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I am a Wolfson Foundation-funded PhD Researcher in Scottish literature. My interests lie within the intersections of literature, architecture and the individual. My aim is to explore the means by which twentieth and twenty-first century Scottish authors use the built environment to address the question of building of the nation, both figuratively in terms of its political and social structure, and also literally, concerning the physical structures that house the powers of the state.
I am interested in the ways in which architecture, power and the individual intersect in the works of contemporary Scottish authors, in relation to the condition of Scotland from the 1980s to present. Mainly, I focus on Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, Iain Banks’ The Bridge and Ali Smith’s Hotel World, as well as her current tetralogy: Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer; however, I have discovered many relevant points in their other works as well. These novels feature structures that are not only there in the physical sense but they also embody the power structures that affect the characters, and these buildings are such a key aspect of the narrative that they can actually be understood as characters rather than a setting. From the Institute in Gray’s Lanark to the detention centre for illegal immigrants in Ali Smith’s latest book Spring, we can trace how the ideas with which one of the most prominent Scottish authors concerned themselves developed over the last 40 years of significant political and social changes, through use of the illustration of the individual’s relationship with architecture and the institutions which it houses.