November 12 2010

Hey-ho, what a week and a half it’s been in the usually less than dizzying world of Scottish architecture. Often things trundle along for weeks without much going on then – wham – umpteen things happen at once. These past ten days or so have been rather exceptional though, so lets get down and dirty with those parts of the news that are fit to print.

Tay me kengo loo down
I previously wrote about Guggenheim-on-Tay and the spurious belief that such projects on their own can deliver regeneration success. In doing so I mentioned Terry Farrell’s ‘the Deep’ in Hull and this proved to be an example too far for one Wrap reader who is either from Hull, has worked for Sir Tel or is in fact the man himself, because a more strenuous defence of its regeneration credentials could not have been made of the project. Interestingly, the riposte to my comments didn’t manage to connect any architectural merits the building might or might not have to the apparent Nirvana that has emerged on the Wash as a result of its construction. I repeat my question, therefore, i.e. who’s actually gone out of their way to visit ‘the Deep’, since tourism expansion is one of the key points made in favour of such object making?

One thing I can say in partial answer to my own question is that the statement made by Graeme Hutton, Dean at Duncan of Jordanstone School of Architecture in the Jute City and one of the eight-strong judging panel for the recent competition to design a northern trading post for the V&A, might be a bit wide of the mark. In his enthusiasm for the winning project, Graeme declared that “in terms of iconic buildings, it is going to be in the top dozen in the world” but even this hyperbolic effusion was exceeded by Lesley Knox, the chair of the ‘V&A at Dundee’ project, who gushed that “this is a building that will be both timeless and put both (sic) the waterfront and Dundee on the map forever.”

Another judge, Mike Galloway, the director of city development at Dundee City Council, threw in his sixpence-worth with the postulation that “the construction of the V&A outpost would spark a huge investment in Dundee’s continued regeneration” and one has to wonder whether or not he’s including Forth Energy’s proposals to create a humongous biomass plant on the bonnie banks of the Tay in his calculations? For therein lies the paradox: as in Edinburgh, all the plans in the world for waterfront development are but nothing in the hands of Forth Ports, the company that owns and operates much of the riverside landmass in both cities and which counts Forth Energy as one of its subsidiaries.

But more on that thorny subject later – lets return to poor old Kengo Kuma, the ultra talented Tokyo-based architect, who must have wondered what he’d done to take the chequered flag on this one, given that he’d set out to produce a scheme far beyond both the proposed budget and the technical capabilities of the Scottish construction industry. I don’t know what the words for ‘short straw’ are in Japanese, but Kengo must have been clutching some in the hope that that his true position in the contest had been lost in translation and that he would still be able to walk away with head and reputation held high. Sorry pal, but its clearly payback time for the collapse of Dundee’s whaling industry, for what other possible reason can there be to drag you from the tuna capital of the world to knock up a foyer space, restaurant, shop and designer lavvies for us out of our most indigenous building material, reconstructed stone?

The imaginatively named Cre8architecture, Kengo’s partners in this singularly ambitious enterprise, are of course no strangers to the merits of this ecologically desirable product, having used it on a stick-a-panel office building for Scottish Widows near Edinburgh’s Tollcross. Quite how the manufactured material will weather in the rather more exacting environment of Jutetown-sur-Mer will be interesting to see, but already that decision seems to be an undesirable consequence of the proposed budget for the project. I know I’ve raised this issue before the latest breakdown of the finances don’t inspire any more confidence in me than I had before. Apparently the Scottish Government has pledged one third of the £45m mooted as the cost, but I didn’t see any mention of this on the list of new capital projects announced by John Swinney to be financed in order to stimulate he construction industry, so it will be interesting to see what budget, if any, it comes from.

The V&A’s commitment seems no stronger than it was when I questioned it before – Moira Gemmill, the museum’s director of projects and design stated that “at the V&A we have spent £120m on about 40 capital projects in the last ten years” which, even the economically illiterate can work out to be around £3m per project and individually a far simpler series of fundraising exercises than this one, especially in the current financial climate. Aside from the Scottish Government’s contribution a further £15m is to be made up from “the Lottery, EU and other public funds” and “£15m in business and commercial sponsorship.”

