This paper examines hydro-electric power schemes in the Scottish Highlands after World War Two. While this initiative was seen by modernising central planners as an urgent corrective to the long standing decline of this ‘semi-derelict region’ there was equal pressure to maintain the artificial wilderness of the Highlands as a ‘cultural museum’, as a potent focus for various local and national communities of interest.
This paper will examine the design elements, siting and landscape architecture of such specific hydro projects as the Cruachan and Glen Affric schemes as monumental elegiac expressions of the ‘Celtic’ culture being debated in the Highland region in the period of post-War reconstruction, making reference to the pre-existing historical processes of making and unmaking the Highland landscape as a wilderness area. We consider the testimonies of many voices seeking to shape this ‘real imagined community’, where we can see an imbrication of design planning, mediation and installation during these significant engineering interventions into natural, human and geomorphological landscapes. The sustainability of hydro electric power schemes, at first glance so clean in comparison to fossil fuel power sources, nevertheless have serious environmental implications. The Highland landscape was particularly charged with significance as a wild ‘natural’ region; after World War Two it was increasingly also considered as a common ‘amenity’ subject to public consultation during planning proposals. Thus in the case of the Highland schemes discussed in this paper we see that most argument was couched in terms of stemming human population decline, social justice, and access to the land. Researchers in other areas of history and cultural theory have already opened up new approaches to the examination of the ‘material powers’ at work in water flows across natural/ designed environments; this paper will consider how these insights can inform and expand current debates within design history.