November 22 2010

Since last week’s musings on the proposed Tayside shop and caff for the V & A, the Scottish Government has announced its budget for the coming year and with it the latest freezing of council tax throughout the country. In anticipation of this, many of Scotland’s local authorities have been busily trawling through their various existing financial responsibilities to see which ones can be offloaded without anyone noticing. The City of Dundee has been no exception in this respect, needing to make at least £20m savings from its annual £330m budget. Times in Jutetown would appear to be harder than even these stark figures suggest, however, with the Council now focusing its cost-cutting telescope on the Mills Observatory on Balgay Hill, the only such facility in Scotland built with the sole aim of encouraging public understanding of astronomy.

Just last month the building celebrated its 75th anniversary, but it looks like the £46500 it costs to open its doors to the public on five nights a week is now under threat. The observatory attracts around 20000 visitors annually which, given its necessarily restricted opening times, is a pretty respectable figure in a city with a population of only 142000. The Council will not decide on its future until February 2011, so just over two months exist to remind the city’s elected representatives that the reason it is in public ownership is because it exists for the public good. It may have been built in 1935, but Dundonian interest in the cosmos has evidently diminished little since then, although whether the starry-eyed looks you get from some of Jutetown’s shell-suited finest are the result of long nights staring into space is not at all clear.

It should be said that the Observatory is not a particularly remarkable piece of architecture, but its construction did provide work for men in Dundee during the bleak years of the depression. Its one outstanding feature is its internal dome, the only surviving observatory lining in the world made from papier mache. Which, by a tangential process of thought, makes me wonder whether the judges for the ‘V & A at Dundee’ actually always intended to select a Japanese architect and merely mistook Kengo Kuma for Shigeru Ban, a man wholly familiar with constructing projects from card and paper, these being the only materials likely to come close to fitting within the Guggenheim-on-Tay’s nominal budget.

Fly me to the ruin
I’m reliably informed there was once a time when the Cockburn Association – Edinburgh’s Civic Trust – was an organisation of some consequence and whose considered opinion on the quality of the capital’s built environment was something to take seriously. It’s hard to believe such a golden age existed, given recent comments from its latest director, Marion Williams, who took it upon herself to publicly pronounce that a new hotel and conference centre proposed for RBS International Airport would detract from the “singular beauty of the control tower and well-proportioned terminal building”.

Clearly the Cockburn has never given the poor woman the bus fare to visit it because - and let’s call a spade a spade here – the aeronautical gateway to Scotland’s capital is one of the ugliest complexes in the whole of western Europe and is becoming daily more unattractive as owner BAA seeks to find yet more ways of screwing money from those who pass through its doors. The vehicular approach to the terminal building is now a steel and concrete assault course designed to confuse passengers rather than prevent terrorist attack and, should some of the former actually manage to find their way to the drop-off area, they are effectively turned upside down and shaken liberally for any £1 coins they have in their possession. Linger there for even a few minutes and the penalty for using the facility goes up to a tenner – all apparently to help pay for improved shopping mall facilities at the airport.

But back to the hotel, a 168-bedroom, four star haemorrhoid with a banqueting hall for 700 delegates, which should save anyone who has travelled to Edinburgh for a conference from actually having to face the tramwork’ ravaged streetscape of the World Heritage Site. Certainly, the published design has all the hallmarks of a four year old son of Stalin learning to use a CAD programme but –hey – if it shields the blankety-blank terminal from external view its probably worth the Stirling Prize. Not that any architect has so far publicly owned up to this one – the Cockburn’s batty criticism was batted away in the press by Vincent Stewart, managing director of consulting engineer Rennie & Kirkwood with “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, a fabulously original statement that suggests the hotel’s structural design will be a thing of absolute wonder.

The part of this tale that’s most confusing though is the cryptically endearing statement by John Bury, the City of Edinburgh Council’s head of planning that “the proposals are an appropriate scale and design and, provided appropriate materials are used, will accord with the principles of the West Edinburgh Design Framework.“ Which kind of brings me full circle to the airport’s “kiss and fly” charge mentioned above and which has exercised city councillors’ minds as to the possibility of taking tighter control of developments around the terminal since, it turns out, the airport’s owners have ‘Permitted Development’ rights and don’t actually need to apply for planning permission for anything within their purlieu (a legacy from the days of state ownership of the airport), As the only organisation in the Edinburgh area with this exemption from  the normal planning process, it can effectively stick its fingers up to the Tweedledums in Market Street.