The ”other public funding” bit is intriguing since Dundee, like most City Councils will be strapped to deliver essential services over the next little while and the other usual source of taxpayers dosh, Scottish Enterprise, may not even be around when and if things get going on this. Which, in any case, may not be for some time, since the likelihood of any Lottery funding being directed northwards this side of the London Olympics taking place is more than a little unlikely. As for finding business and commercial sponsorship at the moment – methinks Moira’s going to have to put in some long hours on that front. I’m sorry to be such a sceptic, but if this project gets out of the water for the kind of money suggested, I think Kirsty Wark will have to retract her famous remark about the Parliament, viz. that ”you don’t get a garden shed these days for under £40m.” And that was a few years ago too. Oh, for just one time that the funding could be put in place for public projects in Scotland before architects are invited to spend time and money on entering architectural competitions.

Logjam in Leith
Now back to our waterfront visionaries, Forth Ports plc. Earlier in the year the company fought off a takeover by its biggest rival, Peel Holdings, arguing that the unwanted bid seriously undervalued the company. Forth Ports based its own assessment of its worth on the development value of the riverside land in its ownership, but this quantification harked back to those heady days when buy to let was all the rage and there was no end of applications to build waterfront apartments of doubtful construction quality. The collapse in the market for one and two bed lets stalled Forth Ports’ rapacious development plans and with no end to the downturn in site the company has naturally turned its attention to other money spinners – such as biomass plants.

In the case of the capital’s waterfront, the proposal comes with the usual guff about how many jobs will be created (500-700 apparently) and the amount of houses it will power (pretty much all of Edinburgh’s, we’re told). The downside of course is the 120 metre chimney (40 storeys to you and me) it comes with, not to mention the amount of timber that will have to be shipped from north America and the Baltic States to feed its daily hunger, since the UK doesn’t actually produce anything like the amount of wood needed to fuel the number of biomass plants currently clogging up the planning system. But for a port operator that’s the whole point – bringing shiploads of timber into Grangemouth is what Forth Ports does best and with the current political wind favouring renewables of any sort, just about the only public money still available comes in the form of massive subsidies for things like - well, biomass plants of course. Would the company be putting forward this project without such public largesse? I think you know the answer.

But Forth Ports is either extremely canny or just plain schizophrenic because whilst it has its provocative plant on the table it has also managed to mug the City Council into borrowing – and the Scottish Government into approving - £84m to restart property development on the waterfront. The laugh here is that our couthy councillors are borrowing the money against enhanced future rate income (the so-called Tax Incremental Finance method) to fund developments including a new cruise liner terminal, lock gates, a new link road and a riverside walkway with shops and restaurants, all of which will heartily improve the value of the land in Forth Ports ownership and, by extension, the company’s share price, the one thing that is all important to the directors as they prepare the company for the next, inevitable, takeover approach. Of course there’s the stats: £660m will be triggered by this largesse – sorry, stimulus – and 4900 jobs created. No, don’t ask me how many people it takes to operate a lock gate or a riverside walkway, but I don’t see a cruise liner passenger processing plant plus some shops and restaurants - even if operating round the clock shifts - employing this amount of people on a full time basis, but politicians always seem happy to believe these projections and so the game continues. But I digress, for in the US where TIF’s are reputed to be popular, the money is usually applied to genuine public sector projects not simply to those the private sector doesn’t want to fund itself.

But it gets better, because having failed miserably in its attempts to get Forth Ports to deliver the £25m or so previously agreed as its contribution to the tram project, the City Council has moved quickly to suggest that a large amount of the approved TIF money can be tipped into the funding gap that prevents the line once proposed from St Andrews Square to Leith being completed. Forth Ports is of course happy to accede to this misappropriation of funds since, from its corporate viewpoint, the completion of this extension to the tram system is essential to the future development of the waterfront. There is of course huge desire on the public’s part to live in shoddily built flats next to a giant biomass plant.

Anyway, I hope you’re keeping up with all of this because, believe me, I’m not making it up and indeed it would be hard for anyone to originate a set of circumstances quite as fantasy-filled as these. And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Edinburgh is the willing guinea pig for TIF in the UK – yes, the city that has proved itself singularly incapable of constructing a single line tram system is being given governmental carte blanche to throw yet more money down a black hole. The scandal is that when the enhanced rate income fails to materialise (and you read it here first) it will be the bank of you and me that will be called upon yet again to stump up the difference.

Oh, and the design of the biomass plant? Think of a Humvee steroidally enlarged a thousand-fold and customised by Darth Vader and you’ve just about got the picture. With their plans for biomass facilities for Forth Energy at Dundee and Grangemouth already in the public realm, Glasgow’s foremost exponents of car crash architecture appear to have cornered the market in this particular genre so could it possibly be that they are the authors of this humdinger too?

