UNESCO delegation and what does it mean?

Professor Manfred Wehdorn from ICMOS ponders Edinburgh's planning process

Gosh last week was a busy week for the Conservation Mafia and the Save Our Old Townies, the Independent Republic has tried it's best to keep those who read the blog up to date. And there are just so many articles to follow. The Canongate's Sally Richardson is in the Sunday Herald today - you can see the photo on page 20 if you buy the real thing or otherwise read it here You can read what the Guardian says here

Dr Mechthild Rossler of the Unesco World Heritage Centre, and Professor Manfred Wehdorn of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, met many officals, developers, conservationists and campaigners in regards to Caltongate, St james Centre, Haymarket and Leith Docks development.

Dr Mechthild Rossler who visited from UNESCO

Dr Mechthild Rossler said "'The World Heritage Committee was concerned that the Caltongate development was approved prior to the committee looking at it more closely. That's why the mission was ordered,'

'I think we got a really good insight into the issues connected with the development projects we looked at. We also looked at the overall state of conservation which is absolutely fine. On behalf of Professor Wehdorn and myself, I can assure you that Edinburgh is not in danger of losing World Heritage status.'

It is important that those interested in the World Heritage don't see that UNESCO are the Mafiosi given diktats about what they think or say - only one heritage site has ever had it's status taken off it and that was when a bird sanctuary came up against an oil field, the government felt the oil field was more important than the bird sanctuary and could not protect it's "outstanding universal values" - alongside UNESCO it was agreed that it was no longer a world heritage site. Where issues are raised UNESCO alongside the State Party try their best to sort out their problems in partnership - this has happened throughout the world, and this is what we hope will happen in Edinburgh. Of course they are not here to take away the World Heritage Status, they were here to see if Edinburgh, Scotland and the UK are committed to protecting the "Outstanding Universal Values" of the World Heritage Sites, and what support Edinburgh may need to protect these values if they are not doing it anyway, see here .

We hope Dr Rossler and Professor Wehdorn got a good view of the city and have lots to think about. The Independent Republic does not want the World Heritage Status to be taken away as we would see that as a disaster and a red flag to developers to develop, develop, develop! We look forward to Rossler and Wehdorn's report - one way or other.

Professor Herb Stovel, Canadian member of UNESCO

Professor Herb Stovel did a fascinating lecture for the Cockburn Association about Edinburgh and it's OUtstanding Universal Values last month which the Independent Republic commented on- check that out here

World Heritage - Prof Stovel podcast can be heard here

Quotes on World Heritage Status

Above First Minister Alex Salmond & Minister Linda Fabiani

Who Has Said What -

The First Minister said: “From the Firth of Forth to the Clyde, the Antonine Wall marks the point where the tide turned for the Roman Empire in Scotland. Built by Hadrian’s successor, Emperor Antoninus Pius, it is the furthest frontier and a testament to design and ambition – attributes that echo throughout Scottish history.

“With this wall added to Scotland’s collection of internationally recognised historic sites, Scotland can be hugely proud that so much of our heritage is recognised not only for its impact on our own evolution and identity but for its contribution to the World.

“Next year, with the Scotland’s Year of Homecoming, we have an opportunity to celebrate that contribution. The opening of the Antonine Wall Centre at the Hunterian Museum in 2009 will be a great addition to the cultural experience on offer and I hope that the newly achieved status of our great wall might even inspire returning friends and family to walk the Antonine Way!” Historic Scotland


Commenting on World Heritage Day in 2008, Linda Fabiani the Scottish Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture stated: "We can... take the opportunity to reflect upon the contribution of our own World Heritage sites and their place in the global story of humanity. We can celebrate, with justified pride, Scotland's contribution".[2] More Here

The leader of the City of Edinburgh Council Jenny Dawe said: “Edinburgh has a rich architectural heritage and is proud of its city centre UNESCO World Heritage Site status. We do not want to see that status compromised”.

She went on to quote Renzo Piano, the Italian architect who designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Talking about designing new architecture in historic environments he said:
“When you work in a historical city centre, instead of worrying about the lack of freedom you should be grateful for the restrictions. Creativity doesn’t need freedom, it needs rules.”

World Heritage Day 2008

Why invest in Edinburgh?

Reputation

Edinburgh is Scotland's capital city,
home of the Scottish Parliament
and the consulate core.
Edinburgh is the world's festival city,
a World Heritage Site,
the world's first UNESCO City of Literature,
a leading international financial centre,
a recognised 'Ideopolis' of knowledge
and is renowned worldwide for innovation and cultural excellence
Inspiring Capital.com

True Identity of Caltongate Architect Revealed

David Brent the "Mastermind behind Caltongate"

Edinburgh – from world heritage site to Basildon of the north?

