Scotland is a small country. If you are in a room full of local experts debating a problem that needs solving, then two things are likely. Firstly, the problem likely happened because of previous decisions those same people made, or because of actions they failed to take. Secondly, the solution, and the responsibiity for making it happen, probably lies in the room.…

A new school in a village can be the most important civic building that will ever be built there. It carries the hopes not just of the designated stakeholders but of the whole community, and can change the nature of a place as somewhere that you would want to live in.

It is easy to overstate ‘placemaking’ at the expense of the…

Context is everything. But to understand the consequences of this, it is first necessary to recognise that what is generic for one expert is unique for another: it all depends on how much you know.

One patch of sea looks pretty much like another, unless you’re on a fishing boat or a North Sea oil platform: see ‘The Perfect Storm’. How we…

The purpose of chess is checkmate. Everything else – the number of pieces taken, the clarity of the strategy, the finesse of the tactics – is just the stuff you do to get to checkmate.

Of course, for some, the game also evokes beauty and fascination for its own sake. So it’s great if you can do both – but it is…