Bleurgh!

Yikes! What a deceptive view. Regardless of the fact that the visual shows the datum at eaves height tying in with the existing eaves, the proposed development is out of scale. There is an existing datum inscribed on the existing gable, which indicates where the historic height of the terrace that would have abutted the gable.Whilst the building currently occupying the site is by no means a thing of beauty it does have a more appropriate scale. The general scale of the buildings on this section of George street is two stories. In general streets have tall focal points that rise at street intersections and corners, not part the way along- doing this interrupts the well established urban grain. I would like to ask Yeoman McAllister how they have defined what a 'well-designed front entrance' - So you have created a glass frontage along a section of street which does not have glass frontages. Good to see you are learning from the surroundings or per haps you mean it has a door- congrats! I do believe the mark of any well designed front entrance is a door. Smashing stuff. The existing granite stock has a robust & humble quality to it, non of these characteristics are present in the proposed development. This development makes the new Potterrow student halls in Edinburgh look good. Universities and Colleges should really put their weight behind the developers and push for better quality of accommodation stock- surely the quality of the surroundings is part of the offer to students and not just the institution.

Is it just me that's a little bit worried these days about the quality of architectural descriptive text within some of these articles?