Scotland on Sunday

For 25 years it has been at the mercy of vandals and allowed to descend into rack and ruin. St Peter's College, a striking Catholic seminary, was closed in 1980 - only 14 years after opening - as part of Vatican cutbacks. Since then the clean outlines of the 1960s architectural masterpiece, created by noted church designers Gillespie Kidd and Coia, have been abandoned. The seminary where Scotland's cardinal, Keith O'Brien, trained as a priest in the Argyll village of Cardross, is now a graffiti-scarred concrete shell with its interiors either destroyed or stolen. But in a move that will embarrass its owners, St Peter's is about to re-emerge into the limelight. It will be unveiled this week as topping the list of the 100 most influential buildings constructed in Scotland since the end of the Second World War. The list, to be published in Prospect magazine this month, will be revealed at the Scottish Design Show in Glasgow on Thursday.