ABSTRACT
Any city’s architecture has the two fundamental aspects of what is public and what is private (Cornell 1997). The clustered houses of our ancestors came together around what became courtyards in the earliest towns of the Mediterranean where the type survives still and is not uncommon. Clusters of houses are evident also in north-east Scotland, and in Aberdeen their growth into a city has given it a somewhat similar organic character, but instead of revolving around a courtyard for private life the kitchen is the heart of household and links to street and place by way of the door outside or to common stairs. In Aberdeen in the urban realm there is much evidence of the organic (that is curved shapes and ways seeming to conform to habit and ease) always, apparently, tempered by concerns for convenience but expressed in orthogonal arrangement. A similar play and contrast can be observed in the design of the habitations of the town (de Mezieres 1992).
