January 21 2010

A peace initiative chaired by Scottish Enterprise, acting as a mediator between the competing parties of Sir Ian Wood and Peacock Visual Arts, has floundered after Wood refused to countenance any alternatives to a full enclosure of Union Terrace Gardens.

The conference was held in the granite city in mid December in the hope that Wood’s promised £50m could be combined with Peacock’s £9.5m of funding to represent “a win win situation for Aberdeen,” whilst ensuring the millions of pounds in public money already spent on Peacock would not be squandered by allowing both schemes to go ahead.

On the table had been moves outlined by Brisac Gonzalez architects to “sprinkle” Wood’s largesse over a wider area by merely enclosing road and railway lines through the Denburn Valley, freeing resources to invest in a series of smaller public spaces at Castlegate, Golden Square and Marischal College.

Architect Edgar Gonzalez, designer of the new Peacock Centre, said: “Aberdeen can and should evolve - without destroying its heritage. The Peacock scheme will make Union Terrace Gardens better, more accessible and safer.”

Damning the Wood backed plan Gonzalez said: “Erasing the valley is not the way forward…We believe a square of this size is too big for a city of 200,000 inhabitants” and outlined the downsides to such a move which includes a loss of topography and 80 mature trees and queried the maintenance bills for such a large structure.

Gonzalez concludes: "We ask you to ponder; is the City Square project really a vision or merely a whim?"

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