Disney Status For Capital?

Even with Disney Status, the ubiquitous Edinburgh Scaffolding

Danger of Capital being made into a Disney production


ON THURSDAY Professor Herb Stovel gave the Cockburn Association's annual lecture, this year entitled Keeping the Faith in World Heritage, in which he made many salient points with regard to recent planning decisions made within Edinburgh and how he perceives their impact upon the Outstanding Universal Values that Edinburgh embodies.

Intriguingly, he made the statement that Edinburgh was of a sufficient size to cope with the increased number of visitors associated with WHS, yet failed to make the connection with the three controversial developments – Caltongate, Haymarket and St James Centre – being proposed to house these visitors.



The pursuit of increased tourist numbers is what threatens the OUV. While UNESCO's prime concern may be keeping the city looking pretty, this resident's concern is for their life in the city.



All new large developments are primarily hotel accommodation – aside from the big three already mentioned two hotels are proposed for Princes Street with talk of a third one in the West End; the Cowgate fire site is proposed to become a hotel and both sides of Waterloo Place are either hotel or serviced apartments. So what future for the real people? Bussed and trammed in from outlying districts to serve the tourist core?



The Old Town once boasted a fantastically egalitarian mix and we need provision to be made for young and growing families on modest salaries within the city centre unless we are to become a Disney version of a living city.


Letter to Evening News 20 October 2008

Edinburgh to be renamed Murrayburgh?

Above is one of the many tour souvenirs available to buy

Talks are said to be taking place in the council to decide on a new name for the capital.



It is to be in honour of Allan Murray the prolific architect reshaping the city for the 21st Century.


Along with rebranding the city, officials believe it should be renamed as many prominent council officials along with the Chamber of Commerce and Visit Scotland, feel that the name Edinburgh conjours up images of old buildings, history and that sort of thing...they say its putting off the business visitor, hen and stags and the increasing numbers of people coming to look at new builds, whether empty office blocks, five star hotels and ten a penny luxury 2 bed apartments.


Allan Murray tours are proving to be popular as demand for more traditional historical and spooky type tours is dropping, as even the ghosts themselves have left the Old Town to make way for new Allan Murray buildings.


The tour starts with a brunch at The Tun building on Holyrood Road, where a short indoctrination talk is given on the economic benefits of all new development.

After brunch and talk you are driven in a Murray themed bus along the ever increasing tour route around the city. Craigmillar not on the tour at the present moment. (It is rumoured that future tours may take in Murray sites in The Merchant city in Glasgow and Peterhead etc)



Here is the route - (so far...)

The Tun, Holyrood Road
Cowgate Nursery, Old Town
Cowgate Fire Site (SOCO), Old Town
George IV Bridge Site.... Old Town
Argyle House , West Port, Old Town


Edinburgh Park (various Buildings)
Croyston House, Ravelston Terrace
Freer Street, New Town
Coal Hill, Leith


Then its onto "The Murray Hat Trick"
The Omni Centre, St James Centre Site and The Cube


Then its up to Calton Hill to look down onto the proposed Caltongate site where you are treated to a wee dram of Murrays own specially blended whisky "The Murrayburgh Blend" Each bottle featuring one of his many buildings.


We are looking forward to a tour review very soon.

Edinburgh is being Vandalised

Nothing Less Than Vandalism

Above is one possible emblem for Edinburgh, replacing the UNESCO

World Heritage Emblem which the city looks set to lose....

Joanna Blythman on built heritage in today`s The Sunday Herald

Thanks to the unique blend of medieval and neo-classical architecture in its old and new towns, Edinburgh holds a coveted international listing as a Unesco World Heritage Site, an accolade only awarded to places of exceptional architectural and historical merit.

Read here why

This is a huge honour, so you might think that all the councillors and officials who passed through the portals of the city chambers would be circumspect enough to realise that even if the finer points of architecture were beyond them, you don't imperil such a listing. No such luck. Koichiro Matsuura, the director-general of this UN cultural body, has had to warn Edinburgh that if it proceeds with certain new developments (of which more below), its world heritage status may be threatened. He has requested that the city puts these plans on hold, pending Unesco's investigation, or risk having its Unesco status stripped from it.

Man from UNESCO, he say no


The alarm has been sounded, but smug Edinburgh Council shows no signs of taking heed. In the past it would have. For decades, conservatism and preservation of the status quo were the order of the day. Thanks to the vigilance of groups such as the Cockburn Association, most of the lunatic plans advanced for the city were thwarted, with the prominent exception of the St James Centre. Not bad going when you think that Glasgow got saddled with a motorway that savaged its Victorian grid.


