The Scotsman

The cream of Scotland's architects gathered to celebrate the best of the country's design renaissance yesterday. At a ceremony at Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel, the Maggie's Cancer Care Centre in Inverness - with its curving copper walls and soft-wood interiors - was hailed as Scotland's best building of 2006. But they warned that housebuilders and government contractors needed to make better use of the country's architectural talent, complaining of "potato stamp" mass-produced homes, "dreary and unimaginative", and poorly-constructed public projects. Douglas Read, the president of the Royal Incorporation of Scottish Architects, said last night's Andrew Doolan Awards showed Scottish architects rank with the best in the world. But "volume builders" must start using them, he said. "Very little of volume building housing ever sees an architect's hand.