Isi Metzstein

ISI Metzstein, who has died aged 83 of renal failure, fled Berlin as an 11-year-old during Hitler's persecution of Jews in 1939, found his way alone to Glasgow and became one of Scotland's greatest architects.

Together with his creative partner Andy MacMillan, he became renowned for his modernist churches and public buildings, many of them in or around Glasgow. These included Our Lady of Good Counsel in Dennistoun, St Bride's in East Kilbride, St Paul's in Glenrothes, St Patrick's in Kilsyth, the now largely demolished St Andrew's College in Bearsden and what was then the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) building at 85 Buchanan Street, subsequently a bank and upmarket clothing store.

Further south, Mr Metzstein and Mr MacMillan designed the red-brick Robinson College, the newest college of Cambridge University, the library at Wadham College, Oxford, and the halls of residence at the University of Hull.

Perhaps most famously, at the creative helm of the old Gillespie, Kidd and Coia firm of architects, Mr Metzstein and Mr MacMillan designed St Peter's Seminary in Cardross.

In stark contrast to the old Church of Scotland building nearby, St Peter's was built in 1966 and won worldwide acclaim, though also some criticism from conservative church folk for its extreme modernism.

As things turned out, the 105-person seminary failed as a going concern, was shut down in 1980, served for a while as a drugs rehabilitation centre and is now abandoned, vandalised and dilapidated. The arts charity NVA, based in Glasgow's North Claremont Street, hope to restore it as a site for artistic education, performances and exhibitions.

In addition to being a hands-on designer, Mr Metzstein also became one of Scotland's leading educators in his field, serving as a professor at Glasgow School of Art, where many alumni credit him with igniting their careers.

Isi Israel Metzstein was born in the Mitte district of Berlin, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, to central European Jewish parents who had moved from Poland earlier in the 1920s to seek a better life. They had no inkling of what lay ahead under Hitler. He was one of five children, including his twin sister Jenny, brought up by their mother after her husband died in hospital during a routine operation in 1933.

With Hitler's rise, anti-semitism surged. "It wasn't necessary for a German to be a member of the Nazi party to go up to a Jew and pull his beard," Mr Metzstein recalled. "They just did it. It was like kicking a dog. They did it as a kind of hobby."

Things reached their pre-Holocaust peak on the infamous Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass) on November 9, 1938, when thousands of German synagogues, Jewish businesses, homes and schools were ransacked or burnt down and more than 90 Jews were murdered. The spectre of the coming Holocaust loomed.

After Britain agreed to accept a quota of Jewish children up to the age of 17, young Isi's mother decided to send him and his siblings to the UK as part of the Kindertransport (Child Transport) scheme which went on through 1939 until war broke out in September. Until then, it was assumed the children would move on elsewhere, perhaps to Palestine, but in the end most stayed in Britain. Sensing the upcoming war, Mrs Metzstein decided to split the children up for their own safety.

Young Isi, by then 11, was delighted to be sent to Scotland, even on his own. He boarded the SS George Washington at Hamburg and headed for the English coast. "Once we had got over the immediate trauma of separation, we started enjoying ourselves," he recalled. "Two hundred miles and 40 or 50 children travelling as ordinary passengers. We ran wild, screaming through the corridors for three days."

His next adventure was the sleeper from Euston – his first long-distance train ride – to Glasgow, which would become his home and workplace for the rest of his life. He first stayed with a family in Clydebank, later in a Jewish hostel, until he was reunited with his mother and siblings.

As the war went on, reports of concentration camps and the Holocaust filtered slowly through, causing massive trauma among most of the Kindertransport children in Britain whose parents were still in Germany.

Most never saw their families again and Mr Metzstein knew he was one of the lucky ones. He would marry Danielle Kahn, also of central European Jewish parentage and born in the south of France during the Nazi occupation, and have three children, all born in Glasgow.

He once said: "People ask, 'Would you ever go back to Berlin?' I never 'go back.' I visit. Only when I am going back to Glasgow am I coming home, because I am confirmed Glaswegian – all my life, effectively."

He died at his home in Glasgow. He is survived by his wife Danielle, children Mark, Saul and Ruth and grandson Eli, as well as his twin sister Jenny and his brother Leo.