Unfortunately in recent years Edinburgh has been plagued by councillors who, though their politics differ, have one thing in common - their egos are bigger than their brains and their judgement is wanting. Puffed up and romanced by developers and modernist architects who feed them the pretentious, self-aggrandising vocabulary of "iconic buildings", "signature architecture", "architectural statements" and "iconoclastic, brave development" - like teenage vandals carving their initials on the ancient stones of the Acropolis - they yearn to leave their hubristic mark on the city for posterity. Hence the spate of fatally misconceived plans that are being given the go-ahead, even though they perpetuate old mistakes and grind their killer heels in the face of Edinburgh's handsome heritage.


How on Earth was the capital's number one vandal, Edinburgh University, allowed to squeeze yet another architecturally meritless, oversized concrete block into Bristo Square? With its track record of flattening three sides of Georgian George Square and erecting the monstrous David Hume Tower, it should have been placed on a Gary Glitter-style register of recidivist architectural offenders never to be trusted.


Just next to abused George Square, the city's Quartermile development is partially completed. A riot of U-PVC and tinted glass that spurns more vernacular, sustainable materials like wood and stone, its overpriced, aspirational yuppie condominiums add only to our housing stock of exclusive, soulless, ever-so-slightly sinister compounds for the very rich.


Then there's the scandal of Caltongate, where two listed buildings on the historic Royal Mile are to be demolished to make way for a five-star hotel and conference centre - as if Edinburgh needs another. But the most monstrously inappropriate scheme yet given approval is the 17-storey (yes, that's right, 17-storey!) hotel and office development at Haymarket. This has been sold by its promoters as "a gateway of blade-like sharpness in the form of a tower" that will "act as a beacon at night" and function as "a gateway building marking the entry into the World Heritage Site from the west". What preposterous and fanciful nonsense.


I happen to agree, on the whole, with Leon Krier, guru of the New Urbanism school of architecture, who said that "the most beautiful and pleasant cities which survive in the world today have all been conceived with buildings of between two and five floors". Even those who go for all that "street in the sky" rhetoric spouted by ideologues of modernism ought to admit that Edinburgh is not Manhattan. However bored architects may be with working in the confines of a conservation-minded city, a philistine should see that 17 storeys are brazenly out of scale among Edinburgh's traditionally low-rise buildings.

It's hard to see Haymarket's proposed tower (above) as anything other than a grotesquely super-sized, overbearing monument to architectural arrogance and civic stupidity. Worse, I interpret it as a declaration that it is now open season on Edinburgh's outstanding urban heritage, one that ratifies the Caltongate precedent.


Former Lord Provost Lesley Hinds betrayed a rare flash of self-doubt after the Haymarket decision when she remarked that "we will be damned or we might be congratulated in the future".



I'll place my bet now. The Haymarket tower will be viewed as Edinburgh's biggest post-St James Centre planning gaffe and those who voted for it as dangerous idiots.

St James Centre

It's not just the odd bad building here and there. The plans for Edinburgh become ever more scarring and radical. Part of me wants to see the miscreants punished by losing Unesco status, but then Edinburgh suffers along with them.

Sean Connery who visited the capital last week, perhaps warning the first minister of the danger the city faces

Time for the grown-ups to step in. Alex Salmond must hold an inquiry into both the Caltongate and Haymarket follies before the council fouls up the city's heritage for posterity.

More on the vandalism of Edinburgh

Allan "Edinburgh is all mine" Murray

Enter Murray`s Edinburgh Here

Why leave a city's designs in one man's hands?

The Times today 13th August 2008 by Magnus Linklater

Edinburgh's celebrated skyline is threatened by a planning policy that puts mediocrity before imagination or beauty


As a cub reporter I once went to interview Colonel Richard Seifert, then famous, or notorious, as the architect of Centre Point - at the time the tallest building in London, soon to be overtaken by the NatWest Tower, which Seifert also built. How, I wondered, could one architect, whose work was synonymous with high-rise concrete monstrosities, have been commissioned to erect more London buildings than Christopher Wren ever contemplated?