NORMAN Foster's Sage music centre at Gateshead isn't one of the most immediately appealing of buildings: a gigantic silver seaslug crawling along the south bank of the Tyne.

Yet, once you are inside, it works brilliantly, not just as a concert multi-hall, but as a belvedere, presenting Newcastle as a sharp panorama – the Norman castle, the great railway station, the five Tyne bridges, the classical blocks of Dobson and Grainger, even the 1960s offices run up by Dan Smith. The northern-facing site pays off in the evening, as the sun sets over this lot.

Which should send visiting Scots back to think again. The panorama from Edinburgh's Princes Street is still stunning, even if largely Victorian, dropping from the Castle Infirmary, past Patrick Geddes's Ramsay Garden, Pugin's Tolbooth, St John's Church, Playfair's Assembly Hall and the Bank of Scotland to the old City Chambers and the crown spire of St Giles'. The trouble comes when you turn to Princes Street itself, which is an architectural disaster worthy of the late great Rayner Banham's puking vole award.

The daft Scott Monument, faux-Tudor Jenners and Sir J J Burnet's grand Edwardian Forsyth's apart, the street is a horror-show of bad planning and worse architecture. The Abercrombie Plan of 1948 envisaged a double-deck shopping street. Although the city fathers dropped nearly every other aspect of it, bits of this scheme were realised in the 1960s at the cost of William Burn's New Club and Charles Barry's magnificent Standard Life offices. The big drapers and grand food shops left, along with Crawford's Tea Rooms, and the southern high street slithered in … and in due course, as elsewhere, expired. This is the territory of Frasers and Marks & Sparks, mobile phone shops, standard-issue Waterstone's and naughty knickers stores, and pretty demeaning.

David Brent`s Caltongate looking towards Waverley Bridge

No wonder Unesco isn't best pleased. The cultural organisation has threatened that if changes aren't made to two schemes – Caltongate and Haymarket – bang may go Edinburgh's world cultural heritage ranking.

Only a collective failure of taste can explain the total nullity of the Caltongate scheme, a Basildon clone promoted by the English developer Mountgrange: something even the council can defend only on the grounds that "it will attract investment". Designed by and for David Brent would sum it up.


It's as if Scotland's architectural ambition, having made its expensive statements in the National Museum and Holyrood Parliament – extraordinary and oddly timeless buildings – has held its tongue, and instead the spirit of boil-in-a-bag Georgian has seeped in from an exurbian sprawl characterised by the journalist Iain MacWhirter as having "the texture of dead skin".

What to do? To the west of Haymarket there's a real need for a first-rate transport interchange, as Waverley Station isn't up to the expected growth in rail traffic without expensive tunnels, and a western site could make use of the under-used South Suburban line. As for Caltongate, think about the young architects – many of them Scots – who took Enrico Miralles's sketches and made such a remarkable building out of them.


And think, too, that the real glories of Scotland aren't medieval or Georgian but Victorian, in all its rumbustious vitality: town halls, schools, railway stations, shooting lodges, workers' dwellings. Every glen or town will produce one extraordinary building, and the cities show scores, ranging in Edinburgh from Playfair's gigantic Donaldson's School for the Deaf only a few hundred yards from Haymarket, to Robert Lorimer's tiny Italianate St Peter's Church in Morningside, built for Wilde's Dorian Gray.

David Brent`s Building for Caltongate on East Market Street

Why not get the youngsters to reimagine the Caltongate site and on it re-erect some of these often-endangered buildings as its foci, rather as the Holyrood parliament incorporates the venerable Queensberry House – creating a new route from Waverley Station into the Old Town, and an imaginative, working museum of Scots architecture?

By CHRIS HARVIE MSP Scotsman 3rd Sept 08

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

Caltongate Developers Thank Council

The guy outside the City Chambers is saying

"They want to thank the people who made it all possible"

The banner to the left says "Stuff UNESCO" and the banner to the right says

"Cockburn Association - Bring it On"

This excellent cartoon by Frank Boyle in today`s Eve News 28 Aug 08 sums up the mood in Edinburgh yesterday so well

The Times 28 Aug 08 and Crowds Make it another Gold

Unlike the city council leader who doesn`t have a clue what the people of Edinburgh think...

"Councillor Andrew Burns, the city's labour leader, thinks most people in the city would find the research results odd.

