ABSTRACT
Thomson complained in 1871 in a lecture which addressed the central architec-
tural problem of the nineteenth century, How is it that there is no modern style of
architecture? ‘The present age, so rich in achievement in other departments, is
seen making the most ridiculous efforts to insinuate its overgrown person back-
wards into empty shells of dead ages, which lie scattered about on the old tide
marks of civilisation, rather than secrete a shell for itself according to the ordi-
nary course of nature.’ Thomson’s presidential address to the Glasgow Institute of Architects
has often been selectively quoted, particularly by those anxious to present its author as a sort of proto-modern, who rejected the tyranny of historical precedent and groped towards a non-historical functional architecture through the encircling fog of eclecticism. That, of course, is to fall into the trap of interpreting the past by the preoccupations of the present, for while Thomson (181775) was undoubtedly a most original and thoughtful designer, anxious to exploit the possibilities of new materials like cast iron and plate glass, he was far from being a pioneer of the modern movement. However ‘modern’ his buildings may seem in their abstraction and innovation, Thomson’s visual imagination was firmly rooted in antiquity.
