This PhD thesis reveals for the first time how Scotland’s post-war architecture was surreptitiously influenced by the secret push and pull of classified nuclear bunkers as demands seesawed to
accommodate shifting Cold War threats. By detailing how these influences were dually experienced across secret nuclear bunkers as well as civil architecture, my investigation evidences a new
narrative of inextricably linked relationships between two seemingly separate, yet, undeniably connected realms. While some of these far-reaching influences appear mutually beneficial for nuclear bunkers and civil architecture, others yielded more contentious fractures when both realms collided and vied over the same post-war resources, architects, engineers, contractors, and supply chains. Crucially, the resultant impact led to difficult decisions that either saw nuclear bunkers or civil projects pushed down the priority list to become delayed, significantly altered, or cancelled entirely.

My original contribution to knowledge lies in revisiting these nuclear bunkers and formally acknowledging them as a unique type of architecture (borne in response to unprecedented threats) to provoke an alternative narrative into how Scotland’s post-war architecture was influenced beyond that which is currently accepted within existing scholarship.

This new narrative extracts vital data through an historical methodology by bridging siloed and previously overlooked multidisciplinary histories, alongside using detailed archival analysis of declassified government files held in The National Archives (TNA) and the National Records of Scotland (NRS). Trade literature (principally past issues of the Architects’ Journal and Architectural Review) and Sir Robert McAlpine company records held in Glasgow University Archives have proved additionally vital in constructing a more complete narrative. A series of fieldwork visits have supported this in-depth archival review by surveying and recording selected case study bunkers from the ROTOR programme and Emergency Government Controls – spanning a timeline of 1950 to 1970.

This thesis addresses two significant gaps in existing scholarship. First, it brings nuclear bunkers into a more authoritative framing of post-war architectural history, initially overlooked by commentators at the time of construction due to classified project status and thus largely omitted from scholarship as a latent effect. Second, it re-addresses the current knowledge imbalance of Cold War nuclear bunkers due to misconceptions generated across multidisciplinary studies; namely that these bunkers are commensurate with the same levels of violence and complex histories implicit with Second World War European examples.