Robert Matthew

Sir Robert Hogg Matthew OBE FRIBA FRSE (12 December 1906 – 2 June 1975) was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism.

[2] From 1920 the family lived at 43 Minto Street[1] ironically the epitome of Georgian classicism rather than modern architecture.

However he spent the time designing kits for prefabricated houses which conformed to the recommendations of the 1944 UK government report Planning our New Homes.

In the early 1960s Matthew was involved in the replacement of overcrowded, insanitary tenement housing in Hutchesontown, Glasgow with high rise tower blocks.

Elsewhere Matthew/RMJM were both involved in the design for various academic campuses – one of his earliest commissions was the Tower Building for the University of Dundee in 1961 – at the time the tallest structure in the city.

RMJM were also closely involved with the Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow, developing its campus masterplan in the early 1960s when it received its Royal Charter to become the University of Strathclyde, designing the Colville Building in tandem with Frank Fielden's celebrated Architecture School in 1966.

Both display the same aesthetic concerns as Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore all of whom he was able to count among his friends and colleagues.

The Matthew home at 43 Minto Street, Edinburgh
Tower Building, University of Dundee (1961)
Colville Building, University of Strathclyde (1967)