Possibly the only hope for RBS International and Edinburgh’s status as the country’s business and tourism gateway is for it to be the one airport in Scotland that BAA is forced to sell off. However, it being the most profitable of the three (Aberdeen and Glasgow being the others) it owns, you can be sure its Spanish masters will fight tooth and nail to keep control of its biggest cash cow and will undoubtedly add yet more architectural disasters to the current melange. If a sale seems a long way off, there’s always the Scottish Government consultation paper that’s due to be published next year. If you want a decent airport ‘Gateway to Scotland’ best get writing now.

A right pair of charlettes
Of course, the land beyond Edinburgh’s ring road has long been something of a planning wild west, the good ol’ boys at RBS having been encouraged to build their own trading post on green belt land rather than let them take their business to the badlands 40-odd miles way. A major rancher in these parts who has so far lost a wheen of money playing poker in the Govan Saloon, one David Murray has also been sitting on a vast area of good prairie land bought for a song when the term ‘green belt’ actually meant something. Of late, however, a whole host of Dave’s business and property ventures have found themselves in some financial difficulty – including his stake in the Loan Rangers – and he has had to parly with a rival bank to reschedule his not inconsiderable debts. Having secured the kind of deal only a government funded money shop is able to offer to big, big players, Dave now needs to get back in the game to recover some of his losses and so has put one of his biggest chips on the table – the land he owns around Balerno, currently just a one horse watering hole but a place where the local traders have ambitions to be part of a massive spread that even has its own 25000 seater rodeo.

Yes, all very much the stuff of cowboy movies and, just as in the films of Alan Ladd, a star able to walk tall with the assistance of boxes, Murray Estates have called on another diminutive talent with a big reputation to stand high on the back of charrettes in order to get the local politicians and planners to do his bidding. In this instance, Andres Duany, head honcho of the New Urban Cowboys, is not so well loved by officials in the big city, who see his employer’s ambitions taking taxable business parks, saloon bars and other houses of entertainment – not to mention vast new barrios of developer housing – well out of their reach.

But Maverick Estates have another big player on their side – step forward Marshall Jim Mackinnon, the man who makes the planning law in these here parts and who can see no wrong whatsoever in encouraging the predations of the New Urban Cowboys across all of the land he has responsibility for. Already, Marshall Jim has encouraged Andres to ride his one-trick pony through Ballater, Lochgelly and Dumfries, blowing the community safes along the way. Way, way back in the mists of time, the Wrap intimated the incursions of the Duany Gang had been financed to the tune of 300000 British bucks (fifty grand in hotel bills alone) by the poor mystified townsfolks in the places mentioned above–, but that was as nothing when compared to the latest beanfeast. OK, so Maverick has had to pay out a reward of around 200000 notes to the New Urban gunslingers, but it was surely worth it just to get Marshall Jim onside, since only he can crack the green belt conundrum and allow a veritable bonanza to emerge in Balerno.

To someone new in town this might all look a bit Dodge City, but Marshall Jim is nothing if not smart and took only the minimum sum out of the Federal safe to get the show on the road. When questioned about the overall cost and the fact that the Duany Gang was able to ride into town completely unopposed, the Sheriff’s office – fronted up by Honest John Swinney – was prevailed upon to insist in mind-numbing detail that no Federal rules had been broken and that its own financial contribution was well below the level set by the bad guys in Brussels.

Which is all well and good but misses several points. First, the wisdom or otherwise of shipping the Duany Gang all the way from the New World at the expense not only of local and national taxpayers here, but in clear preference to home grown Urbanistas who are finding business hard to come by since Fred the Shred and his chums stormed through town leaving only a busted bank and a cloud of dust in their wake. Second, whether the Duany Gang’s vision of how life should be lived squares with what is actually wanted in this part of the Old World – after all, if charrettes really are the public consultation vehicle par excellence, how come the results all seem to come from the Great American Pattern Book? Third, by giving the process something of a personal imprimatur, Marshall Jim has put Edinburgh’s green belt – and ergo green belts throughout the land - into play without debate, democratic or otherwise, and has implicitly undermined the local planning authority that has, until now applied the rules as previously set down. And fourth, the country’s elected government – far from directing planning policy – has been led neatly by the nose by its own officials to publicly defend the indefensible.

And so Marshall Jim rides on with newly-badged Deputy Duany by his side. Had government in Scotland not become so inconsequential of late this highly questionable state of affairs might have carried longer in the national press but the Times, having made the running on the story, cravenly folded its enquiries as soon as Honest John Swinney sent in his robust denial of procurement wrongdoing. This is unlikely to be the end of the tale, however, because the Wrap has been out riding the Scottish prairie himself of late and has found a real rage simmering amongst the country’s best architects and urban designers that their skills are continually being ignored on the domestic range in favour of imported cowpokes. Time perhaps, in advance of next year’s elections for the profession to get some serious lobbying underway to see which political parties are prepared to stand up and really support our home grown architectural talent. “Use it or lose it,” as our friends from across the pond tend to succinctly put it.

