Despite many financial difficulties, Glasgow's Charles Rennie Mackintosh began to design exciting new buildings, motivated by the desire for complete organic unity of structure and decoration. Associated with the Art Nouveau school and their push for change after the conservatism of the previous century, he produced some buildings of excellent quality and form. The Glasgow School of Art is the archetypal Mackintosh work, fusing the curvilinear shapes of Art Nouveau with the crow-stepped gables and conical roofs of the Scots Baronial tradition. The interior effectively combines practicality with decorative beauty, and the library in particular promotes his forward-thinking style as it makes use of a strong vertical motif for its columns, lighting and furnishing. Outside bustling Glasgow at Hill House in Helensburgh, Mackintosh created a domestic building in 1902 that unites the turrets and chimney stack of the Baronial tradition with a modern interior. In the drawing room he creates two 'zones', the wide bay window overlooking the Firth, for summer, and a cosy fireplace with a bookcase as a backdrop for winter evenings.

World War I brought a dramatic shift in scientific and artistic sensibilities; with the old ways undermined, people looked more and more to the future. This new atmosphere was represented in the Art Deco style, celebrating speed and technology. Typical features include modern, flat roofs, soaring geometric motifs and the use of reinforced concrete, which allowed semicircular glazed bays to project out from the building. However, due to financial constraints, few buildings were actually being erected; some gems that were include Glasgow's Baird Hall of Residence in Sauchiehall Street, built in 1938. The architect W. Beresford Inglis used two soaring projecting towers with bay windows to give a dynamic prominence to the general bulk of the building. In contrast, the large, brick-covered planes of the Glasgow Film Theatre, constructed one year later and designed by James McKissack, enhance the squat flat-roofed building. The Maybury, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is a typical 'roadhouse' built to cater for the new car-bound tourist, who could gaze up into the regularly spaced windows of the tower, designed to emulate the radiator of a huge limousine.

Despite the innovative ideas for town planning after World War I and the great rehousing plans set in motion after World War II, few public or private buildings of note were produced. Instead, vast suburban sprawls were constructed in the most economical manner, resulting in a bland architectural character. More recently, the development of housing associations has allowed residents to have some influence over their living space, and tower blocks have been replaced with small brick buildings laid out in crescents and tree-lined streets. In the public realm, the possibilities of modern technology continued to be explored, for example at the Exhibition Plant Houses at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, built in 1967. Here, a glass skin is held in place by an outside structure of steel and iron to provide the maximum use of interior space. The manipulation of glass to enhance space is also apparent at the Burrell Collection in Pollok Park, Glasgow, built in 1983 to house the great collection of Sir William Burrell. The architect Barry Gasson effectively fused nature and art, employing large panes of glass to take advantage of the surrounding woodland light, while the geometric use of red sandstone contrasts well with the wildness of the parkland.