distinctive poetry to the European modernist tradition, combining admiration for the achievement of Le Corbusier with a wide and idiosyncratic knowledge of history. They also worked outside Scotland, at the University of Hull, and Wadham College, Oxford, and were the architects of the new Robinson College, Cambridge, but their work was rooted in the shape and history of Glasgow. Gordon Benson, designer of the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, has written that "their best work, the most distinguished architecture in Scotland since Mackintosh, is measurable against anything produced in Europe in the same period". MacMillan succeeded in combining architectural practice with teaching. In 1973 he was appointed head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, attached to Glasgow School of Art, and professor of architecture at Glasgow University. For two decades he inspired and delighted generations of students with his incisive and empathetic genius as a tutor, his wit and general irreverence, and his sympathy and kindness, as well as by the architecture he and Metzstein were producing. He taught by example rather than by doctrine, and in 2008 the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded MacMillan and Metzstein the Annie Spink award for excellence in teaching. Some 40 years earlier, in 1969, when the institute's royal gold medal was awarded to Coia (who was widely presumed to be responsible for the firm's modern work), he asked that his two partners be associated with the honour. MacMillan was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, the son of Andrew MacMillan, a former railway clerk, and his wife, Mary (nee McKelvie), in the same year (as he was often pleased to observe) that Charles Rennie Mackintosh died. Interested in maps and adept at drawing, he passed the Glasgow corporation exam after leaving Maryhill public school and intended to join the surveying department, but was persuaded to go to the housing department instead. In 1945 he began to attend evening classes at Glasgow School of Art and met Metzstein and Joe Taylor, who would also become important in GKC. After seven years with the corporation, he worked for two years for the East Kilbride Development Corporation, building the new town to the south of Glasgow. In 1954 Metzstein, already working for GKC, invited him to apply for a post with the practice. This old-established Glasgow firm was then run by Coia, the son of Italian immigrants, and was designing Roman Catholic churches in a vaguely traditional manner. Under Coia's "umbrella", the two ardent young modernists, inspired by what they knew of developments abroad, changed the practice's direction. The first manifestation of this was St Paul's at Glenrothes, Fife, completed in 1957, a modest building of whitewashed brick with a wedge-shaped plan, dramatically lit from a sort of tower over the altar. A series of churches mostly in the archdiocese of Glasgow followed, to serve both old and new communities: Dennistoun, Drumchapel, Kilsyth, Duntocher, Easterhouse, Cumbernauld. The largest – a dramatic tall and textured redbrick box subtly lit through a layered wall and accompanied by a tall austere campanile – is in East Kilbride, completed in 1963. The firm's secular buildings, almost all designed for the public sector, often demonstrated a profound and practical understanding of true urbanism – unusual among modern architects – for both MacMillan and Metzstein admired and analysed the grid-iron plan of Victorian Glasgow and its basic building block of the stone-walled tenement. They were deeply interested in the history of their city and loved, and campaigned for, the works of its two greatest architectural heroes, Alexander "Greek" Thomson and Mackintosh. The seminary built by the partnership at Cardross and completed in 1966 was and is widely regarded as the finest modern building in Scotland. It was a resourceful response to a complex brief that drew heavily, but creatively, on the work of Corbusier. This extraordinary and dramatic complex is now a ruin, a victim both of changing ideas about the training of Catholic priests and the indifference of the archdiocese of Glasgow. It has to be admitted that there were structural problems with some of the churches, often because imaginative concepts outstripped the abilities of the contractors. But it was the use of substandard bricks that caused the aesthetically disastrous demolition of the East Kilbride campanile. It was, however, almost miraculous that the pair – a lapsed Presbyterian and a Berlin-born Jew – should have designed so many churches, and once Coia's protective umbrella was furled, the Catholic work dried up and GKC was wound up in 1987. Their last masterpiece was Robinson College, Cambridge, won in competition in 1974. This, brilliantly organised in plan and section, was a subtle response to the growing reaction against the modern movement and placed a redbrick Scottish castle with resonances of Mackintosh on the Backs at Cambridge. Fortunately, MacMillan had another string to his bow, as a teacher. As charismatic head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture, he brought in several former assistants at GKC and allowed Metzstein free rein to frighten and enlighten students in the studio. The Mac was unusual among architectural schools in having several architectural historians on the staff (including me) and for its informality. MacMillan had little patience with academic bureaucracy. Few if any staff meetings were held and when he was obliged to submit work for the government's wretched Research Assessment Exercise in 1992, he produced a lettered T-shirt as evidence he had attended a particular conference at a US university. For many years, visiting lecturers would be liberally entertained by Andy and his wife Angela McDowell, whom he had married in 1955, in their