Sliced toast.

The Adam brothers came down to London to make their fortune, and so did a lot of writers and engineers and politicians--and such later architects as Charles Rennie Mackintosh. A lot of good it did him. Despite the regular grumbles of one contemporary Edinburgh architect (with an Irish name, Richard Murphy, who actually hails from Cheshire), Scots architects do get quite a lot of work in their home country--and do it rather well. We in the fleshpots of the wicked South might not have been much aware of all this had it not been for architect Adrian Welch who runs two major websites: www.edinburgharchitecture.co.uk and www.glasgowarchitecture.co.uk. The marginally better (and elder) of the two is Edinburgh and it's very good indeed.

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The index page is 14 thumbnails long and covers such things as maps, tours, news, interiors, dining, unbuilt design, links and a search page. No, since you were going to ask, there's no Callicrates or Ictinus which is just as well since this is about contemporary Edinburgh architecture and not the old stuff.

There are a few slow loading passages and a few rough edges in terms of spelling and writing, but Welch is an architect--not a hack. I don't want to get too carried away about sites based in the land of my great grandfathers but this is the work of one bloke with a bit of financial support from far too few Scots practices and some sponsorship. He updates it daily, fills even the louche Southern web browser with wild admiration and does far more for the idea of architecture in Scotland than the panjandrums of the old Corporation of Scottish Whatsits could ever imagine possible. Extraordinary, especially when he also runs a similar website for Glasgow architecture.

Soaring on his eagle-like electronic wings, Sutherland Lyall surveys the wonderful web.