The ruin of St Peter's College has sat on a wooded hilltop above the village of Cardross for more than three decades. Over that time, with altars crumbling, graffiti snaking across its walls and nature reclaiming its concrete, it has gained a mythical, cult-like status among architects, preservationists and artists. St Peter's only fulfilled its original role as a seminary for 14 years, from 1966 to 1979. As its uncompromising design gave way to prolonged construction and problematic upkeep, the Catholic Church reassessed the role of seminaries, resolving to embed trainee priests not in seclusion, but in communities. Although briefly repurposed as a drug rehabilitation centre, the building was soon abandoned to decay and vandalism. Ever since, people have argued and puzzled over the future and importance of St Peter's. It has been called both Scotland's best and worst twentieth century building. In 1992, it was listed category A. One of its architects suggested the idea of `everything being stripped away except the concrete itself - a purely romantic conception of the building as beautiful ruin'. And now in 2016, St Peter's is renewed as a cultural space through the work of the arts organisation NVA. In this landmark book, Diane Watters looks at the history of a structure that emerged out of an innovative phase of post-war Catholic church building. She traces the story of an architectural failure which morphed into a tragic modernist myth: unappreciated architects betrayed by an unloving client, and abandoned by an uncaring society. This is a historian's account of the real story of St Peter's College: an exploration of how one of Scotland's most singular buildings became one its most troubled - and most celebrated.

In 2000, the NVA arts organisation created The Path: a light and sound event that attracted 5,000 people and stunned audiences. The Path was a night-time walk through Perthshire's Glen Lyon where music, light and international performances created an intense sense of pilgrimage that aimed to enhance the participants' sense of the power of the natural landscape and rediscover what we may have forgotten about the world around us. Now this unforgettable event is to be taken to one of Europe's most hauntingly beautiful landscapes - the high cliffs of Coire Faion and The Storr on Skye. Around midnight, groups, equipped with head torches and walking sticks, will be guided through this inspiring landscape as the words of Skye's legendary poet Sorley MacLean echo down from the mountain. This book of essays and photographs from the storr event will capture what promises to be one of the greatest single site-specific environmental artworks ever to be staged in Britain.