Born in Glasgow on 13 May 1945, Doug Clelland attended Eastbank Primary School until the age of eleven, completing his schooling at Hutchesons’ Grammar School. 

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In 1963, he commenced part-time architectural education at the Mackintosh School of Architecture (Glasgow School of Art). He moved to London in 1966, studying for a year at Kingston College of Art. Among smaller assignments, he submitted projects for an S-Bahn station in Leicester, a carpet factory in Kidderminster and a community condenser in Notting Hill. In 1967 he worked in Canada and the United States for various architects, including John Andrews and Louis Kahn.

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Doug completed his formal architectural education at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture, obtaining the Diploma in Architecture in 1970. Projects included the proposed eastern expansion of London onto reclaimed Thames estuary islands with connections to mainland Europe. In his final year he focused on edge development on the Isles of Grain and Sheppey, with a Ministry of New Ideas as centrepiece.

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Doug taught at the Architectural Association from 1971 to 1975, sharing units with Daniel Libeskind (Intermediate 6) and Dalibor Vesely (Diploma 1). He also pushed ideas along at the Polytechnic of Central London (University of Westminster), before fully taking on the urban architecture studio there until 1988. He has published numerous pieces on architecture, cities and the arts.

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Doug commenced private practice in 1972 with a set of small buildings in Kensington (London), Nackington (near Canterbury) and Forgandenny (Perthshire). The Weinreb Studio in Highgate (London) received an RIBA regional award. The Gartnernes Forsikring building in Høje-Taastrup, Denmark was accorded a Danish design award. He won the Allerton Bywater Millennium Community competition, and master-planned the rebuilding of parts of Norris Green in Liverpool. His most recent completed building is an extension to the Mulberry House School in London.

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Over the years he has especially enjoyed collaborations with Eric Parry, Michael Stiff, Anders Nielsen, Gavin Rae, Paul Sutton, Rod Springett, Greg Shannon, Jeremy Sturgess, Richard Jones, Andris Berzins and Mark Dudek.

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Apart from notable exceptions, relationships with clients have never proved easy.

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Doug’s involvement with Berlin commenced in 1977. Over the years he has edited a number of journals on the city (AR / AD / AT). He was involved in the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) from 1984 to 1987, being a prize winner in the Wilhelmstraße urban design competition. Following the fall of the Wall, he was a member of juries for competitions for the spatial unification of post-1989 Berlin, including the location of new government buildings on the Spreebogen. He designed buildings for Siemens (Treptow) and GSW Immobilien (Friedrichstraße). Doug was elected to the Berlin Architektenkammer in 1992.

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From 1989 to 1991, Doug lived largely in his birth city of Glasgow. He conceived and managed the anchor event Glasgow's Glasgow during the city’s visibility as 1990 European Capital of Culture.

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He returned to teaching in 1994 as Herbert Rowse Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Liverpool John Moores University, where he remained until 2010. During his tenure the school expanded four-fold. Since then he has mixed practice, teaching and writing – in recent years committing more time to travel and (as with many colleagues and friends), to a reflection on globalisation. He acted as a professor of architecture at both the Berlin University of Applied Sciences and the University of Malta. He also created the curriculum for the school of architecture at Beykent University in Istanbul – acting as visiting professor during its formative years.

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Doug served on the City of London and Westminster Society of Architects (CLAWSA) branch of the RIBA, and on the Council of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. He was a Governor of the Bramber Nursery School in West London. He has been an invigilator and reader for the RIBA on the Dissertation Medal in 1994, 1995 and 1996 – and an External Examiner in Architecture from 1998 – 2001 at the School of Architecture, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee. He acted as Chair of the Projects Committee of the Merseyside Civic Society; put together a two-day conference ‘Mind the Gap’ for the British Council in Berlin; and organised two competitions for Scottish Power. He has been a participant in the Standing Conference for Heads of Schools of Architecture (SCHOSA) and active in the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE). He is currently an emeritus professor at Liverpool John Moore’s University.

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Doug is the author of two published non-architectural books and continues writing about cities, architecture and their context in life. He divides his time between Oxfordshire, the Gers in France and Berlin. He lives solely, having been married four times, the father of three daughters and a son.

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