sir john james burnet·1857 - 1938

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John James Burnet was born in Glasgow in 1857, son of the distinguished Scots architect John Burnet (1814-1901). John James studied architecture and engineering at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He travelled widely in France and Italy before returning to Glasgow. In 1882 father and son established the practice of John Burnet & Son. In 1886 it became Burnet, Son & Campbell and subsequently the Sir John Burnet, Tait and Lorne partnership.

“Arriving on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Spring of 1919, in concert with the Australian ANZAC veteran Colonel Cyril Hughes, he set to work designing the cemeteries”

Burnet was responsible for the design of a substantial number of well-known Edwardian Glasgow buildings including: the Athenaeum; the Royal Institute of Fine Arts (later Pettigrew & Stephens); the Clyde Navigation Trust Buildings; the Glasgow Savings Bank; the extensions to Merchants' House; Barony Church; the Cenotaph; Charing Cross Mansions; Atlantic Chambers; the Alhambra Theatre and the Elder Park Library at Govan.

The University of Glasgow has some outstanding examples of his work, including its University Chapel, the James Watt Engineering Building, the George Service House and the Thomson Building. In 1882 he designed the Drumsheugh Baths in Edinburgh in the Saracenic style. He rebuilt it again after it burned down in 1892. In Edinburgh he designed Burtons Department Store, Scotland's first steel framed building; this fine corner building is still in use, but now subdivided.

In the period 1907-14 Burnet carried out a substantial amount of building work at Sir Robert Smirke's British Museum at Bloomsbury in London. He designed the King Edward VII Galleries, fronting Montague Place which were intended as the first phase of an expansion of the Museum which would replace all the surrounding properties, the freeholds of which had been purchased from the Bedford Estates in 1894-5. The foundation stone was laid by King Edward VII in 1907 and the building was opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. Protection orders on surrounding buildings meant that the scheme that Burnet originally envisaged could never be completed.

In 1918 Burnet was appointed architect for the Imperial War Graves Commission. Arriving on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Spring of 1919, in concert with the Australian ANZAC veteran Colonel Cyril Hughes, he set to work designing the cemeteries. ‘The people of the district were impoverished, and Burnet feared that they might be tempted to carry off any bronze or stone work for domestic purposes. This led him to recommend that the cemetery walls be built at least eight feet high and that ‘headstone blocks', very similar to those used in Macedonia, with sloping faces rather like reading-desks be used instead of headstones.'

Burnet designed the Helles Memorial which was completed in 1924. The memorial serves the dual function of Commonwealth battle memorial for the Gallipoli campaign and also as a place of commemoration for many of those Commonwealth servicemen who died on the Peninsula and have no known grave. The British and Indian forces named on the memorial died in operations throughout the peninsula and the Australians at Helles. There are also panels for those who died or were buried at sea in Gallipoli waters. The memorial bears more than 21,000 names of the fallen. In 1920 Burnet threw his considerable prestige behind the Commission's ultimately successful struggle in Parliament.

Sir John succeeded Sir Rowand Anderson as second President of the Institute of Scottish Architects. In that role he inaugurated a collection of busts of celebrated Scottish architects, and the series of portraits of Presidents. In 1923 he designed the Zoology Building at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow.

In 1931 the Sir John Burnet, Tait and Lorne partnership completed the Royal Masonic Hospital (now the Stamford Hospital) at Ravenscourt Park in London.

Sir John died in 1938 and the Sir John Burnet Memorial Award Prize is awarded annually in his memory by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.