The launch this week of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland's Festival of Architecture in 2016 coincided rather neatly with the publication on Monday of The Herald's list of Scotland's top 100 people of power in the land.
Therein the secretary and treasurer of the RIAS, Neil Baxter, leapt from number 73 to number 61, an adjustment likely to be more than justified by the profile the festival gives his organisation next year. A Lenzie lad long resident in the capital, Baxter would not be slow to realise the implications of a small error in our profile of him in the supplement, which referred to "next year's Festival of Architecture in Glasgow", when in fact the programme specifically aims to cover the whole of the country, as well as most of the year.
Read more: 100 years, 100 buildings
There are many reasons to admire the challenge the Festival of Architecture has set itself, but that may be the greatest of them. As an organisation dedicated to representing the current creativity of the profession, the RIAS has to ensure that the festival is forward-looking when the general public tends to lean towards a heritage approach to architecture.
The built heritage of Edinburgh, and specifically the contrast between the closes and cobbles of the Old Town and the elegant Georgian grid of the New Town on the north side of Princes Street Gardens are the year-round tourist attraction of the capital beyond the Festival and Hogmanay.
Glasgow has also been keen to promote its Victorian grandeur and Charles Rennie Mackintosh invention, even if the entertainment venues on the waterfront at the Broomielaw now represent a more contemporary expression of "Clyde-built".
Talk to any of those behind Paisley's newly-launched bid to be UK City of Culture 2021 and it will not be long before they mention that their town has the largest number of Grade A listed buildings in Scotland outside of Edinburgh.
So the Festival of Architecture's Scotstyle exhibition that will showcase the last century of design during next year has a job to do, but as a touring show that will be seen across the nation it also has a the challenge of making us think of architecture in something other than local terms.
As bidding processes like the one for City of Culture illustrate, we are now used to thinking of creativity in terms of specific locations, and there is a fraught recent history of territorial battles over architecture and design. Remember, for example, the fruitless competition in the 1990s to create Scotland's first National Gallery in Glasgow, devoted to architecture and design, with the George Square Post Office, the Old Sheriff Court and a site in Kelvingrove Park all in the running.
In the last year of the last century, Glasgow's status as UK City of Architecture and Design gave us The Lighthouse in the building Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed for this newspaper, but the director of 1999, Dejan Sudjic, also had to deal with a fair level of local suspicion about the international dimension to much of his programme, and the people he brought to the city to execute it. And it is of course Dundee that has won the title of Unesco City of Design as well as the contest to be the site of the Scottish branch of the V&A.
After so many years of Scotland's town's and cities being pitted against one another in the architecture stakes, if 2016's Festival of Architecture is a truly national celebration, the RIAS will deserve the fullest praise, and Baxter another substantial hike up The Herald's chart.
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