Holl’s fair in love and war
And since we’re on the subject of those with whom our politicians constantly tell us we have a special relationship, let’s shift to Glasgow or, more particularly, it’s School of Art. I know I’ve been a bit slow off the mark here, but can anyone tell me what we’re supposed to glean from Steven Holl’s recently published images for his competition-winning project? I admit I’ve only seen a few computer renderings, but these are the one’s that have been in the papers so presumably they’re the best of what’s been made available. Aside from a vertical tiering of north lights to form the building’s rear elevation, a couple of views from Sauchiehall Street showing (precious little of) the end gables of the new design and a section that indicates a long inclined light shaft piercing all seven floors of the future construction – not exactly Mackintosh’s staircase rising in Platonic manner from the cave to light, but we’ll let that flea stick to the wall for the moment. Oh, and there’s a perspective of a ramped interior that could be in any building, anywhere. Not, in fact, much to go on at all.

But why all the mystery? It’s difficult to know who’s being enigmatic here - JM Architects, Stevie’s local partners, are a talented crew, but could hardly be accused of being the types to tease a waiting audience; the US wunderkind himself can be a tad obscure at times but he seems unusually constrained in interviews about this particular project, mouthing the usual locally-required platitudes about Mackintosh’s genius. Can it be that the design team is under instruction not to say or show too much and are part of a highly orchestrated marketing game on the part of GSA boss Seona Reid designed to secure the necessary readies to put in place this latest piece of Holl’s international jigsaw?

Certainly, if we’re confused by what’s going on, his compatriots back home have been totally mystified by the miserable amount of information released to date. Reading the comments on US architectural mags’ websites of late reveals concern there that big Mac’s architectural lodestone is actually to be demolished to provide Stevie with a clear site on which to express his rather more 21st century ambitions; Which either tells you everything about the communication success of the material published so far by GSA or is a measure of the insularity of most of the US architectural profession.

Actually it’s better than that – at the time of the announcement of the competition winner, Architectural Record publicised Alan Dunlop’s concerns that it hadn’t been an even playing field for Scottish architects (sorry Alan, I’m paraphrasing here) and ever since then the mag’s website has trailed a sub-heading about Scottish complaints that the job didn’t gone to a fully paid up home team. Responding to this accusation, McHoll has since pronounced that in a world where books and music can be understood internationally, why should architecture alone be treated in a ‘nationalistic’ way? Which is kind of worrying, since the comparison is specious and the discussion’s not about jingoism anyway. Steven, if you really understood Mackintosh’s building as much as you profess to, you’d appreciate the whole value of context and the way in which this particular Glasgow Boy expressed it literally in his work.

And this perhaps underlies the most recent comments about the Holl project by William Curtis, the renowned architectural historian and critic who has seen fit to question the building’s appropriateness in terms of its siting, scale and materials opposite Mackintosh’s masterpiece. Bill doesn’t mince his words for although having a long time “interest in broadening the ‘canon’ of architects working around the world” (Wikipedia’s words, not mine) he doesn’t seem too keen on this particular example. I won’t reprise his thoughtful comments on the reflective impact the façade will have on the interiors of the original studios across the street, suffice only to say I hold similar doubts to his on the effect the extensive external use of matte white glass will have in the natural light of Glasgow.

One only has to look at the new extension to the Usher Hall in Edinburgh to question the wisdom of this selection of material in this climate and location, a choice I should add, that apparently “references the Mackintosh’s stone skin on the 1909 building.” Oh, that and the fact that our Steven used the same material – we are told “to stunning effect” –on the Vanke Centre Chenzen, a building whose section looks oddly similar to the Glasgow design but is in all other respects different. And I don’t mean to bring it up again Steven, but the stone “skin,” as you put it, is what we might refer to as indigenous – contextual if you will – whilst the greenish white glass is, well, just that. Contemporary it may be, but the jury’s still out on its complementarity. I’m sure of one thing though: you’ll not want this building to be thought of as the lovechild of a Vanke.

And finally…
No room for trump, trams or tweets this week, but a big slap on the back to Elder & Cannon Architects for taking a positive story about Shettleston onto the news pages of the UK’s architectural press. This year’s RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award has not only found its way to one of the most deprived parts of Glasgow’s East End but also to the offices of the local housing association. As a positive fillip for this sector at the moment, it doesn’t get much better that this. Nor for Elder & Cannon, who have now won Britain’s richest architectural prize for a remarkable third time in only the ninth year of its existence. No other winner has gained the award more than once, so the boys in Berkeley Street are clearly doing something right. Not too much use of white glass, mind you, unless it’s for the champagne.

Next week…
Bei Jingo – Murphy conquers China. As well as trump, trams & tweets of course.

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