Robert Gordon University - Garthdee campus Sutherland had trained as an architect at the Aberdeen School of Architecture, which was part of Gray's School of Art which in turn was part of Robert Gordon's Technical College, a predecessor of the Robert Gordon University. He qualified with a diploma in architecture in 1923 and became a successful businessman, which was his main interest although he also owned an architecture practice. He moved into Garthdee House with his wife Georgina Scott Sutherland, but they found it too big for two people. Through personal and business contacts with the Aberdeen School of Architecture, Scott Sutherland knew that the school
Robert Gordon University - Garthdee campus time of Scott Sutherland's land donation, the site consisted mainly of open fields, often let out to tenant farmers, and the houses that characterise Garthdee as a suburb today had not yet been built. After extending Garthdee House (see below), the School of Architecture held its first classes there in 1957. Between 1966 and 2013, all other departments of the college (later to become Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology and then the Robert Gordon University) moved to Garthdee. The eastern part of the site was not part of Scott Sutherland's Garthdee estate, although it too had historically been part of