Prospect

Last month, the RIAS council made the decision not to move from Rutland Square, Edinburgh. Alan Dunlop feels the incorporation needs to modernise. Fifteen Rutland Square is a beautiful, listed Georgian townhouse, gifted to the RIAS by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. It is also damp and cramped with inadequate office provision and poor exhibition space. It is inaccessible to disabled people and dangerous, with limited fire escape routes from the top floors. As the headquarters of an organisation representing architects, it anchors us firmly in the past. Council members who voted against moving did so in a co-ordinated attempt to maintain the status quo, taking the advocates of a move by surprise. After ten years of working groups and much deliberation, how could such a stalemate arise? To some, the townhouse represents everything that the RIAS stands for: it has a faded grandeur, it is listed and it is in Edinburgh. It has status. To others, it is no longer fit for purpose and the decision not to move reflective of an organisation highly resistant to change.