This is a conversation with Margaret Stewart, in which we discuss her recent documentary film, Loudoun, and the ways in which filmmaking shapes her broader work in architectural history. The conversation was recorded on the 7th of January 2021. 

MARGARET STEWART is an architectural historian and a Lecturer in Architectural History at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the University of Edinburgh. Her specialism is 18th century Scottish landscape and architectural history. In 1995, Stewart began lecturing at Edinburgh College of Art, where she later curated the historic plaster cast collection. Before that, she was a curator of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Collection at the University of Glasgow. Among her publications is the book The Architectural, Landscape and Constitutional Plans of the Earl of Mar, 1700–32, published by Four Courts Press in 2016. More recently, Margaret is exploring film as a medium for communicating architectural and landscape history. In 2019, she produced the experimental documentary film Loudoun, which is about the origins of landscape design in Scotland around 1700. We invited Stewart to this conversation to hear more about how she uses film as a non-text based way of sharing architectural and landscape architectural history to wider audiences. 

Interview Bibliography by Margaret Stewart

Blunt, Anthony. Nicolas Poussin. London: Pallas Athene, 1990.

Glendinning, Miles, Ranald MacInnes, and Aonghus MacKechnie. A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996.

Stewart, Margaret (Producer). 2019. Loudoun: A Film About Landscape Design in Scotland Around 1700, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Film. Accessed May 27, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE2HiU2WxaQ 

Stewart, Margaret (Producer). 2017. In Alloa's Gardens. The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. Film animation.