Charles McKean

Image: Pete Boardman FBIPP

From featuring in the BAFTA award winning BBC series Coast to teachings and writings on subjects ranging from the evolution of Scottish architecture to the battle for the North, Charles McKean is renowned as Scotland's leading authority on the architectural history that shapes our towns and cities.

An architect and a historian, Professor McKean bridges the gap between these two distinct disciplines. He tells Contact of his achievements in research and plans for the future.

Name:
Charles McKean

Job Title:
Professor of Scottish Architectural History

University department/division:
History, School of Humanities

Academic background:
Chief Executive the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland 1979-94, Head of Duncan of Jordanstone School of Architecture 1994-97, Department of History thereafter.

Sum up area of research in 50 words or less:
Scottish Architectural and Urban History within an international context. Specific focus on the periods of the Renaissance 1500-1700, of the Enlightenment and urban modernization 1745-1840, the High Victorian, the 1930s and the present. I have published on all of them.

Greatest achievement/breakthrough in research:
Getting my European and English colleagues to take the architectural culture of the Scottish Renaissance seriously, and accepting it as part of mainstream European culture. Such has been the transformation in the understanding of Scottish renaissance architecture over the last decade that much of the previous interpretation of this Country's architectural history has been superseded.

We are seeing Scottish Renaissance architecture being reconnected to the European mainstream at long last, and the results are proving extremely exciting. Towns, urban monuments, furnishings, decoration, gardens and policies, methods of construction, materials, patronage and - above all - the different ranks of country seat are all being re-examined to recover the culture of Stewart Scotland.

Goals for the future:
Identifying the Scottish architects, builders, gardeners and craftsmen of the Renaissance; producing a study of Scottish towns; expanding the postgraduate research centre into Scottish architecture.

What other University department/division would you like to collaborate with?
I am already enjoyably collaborating with Town and Regional Planning and Geography. I am also working with Stirling and Edinburgh Universities on Historic Scotland-funded Burgh Surveys: the evolution and character analysis of nominated towns like Fraserburgh, Whithorn, Tain and Galashiels. Our project Dundee 1500 - 1800 involves scholars and post-docs from Dundee, Caledonian, Oxford, Cambridge and the Highlands and islands universities. It should be published later this year.

Do you have any ideas for collaborative projects that you'd like to be involved in?
Many. Particularly an examination of the distortions of Scottish culture caused by the Enlightenment glitterati who, in order to devise a new role for Scotland within Britain felt that they had to traduce the culture of pre-Union Scotland. What is interesting is how they did that, their use of language and examples, and their misuse of history. This embryonic project was to involve the disciplines of History, Philosophy and English, and the Universities of Stirling, St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

If you could choose one thing that would positively impact your research/work environment/job satisfaction, what would it be?
More time.

If you weren't in this job what would you be doing?
A consultancy on architectural commissioning and historic buildings.

Battle for the North

Professor McKean is the author of Battle for the North, an insightful book that explores why the first Tay Bridge collapsed and the complicated reality underlying the Victorian pursuit of progress.

The first Tay Bridge collapsed into the sea in 1879 only 18 months after it had opened, drowning 72 people travelling by train to Dundee. Shock reverberated through Britain, and the public demanded answers. The bridge had been hailed as a triumph of construction, and its fall shook society's confidence in the excellence of Victorian engineering.

This epic tale of engineering follows the rise and fall of the career of engineer Thomas Bouch, ostracised from the engineering community when his bridge crashed into the Tay estuary. Over four decades, a fierce and dirty railway war drove forward the construction of the two largest railway bridges in the world, symbols of a modernising Scotland.

Professor McKean offers new conclusions about why the first Tay Bridge collapsed and tells how the Forth and Tay bridges eventually became reality. He follows the railway battle for Scotland from 1845 - 95 and the people it involved: from the Victorian entrepreneurs, poets, journalists, lawyers, town councils; to the engineers, briggers, excavators and rivet boys; to the pioneering and inventive contractor William Arrol - who constructed the bridges that stand today.