St Giles' Cathedral

Dalziel + Scullion / Sutherland Hussey Architects

LATITUDE

Latitude is a part of the Northern City Exhibition which is part of the ACCESS to Architecture project managed by The Lighthouse and supported by the Scottish Executive.

At the centre of a darkened space an optical instrument turns on a tripod in a slow 360 degree arc. As it turns it reveals images of the contrasting moments and movements in the everyday life in the city of Edinburgh. Whilst utilising contemporary technology, this mechanism recalls the older, ghost technologies that once mediated and measured our surroundings and our place in the world.
 
As this instrument makes its way around the darkened chamber it reveals details, contours, found incidents and flashes of the Edinburgh cityscape, some return the mind to parts of the city-the ecological micro worlds-which are for the most part ignored, be it where the urban is a shared shelter and nest for the animal world; or in the accretion of lichens, mosses and other vegetation we live alongside. These are set against the cultural and social ecologies of the city, the imprint, impacts and contrasting pace that human culture brings to the surface and the underbelly of the city.
 
The structure pays homage to the eruption of figures to emerge from Edinburgh who played key roles in the advancing "Age of Enlightenment" and the search to position man at the centre of the cosmos-this work proposes a counter point of reference through which to consider the position of mankind and our relationship to the earth and the elemental forces that permeate our lives.