“I understand the planning regulations,” said the colonel, fixing me with a disconcerting smile. “I deliver on time, I understand my clients, and I give them exactly what they want.” That was not the whole story. He had a very clear idea of what he himself wanted and, ideally, he would have liked to rebuild all London in his image. He told me of his vision of great battlements of tower blocks, surrounding, and dwarfing, the very few old sites that he thought worth conserving. Luckily, he was defeated in the end by the very bureaucracy he thought he had mastered. He still managed, nevertheless, to complete more than 500 office blocks in Britain and Europe.


For anyone who wonders whether any of today's architects could influence a city to the same extent, a trip to Edinburgh in this festival season would be instructive. In this place of architectural marvels, there is a new name to conjure with. The successor to Adam, Playfair, Hamilton, Bryce and Gilbert Scott - the creators of Edinburgh's celebrated skyline - is Allan Murray. His may not be a name to conjure with in the wider architectural world, but in terms of current projects and masterplans in this city, he dwarfs everything that his more famous predecessors constructed.

Glenrothes where wee Allan grew up
More Here

It is hard to take a walk from the narrow wynds of the 17th-century Old Town to the stern splendour of the 18th-century New Town without stumbling across a Murray site, either completed, in construction or in contemplation.

A Murray Prototype

Walk down the Royal Mile, past a new Allan Murray hotel, from where you may observe the site of an Allan Murray redevelopment in the heart of the Old Town, proceed down the Canongate, where a couple of fine old buildings are to be demolished to open up a new Allan Murray shopping precinct, then head towards Leith Walk, where the glass-fronted Allan Murray office complex successfully conceals the once scenic Calton Hill. Then observe the sprawling and hideous St James Centre to your left, which is, mercifully, to be razed, to make way for... another Allan Murray complex.

Omni Centre

Or instead just click on to Mr Murray's impressive website where all these and more are collected together under brave new titles such as Caltongate, Soco, St James Quarter and Edinburgh Park. That so many precious sites have been assigned to just one architect, without any noticeable public reaction, is a remarkable commentary on the way in which British cities are allowed to develop with no apparent control over how or even why they are doing so, along with a minimum of public accountability. In any other European city - Barcelona, say, or Rome - there would be high-profile competitions and rigorous scrutiny of any large architectural project. Here, the developer, and the architect of his choice, is king.

I like one or two of Mr Murray's smaller buildings, but his masterplans and big developments strike me as bland and undistinguished. One commmentator has described his office buildings as “wallpaper architecture”. His practice was set up barely 15 years ago, but his success is in stark contrast to that of other Scottish-based architects, some of whom have been nominated for the Stirling Prize and won awards in England and abroad, but have never been given contracts on anything like the scale achieved by Mr Murray.

The truth is that when it comes to developing our cities, design tends to take second place to the more prosaic imperatives of the market. The developer who can bring in a project under budget, on time and without offending planning restrictions has a head start on his rivals, however imaginative their approach may be. The architect who can be relied on to deliver those objectives will be favoured over his starrier competitors. The planning committee giving the go-ahead simply wants to know that the scheme is trouble-free. The outcome may be mediocre, but it is safe and reliable mediocrity rather than dangerous originality.


What is happening in Edinburgh may be more striking in a city renowned for its great architectural heritage than elsewhere - but the outcome is reflected in most of our major towns and cities. It is nearly ten years since the architect Lord Rogers of Riverside published his ground-breaking report on urban renaissance, in which he said that design must always take primacy over planning laws and expansion plans. He also said that the public should be more involved in developments that affect the look of the places they live in.
Neither of those aims have yet been realised, and Edinburgh's example suggests they are still a long way off.


More here on Murray - Caltongate or Edinburgh Must Die

Allan Murray`s Gherkin

Allan Murray`s Cube

No, No ,No to Gherkin

Towering folly

If I'd read your report on Henderson Global Investors' plan to create Edinburgh's own 'Gherkin' tower (2 April) a day earlier, I'd have assumed it was an April Fool's joke.
Of all the preposterous architectural schemes mooted for the city in the past few months (Caltongate, for example) this one really takes the biscuit. Granted, the St James Centre is an eyesore, but to replace it with another one would be an act of extreme folly. To quote a recent Amy Winehouse hit: "No, no, no."

Martin Hetherington Scotsman Letters

Will We Ever Learn From Our Mistakes

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Tomorrow the City of Edinburgh`s Planning Committee have to decide whether they want to go forward with the legacy they were left from the previous New Labour administration...

Will they have the courage to say no and fight for an appropriate development, which does not depend on a five star hotel which demands the destruction of historical buildings, homes, and may ultimately cost the city its World Heritage Status.

