Reading the Land: Highland Observatories Part 1 Project 2024 Jonathan Stone Mackintosh School of Architecture | UK The landscape of the Highlands of Scotland is defined by human intervention. Far from being an untouched wilderness it has been marked over the centuries as it has been put to use and exploited.In the far north east of Lochaber lies the rounded massif of Meall Dubh, the black mountain. While a lesser hill encircled by grander neighbours, it bears a long history scarred upon its slopes, from the timeless stone cairns on its many lesser summits, to the remains of an iron fence once a rigid border on the rolling ridgeline, to the 130m tall wind turbines which march across its heather moorland.For the project, The Observatory, the intention was to create architectural vessels for accessing, appreciating and understanding the totality of the landscape of Meall Dubh and humanity’s place within it. Across three observatories, stretched across the ridgeline of the mountain, and connected by pathways tying together the tracks of the windfarm, the complex character and history of the human and natural landscape of Meall Dubh and Lochaber emerge. Jonathan Stone Tutor(s)