seemingly chaotic family home in Maryhill. Such was the affection and respect in which MacMillan was held that when he retired in 1994, hundreds of students, past and present, together with many architectural colleagues and friends, hired the Clyde paddle steamer Waverley for a bibulous cruise to Bute in his honour. Not that retirement ever meant retirement. His scholarly interest in the school of art building and his paternal interest in the school and its students remained, and he would often return. The occasional "Andy and Isi show", which consisted of the two old friends sitting at a pub table with a bottle of Macallan whisky and talking, was one of the most rewarding and instructive of entertainments. MacMillan also continued to be much engaged with Scottish architectural life. He served on many architectural juries and his influence ensured the appointment of Benson & Forsyth for the new Museum of Scotland (1998) and of the little-known Catalan Enric Miralles to design the Scottish parliament building in Edinburgh (1994). MacMillan seemed indestructible, but while judging the 2014 Doolan prize in Inverness for the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, he collapsed with a brain haemorrhage. He is survived by Angela, their four children and three grandchildren. • Andrew MacMillan, architect and teacher, born 11 December 1928; died 16 August 2014" • This article was amended on 13 October. The list of churches in the archdiocese of Glasgow was modified with "mostly" in recognition of the fact that St Patrick's, Kilsyth, is in the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Obituary 189th RSA Annual Exhibition Catalogue, 2015, (p.73); "Andrew macMillan OBE RSA Andrew MacMillan OBE RSA(1928-1014) was born in Glasgow in 1928. At north kelvinside Secondary School, MacMillan proved an able all-rounder and was entered for the 'Corporation exam' for an apprenticeship with Glasgow Corproation (now Glasgow City Council). He passed and was interviewed by the chief architect and the chief surveyor. During his apprenticeship he took evening classes at Glasgow School of Art, where he met Isi Metzstein [RSA 1928-2012], then working as an apprentice at Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, one of Britain's most respected architectural practices. MacMillan worked for the Corporation for seven years, and by trhe age of 20 was running his own projects. He then spent two years with East Kilbride new town, but became increasingly frustrated by local government bureaucracy. In 1954, when Metzstein mentioned that there was a vacancy at Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, MacMillan jumped at the chance. Like many young architrects of their generation, MacMillan and Metzstein were passionate converts to modernism; and from 1957, when they effectively assumed creative control of the practice's output, they began to produce an extraordinary string of Modernist buildings. Their first project, St Paul's, Glenrothes, complete din 1957, was described as ' the first modern church in Britain". They went on to build 17 churches and chapels throughout central Scotland, following in the wake of new town development and urban housing schemes, culminating with the completion of the church of St Columba in East Kilbride in 1979. There were also the college buildings in Oxford and Cambridge, schools in Glasgow and Cumbernauld, and a maternity hospital in Bellshill. St peter's Seminary, a three-storey concret ziggurat on the banks of the Clyde, inspired by Corbusier's [1887-1965] chapel at Ronchamp and his monastery at La Tourette, was considered their masterpiece. Completed in 1966, it was designed with a sympathetic understanding of the ritualised nature of seminary life. The seminary won acclaim even from such traditionalist journals as Country Life for its design and fine workmanship - the interiors were panelled in solid wood, echoing the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1968-1928). It wa svoted Scotland's best modern building by th earchitecture magazine Prospect, and in 1967 it won Gillespie, Kidd and Coia an award from RIBA. It was also one of only 42 post-war buildings in Scotland to be Grade-A listed. MacMillan became a partner of the firm in 1966 and served as Professor of Architecture at Glasgow University and Head of the Mackintosh School of Architecture from 1973 to 1994. His teaching at the school (with metzstein) was credited with making it one of the best architectural training establishments in the world. In his late ryears MacMillan served on architectural judging panels, was a Government Adviser and Vice-President of the Glasgow School of Art. He was a member of the Scottish Arts Council from 1978 to 1982, and a member of the panel that chose Enric Miralle's [1955-2000] design for the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Among many awards, MacMillan won the RIBA Award for Architecture on four occasions and the Royal Scottish Academy Gold medal in 1975. He was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1977 [Associate, full Academician in 1990] and appointed OBE in 1992." https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/07/andy-macmillan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_MacMillan http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0ahUKEwixu5uo-ZjOAhWFtxoKHZ2ACeMQFggpMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fobituaries%2F11053693%2FProfessor-Andy-MacMillan-obituary.html&usg=AFQjCNEMX2Yvz9VF_i4hj0vjKZ0ffr05wg http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/tributes-pour-in-for-scottish-architect-andy-macmillan/8668514.fullarticle http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200547 http://www.gsa.ac.uk/about-gsa/our-people/honorary-graduates/m/macmillan,-andy/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-28835877



An image from the RSA collection.