He said: "This is very surprising. It is certainly not a description of Edinburgh I recognise."

see Edinburgh a Miserable Place to Live

SNP local councillor knows what`s what, though-

"local councillor David Beckett urged colleagues to take the opportunity to "correct their mistake" and refuse the application.

He said: "The Caltongate plans should have been refused by this council at the first opportunity. "The biggest concern is the effect this will have on the city's World Heritage Status, yet I was told at the last meeting on this subject that it was 'scaremongering' to suggest that this development could cost us that," he said.

He was backed up by Green councillor Steve Burgess, who said the development should at least be delayed until after the Unesco report – which is not expected to be until late next year.

Full article Eve News Article Today and the paper`s editor doesn`t seem to have his ear to the street either -Editorial Today

Bond Says No To Caltongate

007

" Warns that the Capital "could soon" lose its prestigious world heritage status "

Highlighting the ongoing investigation by Unesco into the city's World Heritage Site status, following major development plans such as Caltongate, he warns that Edinburgh "could soon lose" the prestigious title.

Caltongate Developer Manish Chande and business partner Martin Myers

The city's planners should take a leaf out of Copenhagen's book, he suggests, to learn how to preserve a historic landscape.

Although he praises the "imaginative" work of Edinburgh architects Allan Murray, Malcolm Fraser, Richard Murphy, Charlie Sutherland and Charlie Hussey, he deplores the general standard of new buildings springing up across the city.

But has he been briefed by Miss Moneypenny correctly as he does not seem to know the true identity of the villians in the capital......

"Each time I return to the city I am shocked at the mediocre quality of the new architecture," he says.

Full Article Here Evening News 21st Aug 2008

Caltongate Halted!

Hold your horses or your heritage status is at risk,

says the man from Unesco

MAJOR developments in the capital should be halted until an investigation into Edinburgh's World Heritage status is completed, the head of Unesco warned yesterday.

If you haven`t written to the Scottish Ministers yet, then do mention this in your letter and demand the demolitions notices be revoked, and a public inquiry be held. See yesterdays posting on what to do.

Koichiro Matsuura, the director-general of the UN cultural body, believes no more decisions should be taken on key projects like Caltongate and Haymarket until the results of a year-long probe are published.

A team of inspectors will visit the capital in November after Unesco's world heritage committee ordered an investigation into Edinburgh's World Heritage Site.

A report, due to be published in the spring, will recommend whether Edinburgh is placed on Unesco's official "at risk" list of endangered sites.Mr Matsuura told The Scotsman there was mounting concern with Unesco about the impact of major developments in the city and the impact they would have on its skyline.

He said: "Edinburgh's World Heritage Site is very important and it is crucial that its outstanding features are preserved and protected.

"The main trigger for the probe was the city council's decision to approve the £300 million Caltongate scheme, earmarked for land on and around the site of a former bus depot, in the Old Town. Two listed buildings face demolition to make way for a five-star hotel and conference centre, which will have an entrance on the Royal Mile.

Final approval has yet to be given by the council and the Scottish Government.

Just weeks before Unesco's world heritage committee was due to meet, council planners approved the £200 million Haymarket scheme, which involves the creation of a 17-storey five-star hotel development.

Unesco also made clear that its investigation would cover the proposed redevelopment of the St James Centre, which the council is due to rule on for the first time later this year. Widespread fears have been aired about the impact a new landmark building will have on the skyline.

Mr Matsuura's trip to Edinburgh was announced just weeks after the probe into the capital's World Heritage Status was launched. Mr Matsuura said: "I am a bit concerned about the Caltongate development. I saw for myself the site of the development during my tour and was told not to worry too much about the impact it will have, but the big concern will be how it affects the historic skyline.

"The debates about new developments are not just happening in Edinburgh, but we are opposed to anything which would impact on the city's skyline. Modern high-rises should not be built in historic city centres or in areas where they would have a significant impact. Nothing else should be decided on these schemes until our inspectors have visited and reported back.

"A spokesman for Mountgrange, Caltongate's developer, said: "We're not supportive of unnecessary delays in the planning decisions that hold up major investment decisions being made that are important to the economic health of Edinburgh and Scotland.

Haymarket Hotel

"John Nesbitt, managing director of Haymarket developer Tiger, said: "Our proposals have been referred to the Scottish Government following approval from the council in June. Historic Scotland, the agency charged with safeguarding the nation's historic environment, had no objections."

A council spokeswoman said they wanted to keep details of the discussions confidential.

John Graham, Historic Scotland's chief executive, said: "We don't feel we have a part to play in this process any more." Full article by Brian Ferguson here Scotsman 20th Aug 08

The Press Association

Historic Scotland & Caltongate