Ruskin Lane Consulting Autumn 2014 | Page 5

NEWSROUND

AN APPRECIATION

Professor Andy MacMillan OBE FRIAS (1928-2014)

Image © Paul Hackett

A

ndy (never Andrew) MacMillan was one of the
brightest stars both as a practising architect and as a
teacher in the architectural firmament of Scotland.
At an early age while working for the East Kilbride
Development Corporation he joined the long established firm
of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, through his friendship as a part
time student at the Glasgow School of Art with Isi Metzstein.
Isi had already caught the eye of the principal, the astute Jack
Coia, and had entered the firm as an apprentice. That was in
1954 when wartime building controls were being relaxed and
there were governmental and local authority housing
programmes in peripheral urban estates or in new towns with
a concomitant demand for churches and educational and social
buildings. All these would be supplied by a practice in which
the principal was an Italian Catholic supported by a German
Jew and a Scots Presbyterian – a mix of cultures (faith was not
to the fore) which gave Scotland its foremost experimental
practice. It was recognised with the award of the RIBA Gold
Medal in 1969 which was the first time it had come to
Scotl