Graham Couper Law was born on 28 September 1923, the son of William Couper and his wife Eliza, and lived in Rhu during his early years. He was educated at Glasgow Academy, Ardvreck Preparatory and Merchiston Castle Schools. He studied for the degree of MA at King's College, Cambridge from 1940-41 and from 1947-50, his studies having been interrupted by the Second World War. During the War he served with the Royal Engineers. He was awarded a College Exhibition and distinction in his thesis and was admitted ARIBA in 1951. He worked as an assistant with Adams Holden & Pearson in London and then moved to Glasgow to the practice of Burnet & Boston. He was with the Weir Housing Corporation in Coatbridge for a spell before joining Robert Matthew's newly established private practice in Edinburgh in November 1954. One of his first projects there was Kincardine Power Station.
Earlier the same year, in April, another young architect, James Duncan Dunbar-Nasmith, had joined the practice. Dunbar-Nasmith was born on 15 March 1927 in the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, where his father, Admiral Sir Martin Dunbar-Nasmith, was Captain. His mother came from Morayshire, and the family retained a home there, while moving every two years according to his father’s postings which included London and Sri Lanka. His elder brother, David Arthur Dunbar-Nasmith, would follow their father into the Navy. Educated entirely in England, James Dunbar-Nasmith attended Winchester College. On leaving school he served in the army for three years before going up to Cambridge to study architecture. It was there that he first met Law. Having graduated BA, he went on to study for two years at the School of Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art. After passing the qualifying exam, he sought to stay in Edinburgh in order to be near his aging parents, who had by then settled back in Morayshire. He worked for six months in the office of Leslie Grahame Thomson, before he was able to secure a position in Matthew’s burgeoning firm.
The young architects developed strong friendships and Dunbar-Nasmith recalls them and their colleagues Tom Spaven, Margaret Little and Margaret Brown (later Richards) thinking, in youthful fashion, that they were ‘going to create a new world through architecture and change people’s lives’ – notions which he would later dismiss as ‘rubbish’.
Dunbar-Nasmith was admitted ARIBA in 1957, and he and Law left the Matthew firm (by then Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Partners – RMJM) to go into partnership on 1 April that year, with an office at 54 Frederick Street, Edinburgh. Their first job in independent practice, begun in the evenings while they were working out their notice period with Matthew, was a pair of farm cottages at Cublington in Buckinghamshire for Dunbar-Nasmith’s schoolfriend Leopold David de Rothschild (‘Leo’), who would go on to commission a number of other buildings from the firm. Law’s previous experience working for the Weir Housing Corporation was instrumental in securing for the new partnership a second project – a contract for 45 houses on the Ochlochy estate in Dunblane. They were given a completely free hand in the design, for which Law was principally responsible. Dunbar-Nasmith recalls that the publicity for this speculative project of elegant single-storey, two-storey and terraced houses ‘made our name’. Further commissions followed, including various alterations to country houses; a new country house in Hampshire for Leo de Rothschild, on seeing which the Queen would later decide to commission the practice to build cottages on the Balmoral Estate; and a series of schools in a patent system of construction. The practice expanded over the years and a branch office was opened in Forres in 1975.
It is for its theatre projects that the practice is perhaps best known. It first altered the original Pitlochry Theatre (previously only a tent), and then went on to design the new Eden Court Theatre in Inverness in the mid-1970s, in preparation for which Nasmith toured German opera houses and Law toured those in America and Finland. This was followed by the new Pitlochry Festival Theatre at the end of the decade. Both designs reintroduced the idea of operatic excitement to the auditorium and were important landmarks in post-war theatre design.
By that time, most of the architectural work (including all the designs for the theatres) was being carried out by Law, as Dunbar-Nasmith had become increasingly involved with professional bodies and in education. He taught at the Edinburgh College of Art from around 1960, and subsequently joined the RIAS Education Committee, the RIBA Board of Education (of which he was Chairman), the RIBA Visiting Boards, the Commonwealth Board of Architecture Education, the Commonwealth Visiting Boards and the Ancient Monuments Board (which he chaired for a year). He was appointed Chairman of the Joint Building Group in Scotland in 1966, was head of the Edinburgh Architectural Association in the 1960s, and was involved in the Edinburgh New Town survey, as well as serving for some time on the Royal Commission and as a trustee of the Theatres Trust. In 1979 he was appointed Professor of Edinburgh University and Head of the Department of Architecture at Heriot-Watt College, following in the footsteps of Robert Matthew. Later, in 1995, he would become Chairman of the Scottish Civic Trust.
Law also took an active interest in matters relating to the profession and served on the Council of the Edinburgh Architectural Association, the RIAS Council and the ARCUK Council and on its professional purposes committee. He undertook some tutorial work at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 1960s, and was elected FRIAS in 1963. From 1980 he was an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, to which he was a regular contributor of both painting and architecture and from 1913 an Academician. He was the first chairman from 1977 to 1981 of an organisation dedicated to providing studio accommodation for artists and craftsmen, Workshops and Artists' Studio Provision (WASPS).
In addition to a large portion of the practice’s architectural work, Law was responsible for the design of a number of exhibitions for the Edinburgh Festival, some of which were carried out in association with Richard Buckle. Among others were the Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth, ‘Indian Art and Dance’, and ‘Treasures from Scottish Country Houses’ exhibitions. He was very clear-minded and applied this to any problems that arose during a job and ensured that the first concept of a design was not lost until the building was completed. As a person Law was very modest despite his prodigious talents, and hated publicity. He delighted in the company of close friends and his large family, to whom he was devoted.
The practice first became involved in conservation architecture through a commission to alter a castle near Lake Menteith, for which they secured a Historic Buildings Council grant. It was to develop a strong reputation for work in this field.
Dunbar-Nasmith cites the choice of materials as a key consideration in his work, particularly from the perspective of the way people come into contact with the fabric of buildings. ‘I cannot see concrete as a suitable material to lean against,’ he confesses; and he pays particular attention to the creation of elements such as door handles and balustrades that are ‘nice to feel’, stating: ‘The first job of a building is to give pleasure; unless people love their buildings, they won’t look after them.’ On the subject of style, despite the heady atmosphere of modernism that infused his early years, in later life he was of the opinion that ‘there’s just good architecture and bad architecture. Style is completely irrelevant.’
Dunbar-Nasmith was made a CBE in 1976. In 1983, the practice made moves to expand into Germany by acquiring a practice in Wiesbaden; this was to be closed after five or six years. Law retired in 1984 and Dunbar-Nasmith, who had shared a partners' desk with him since the beginning, continued the practice.
Law died from cancer on 13 September 1996, survived by his wife Isobel Evelyn Alexander Drysdale and their four children and ten grandchildren.
Dunbar-Nasmith was knighted in 1996. He retired c.2001.
The practice remained at 16 Dublin Street, having moved there c.1967, and did not move again until early 2009.