Isi Israel Metzstein was born in the Mitte district of Berlin in 1928,[3] one of five children.[1] His parents, Efraim and Rachel Metzstein, were Polish Jews who had moved to Germany in 1920. Isi had an older sister, Lee, an older brother, Josef, a twin sister, Jenny, and a younger brother, Leo,[3] In 1933, Isi's father, Efraim, died leaving his mother to raise the five children on her own.
In November 1938, after Kristallnacht had seen Isi's school set on fire, his mother saw to it that her children were kept safe by sending Isi and his two youngest siblings to Britain on the Kindertransport,.[3] Isi left Berlin alone a few days before his 11th birthday in July 1939. With his brothers and sisters scattered around the UK, Isi was taken in by a family in Hardgate, Clydebank[2] before they could all be reunited once more, eventually settling in Glasgow.[3]
After leaving Hyndland School in 1945, Metzstein's professional career as an architect began with taking evening classes in architecture at the Glasgow School of Art[2] and an apprenticeship under Jack Coia[2] at Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. Whilst at the Glasgow School of Art, Metzstein met Andy MacMillan and the two became friends, often going for drinks together in the Kings Arms on Elmbank Street.[3]
When MacMillan joined the firm in 1954, the pair designed many churches, colleges and schools together in the Modernist style.[2]
In 1969, Metzstein began teaching at the Glasgow School of Art,[3] and became Professor of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh in 1984 before returning to teach in Glasgow in 1991.[3]
Writing of Isi Metzstein's death for Architectural Review, Clare Wright noted that:
"With a change of ethos post war, Coia ceded much of the design control to the young Isi and Andy. An early project for St Paul’s Church in Glenrothes (1957) is a modest building of simple form and materials, yet exhibits an extraordinary quality of light and monumental presence which owed much to Le Corbusier. The sixteen churches that followed formed a distinctive body of work. Combining functional requirements with resonant symbolism, they were the perfect vehicle for developing an architectural philosophy, which reached its most mature expression in the design for St Peter’s Seminary at Cardross."[4]
