June 18 2024

Edinburgh is strengthening its identity as a waterfront city by building a new coastal town overlooking the Firth of Forth at Granton.

Evolving a Scandinavian-inspired masterplan from 2022 the detailed plans call for 847 net zero homes of all tenures supported by ground floor commercial units, open space and capacity for a primary school.

Sitting in the imposing shadow of the Granton Gasholder the planned community will plug into a low-carbon heat network with its streets and spaces designed to foster social interactions and active travel. Split between three distinct character areas defined by small differences in architecture and landscaping.

Eugene Mullan of Smith Scott Mullan Architects said: "Creating a unique place is key to establishing this sustainable community, and this has been considered throughout the design process by focusing on creating character areas, addressing public safety, and enabling access to local facilities, nature and well-designed landscape spaces.”

The project team includes Cruden Homes, Optimised Environments with visualisations by Float.

11 Comments

#1 Posted by Philip on 18 Jun 2024 at 11:00 AM

Is there a CAD plugin that just churns out the same old brick-faced, banal dross...and then gives you a few equally banal PR lines about placemaking and character?..

#2 Posted by D to the R on 18 Jun 2024 at 13:31 PM

What would you rather see Philip ? Ville Savoye ... Falling Water ... This 'dross' provides affordable social and mid-market rental housing for the masses ... we could go back to the tower blocks though ... hmmm

#3 Posted by Philip on 18 Jun 2024 at 14:52 PM

I'd much rather see something mildly authentic, clever even. This could be any project published on UR over the last 4 years..with a Gasholder photoshopped in. Reductive, copy and paste archi-filler. Certainly not 'unique' as quoted.

#4 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 18 Jun 2024 at 15:21 PM

Economics look a bit troubling -- £1.3bill town involving 847 homes ...

£1.5mill each -- a bit toppy even by Holyrood Giant Vampire Squid standards.

Shome mistake surely?

#5 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 18 Jun 2024 at 15:25 PM

Places have to be unique to be sustainable -- what a load of self serving / self indulgent dross.

Plus social interactions in Auld Reekie -- some hope / they only talk to people they went to school with.

Happy clappy wishful thinking more like.

#6 Posted by D to the R on 18 Jun 2024 at 16:01 PM

Phil ... like it or lump it - this is what gets consent these days. Maybe you could share a link to the authentic and clever affordable housing projects you're thinking of?

#7 Posted by town planner on 18 Jun 2024 at 18:52 PM

This needs to be higher density than 4/5 stories for this site and location. Low density sprawl is going to cover all of central Scotland at this rate!

#8 Posted by tara on 18 Jun 2024 at 19:20 PM

@phillip It's New London Venacular..,,,did you mean you wanted something related to Edinburgh?

#9 Posted by Urban Realm on 18 Jun 2024 at 20:30 PM

@4 No mansions are included. The £1.3bn figure is the cost to deliver the full masterplan. The current approval governs phase one only, a subset of that headline figure.

#10 Posted by Mark on 19 Jun 2024 at 07:44 AM

How have they managed to omit the Scottish Gas HQ building designed by Norman Foster from these images? It should be the building right in front of you on picture 3. And most of these ugly buildings in the pictures are already built. I used to live in this area but I escaped...

#11 Posted by Craigbert on 19 Jun 2024 at 10:25 AM

I look forward to cycling through this completed masterwork with my vegan compadres.

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