Background by Charles Rattray
Cameronwebster's Glasgow studio is a pleasant place to be. Millie, the resident spaniel, sleeps contentedly under a generously sized table. Around her, the usual paraphernalia of flat screens and trilling telephones take their places in a lofty room arranged around a pool of natural light in the form of a courtyard. This room - or, more accurately, volume - is so full of daylight and long views that it is a surprise to discover that its site was previously a tenement backland and that much of it remains a basement. These rather dreary things are now recalled only by the sensuously earthy tiles in the cloakrooms and one's arrival down a staircase (one that seems sculpted out of oak); remarkably, and from unpromising circumstances, Cameronwebster have conjured up a series of spaces where life and work can be enjoyed in what seems a special relationship to the changing sun and the sky.
As is always the case, the seeming inevitability of the spatial organisation, the abundant daylight and the effortless sense of style that pervades this place, as well as all the other examples of their work, are not easily achieved. One might mention three aspects.
First of all, Cameronwebster always work to reach a conceptual clarity that transcends fashion and the irrational motifs of rather too much recent architecture. The scale of this endeavour ranges from the very small - such as the design of products like a bedside chair - to the very big - their urban design proposals for the 21st Century Green in Pollokshields. Then their freedom to express this clarity exists only because they have a complete and practical understanding of the building process. Craft meets art. Robin Webster is the son of a stained glass artist; Miranda Webster has experience in the practical management of very large and complex buildings, such as the BBC at White City; Stuart Cameron trained as a joiner in his father's building firm before reading architecture. Finally it is clear that they have a particular sensitivity to the communicative power of materials - in their assembly, juxtapositions and response to lighting. At Lindow House, for example, the slate, zinc and glass are detailed with loving precision around a warm timber core.
These architects are disciplined and rigorous, then, but they have a sense of the romantic. They also share the academic's wish to take a step back from the details of a brief and consider the ultimate purpose of an architectural design - to benefit all.
With Cameronwebster we are in safe hands: their work is rooted in both research and knowledge, they share the best of experience and they enjoy the noteworthy admiration of distinguished peers. Perhaps most important of all, they imbue their architecture with a considerable joie de vivre. Those who commission them will get more than they bargained for; they will get something rather wonderful.
Charles Rattray
Charles Rattray is an architect. He teaches at the University of Dundee and is Associate Editor of Architectural Research Quarterly and writes extensively for the architectural press. His most recent publication is Rationalist Traces (John Wiley, 2007)