1. Jurys Inn Jeffrey St, hotel does not use image when advertising, surprise surprise!

2. St James Centre Whatwaslosthere

3. Appelton Tower, Edinburgh University Whatwaslost

Read early posts to catch up and details of protest outside

City Chambers from 9am tomorrow , Weds 6th feb.

more background at www.eh8.org.uk

News Flash - St James Centre is an eye sore!

12 days to go to Planning Committee

Jings, crivvens and help ma boab - a news flash that took 40 years to reach us! St James Centre is an eyesore! Poor thing hasn't even reached it's 40th birthday and so monstously condemned and put on the shelf. Modern 1970s shopping doesn't suit anymore. More hotels to be built, more arcades, more of everything really. St James Centre was seen as essential to the development of modern Edinburgh in the 70s. Up until the 60s St James Square. Leith St and Greenside was a residential and busy shopping area but they were no longer seen as modern and were deemed "slums" so were knocked down to build the "brutish" St James Centre. Will Caltongate be called that one day. Will anyone care that we tried our very best not to allow the Canongate to become a 2nd rate 21st Century St James Centre?


Check out what St James Centre looked like before the wrecking ball here

And what guess who - yes Allan Murray is to be the architect and wants to build across the road too here

Are memories so short, are lessons never learnt? The cooncil's bammers, sorry I meant planners are recommending to pass ALL of the developers Planning Applications for Caltongate.

From the Evening News today
Replacement for St James eyesore unveiled in £850m galleria vision
By SHÂN ROSS
IT HAS been derided as an eyesore by conservationists, shoppers and architects since it was built in 1973.
Now, the St James centre in Edinburgh has revealed proposals for an £850 million transformation in what could be come the biggest city centre development for decades. Plans unveiled yesterday include a public square, roof-top garden, two hotels, shops, luxury flats and new streets.The original building, an example of "brutalist architecture", would be demolished to make way for a three-storey, crescent-shaped arcade.The ambitious plans, which could be completed by 2015, were welcomed last night by conservationists. Moira Tasker, director of the Cockburn Association, said: "It is an opportunity to rectify the mistakes of the past and create a legacy this generation can be proud of." Sebastian Tombs , chief executive of Architecture and Design Scotland, a body set up to champion good architecture, said: "The skyline is a very important aspect in thinking about the cityscape. "Now is the time to be thinking quite boldly, asking questions and exploring all the issues."However, Dr Miles Glendinning, of Docomomo Scotland, a pressure group that fights to preserve 20th-century buildings, said the plans would be "unforgivable" and quickly become out of date. But he conceded: "There is such a consensus among civic opinion that this postwar building should go that it would be impracticable and implausible to put up a fight to save it."His comments came on the first day of an eight-week public consultation on plans by the centre's owner, developer Henderson Global Investors, to demolish the existing centre.The centrepiece of the proposed St James Quarter in the heart of the Edinburgh World Heritage Site would be a crescent-shaped, glass-roofed multi-level galleria, inspired by the 19th-century Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. The arcade will sweep from fashionable Multrees Walk to the centre's current Princes Street entrance.The John Lewis store alone, of all the current 50 retail outlets, would not be demolished but the other shops could be housed within the galleria.Chris Pyne, senior portfolio manager at Henderson Global Investors, said: "This redevelopment will provide a major boost to retail in the heart of the Scottish capital. We recognise the significant public interest in the St James area, and the importance it holds for … the city."Continental-style shopping - complete with roof gardenTHE new St James Quarter could replace the existing St James shopping centre.• At the heart of the proposed development is a crescent-shaped, glass-roofed, multi-level galleria with public-access roof garden. Existing shops, except John Lewis which will stay where it is, could move there.• Three
distinctive new buildings adjoining the galleria will house cafés and restaurants on their lower floors.• A series of continental-style public squares will be included to encourage shoppers to walk through the quarter from different directions.• The venture will involve the creation of a new street from Multrees Walk to the entrance to the present shopping centre in Princes Street. The crescent shape reflects the design of streets in the New Town.• There will be two hotels, one of them five-star. The Thistle Hotel may be the second one.• There will be office suites and the potential for a number of new homes on the galleria's upper levels.• There will be a cultural hub – an independent cinema, art gallery or festival venue.• A new public square, lined with cafés, restaurants and a hotel, is proposed for the area around St Mary's Cathedral.