Slow Boat to China

Garthdee in Aberdeen has been home to the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture for over 50 years. It's just down the road from this block of 1960's flats.
I suspect that Scott would have been nearing the twilight of his life when this was built and I wonder what he made of it all. He had after all been instrumental in the building of Kincorth, just up the road which in many ways has better built houses albeit from an earlier era.
He was born in Torry, Aberdeen, the son of Robert William Sutherland, fisherman in a steam trawler and Annie Hutchinson Scott, on 13 January 1899. Educated at the School of Architecture, Robert Gordon's College he became a member of the Council of the Aberdeen Society of Architects. His RIBA nomination papers state that prior to that date he had been responsible for 22 schools for the County Education Authority (District 5), to which he had been appointed architect in 1927, as well as some 250 private houses. The year before his admittance as FRIBA, Sutherland had married Edith Iris Webber.
Early in life Sutherland lost a leg due seemingly to a fall, but overcame the disability to become a good tennis player, swimmer, cricketer and fisherman and preferred a motorcycle to a car. He was also an expert bridge player and a leading member of the Aberdeen Magical Society.
Sutherland specialised in cinema and house design and in the early 1930s lived at Beechgrove House of Beechgrove Garden fame, which he later sold to the BBC. He then bought Garthdee House with the long-term intention of giving it to the School of Architecture at Gray's.
Sutherland was elected progressive councillor for Ruthrieston in 1934 and was appointed housing convener. He was responsible for the competition for Kincorth Housing Scheme in 1936, won by R Gardner Medwin, and encouraged the Viennese design of the Council housing at Rosemount Square begun in 1938. By the end of his first year as Housing Convenor he had increased the number of council houses being built from 250 to 800 per year. By 1946 a quarter of Aberdeen's population had been re-housed with 7,000 slum houses demolished and 8,500 new houses built.
In 1941 he divorced from his wife Iris, having separated earlier. In 1948, literally on a slow boat to China, he met Georgina Buchanan, secretary to the Governor of Hong Kong and they married in 1950. About this time Sutherland carried out his intention of giving Garthdee to the School of Architecture with a substantial endowment. It opened in 1956 and took his name.
I doubt if the folk who live in this block of flats have ever heard of the man and I doubt if the architect who designed the place lives in a house like this.