Half Phu or half empty?
Recent developments began well for RMJM, what with them finally getting the go-ahead in St Petersburg for their Gazprom Tower, otherwise known as the Okhta Centre and destined to be the tallest building in Europe. Opponents (of whom some 3000 gathered in St P on the announcement of the go-ahead) may argue the decision was a tad undemocratic but hey, this is Russia and the new hq for the country’s most important company has the imprimatur of city native and prime minister Vladimir Putin, so what more could you ask for or expect? The only outstanding approval now required is a building permit from City Hall, but as it has backed the project from the start we can expect some uncharacteristically speedy bureaucracy there to get things finally moving.

 Aside from that not unimportant success, however, it’s all been downhill on RMJMs pr front. First, the practice’s local arm was unsuccessful in the RIAS-run competition for a new SSCI (Scottish Sustainable Community Initiative to those of you baffled by the acronym, but of which concept more later) at Whitecross, near Linlithgow, although there can’t have been too many expectations about this down Bells Brae way, given how bizarre their proposed scheme was. If this is what they think housing is all about, God help the Commonwealth Games village.

Next, the news that the Blessed Will Alsop has, after a year with his latest employer, failed to bring in a single new project to the operation. Now, say what you will about Will, but anyone watching his career since the dim and distant days when he topped-up Cedric Price’s rotrings will long have realised that securing clients and running businesses are not exactly prominent amongst the maestro’s unusual mix of skills. Quite why Morrison pere et fils therefore thought he might suddenly change spots and turn into a job-getter is anyone’s guess and, anyway, didn’t the boy Morrison employ one of his old army pals to do the job of winning commissions from commissars in the strangest corners of the globe? No, our man Alsop can hardly be blamed for the downturn in work that the firm is currently experiencing. In any case, I haven’t seen the same sort of mid-term progress reports appear about ol’ Shreddie who, it might be argued, is meant to know something about the pitfalls of running a multi-national business.

But if its shortlisted Whitecross competition entry indicated the firm has misplaced a large chunk of its architectural direction, the most recent news of mega numbers of staff jumping ship at RMJM offices around the globe must be worrying, especially when it is accompanied by tales of employees not being paid or having wages delayed. In the current climate, this latter phenomenon is sadly not unusual in architectural offices, but when it happens in Abu Dhabi it’s a bit more serious and for two reasons – first, it’s illegal there to bounce cheques and second, the authorities in this small Arab state have it within their power to freeze the company’s licence to operate. Regular readers of the Wrap will recall that it’s not so long ago that the boy Morrison was noising up this particular office as one of the company’s most important routes to the future, so you have to ask, where has it all gone wrong? Some flannel about a client there being slow to pay and causing cash flow problems hardly cuts the mustard – anyone with experience of working in the Middle East knows that this is hardly uncommon and that you have to have very deep pockets and nerves of titanium to operate in those dusty parts.

The final word must surely go to Charles Phu, until now the project architect on the Gazprom Tower, who has made the decision to walk the long plank towards unemployment because, despite the firm boasting of its “many highly talented” staff, he believes morale has been damaged by the number of non-architects effectively running the firm and because of competition between different offices. It doesn’t sound like an altogether happy working environment and, it has to be said, the emergence of such a situation wasn’t exactly the scenario Robert Matthew had in mind when he formed the multi-disciplinary practice all those years ago. As he looks down from on high he must be wondering where exactly things will go from here. Or, perhaps more pertinently, Will go from here?

And finally….
Regular readers will have followed the tale of the Holyrood Doocot’s enhanced security measures, so its good to finally report that they have had some effect. Sadly it’s not an assault by the Taliban that has been effectively countered, but a frontal approach by the Tories’ education spokeswoman who drove into the underground car park and over the retractable barrier. To be fair to Liz Smith, the MSP in question, she did notice there was a red light showing even though the barrier was in its down position and used the intercom to call security staff. Whether through a wicked sense of humour or some unfounded faith in the technology, these defenders of our democracy told her to drive on and, to her chagrin, the beastly bollards rose up and took off the front two panels of her car and broke the gear box and damaged its brakes. A spokesman said the vehicle entry system had been incorrectly activated by staff and that the Parliament (i.e. the bank of you and me again) would cover the cost of repairs, estimated at several thousand pounds. You can only hope this was really a practise run designed to impale terrorist vehicles trying to enter the car park. The good thing is it seems to work but for the £250k that the system cost I wouldn’t expect anything less.

Next week….a right pair of charlettes
The Wrap’s report on the Duany and Jimmy Charette Show is held over until next week since the story is still unfolding but mainly because it’s just too much of a tale of modern Scotland for it to be hidden amongst other Wrap material.

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