Features & Reports

Name Ewan Imrie

How old are you? 36

Where were you born?: Born Dundee, but raised in a village called Kemnay near Aberdeen

Which newspaper do you read?: Evening Times

Project: Castlemilk Stables Block

Architect: Elder and Cannon

Location: Castlemilk

Client: Glasgow Building Preservation Trust

Structural engineer: Dewar...

GLASGOW City Council's Development & Regeneration Services have commissioned the first accurate 3D Urban City Model to assist in the planning & development of the city. The model presently covers a considerable section of the city centre & the Clyde waterfront...

Project: Garrison house and grounds

Architect: Lee Boyd

Location: Cumbrae

Client: Cumbrae Community Development Company

Structural engineer: David Narro...

Holmes architects has submitted a full planning application, on behalf of Valad Property Group, for a major commercial mixed-use development on 110 Queen Street, Glasgow. Located in the heart of Glasgow's commercial district and surrounded by mainly A-listed buildings, the...

THE pursuit of architecture in Britain in the 21st century is often enervating, and sometimes almost shockingly satisfying. Submissions, competitions, invitations, fee wrangles, project cancellations and commissions form the sedimentary layers of the professional coalface...

 A-S:Ls Glasgow office has won the competition to design a new £5m Library for the University of Edinburgh at the King's Buildings, and have been commissioned to undertake a separate but related project within the James Clark Maxwell building, to create a new...

The £140 million Estates masterplan for the Robert Gordon University's Garthdee campus will have to be redesigned following RGU's acquisition of additional land across the river from the original site.

The masterplan had been prepared by Edinburgh-based The...

DCM's new offices sits above the Argyll Arcade, over looking Buchanan Street. As one of the contenders for the commission to redesign Buchanan Street in the mid 1990s they surveyed many of the vacant properties on the street. Ten years on they have returned to the same...

A consortium put together by Progress Property Developments is among one of several groups bidding for the lucrative contract to develop GlasgowÕs 2014 Commonwealth Games Village.

Glasgow City Council opened the tender on 26 May, which is open to any company...

East Strathclyde Police has denied reports that it is planning to relocate its headquarters into the east end of Glasgow, although Chief Constable Stephen House has confirmed that the organisation is planning to move from its divisional headquarters at Pitt Street in...

What are the main challenges facing Glasgow?

The first challenge is how we actually achieve a step change in the economic performance of the city. We need to understand what is our economy like and what it will be like in the future. The second...

Val Clugston had only three months to design the interior of Glasgow Caledonian University's landmark Saltire Centre whilst at Curious Orange. Construction slippages ultimately extended that timeframe, but the lessons learned and applied, drawn partly from her own PhD...

This essay was stimulated by two seminars I attended last month. The first, an Urban Renaissance Conference on the Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool and Edinburgh held in University of Glasgow at which the hosts were generally being rounded on as the only European city currently...

Reading Prospect's Edinburgh issue was a strange experience. I see some very different "challenges" to those outlined, with the big underlying issues facing Edinburgh missed or obliquely-referenced.

For me the first big challenge is the centralised and...

Union Street Properties, the developer that has been hoping to redevelop Alexander Greek Thomson's Eygptian Halls in Glasgow, has recently purchased the upper floors of the 60,000 square ft block giving the group complete control of the building. Glasgow City Council issued...

Leading architect Malcolm Fraser has spoken out about the rising influence of planners in the design process - claiming architects are being usurped by planners, in effect marginalising the once valued role of the profession.

Writing in this issue he singles...

Scotland's economy, we are routinely informed by politicians, is in future to be knowledge-based, a condition within which the nation's well educated citizens will be able to apply their skills to high added value, activity and earn substantially more than those in other...

Rem Koolhaas, director of OMA, was in Glasgow recently to visit Gartnavel Hospital to identify a site for his proposed Maggie's centre.

Koolhaas spent a couple of hours with the client and the estates department of the hospital trust to identify a site close to the...

Last month Prospect looked at the urban design challenges facing Edinburgh. This issue looks at a broader level at the key tasks facing Glasgow. Some of the issues confronting Glasgow, in particular the east end, are not susceptible to an architectural or even a planning...

Glasgow City Council has confirmed that its architects will be moved from its Land and Environment department into the Development and Regeneration Services team.

The Council has denied that the move will reduce the salary rates for architects which have been in...

Fifteen years ago I had a studio on London Road smack bang in the middle of the Barras Market and five minutes from George Square. I say a studio but it was more a squat in what was a semi derelict former warehouse. I rented the space from a dodgy bloke whose business card...

Following recent speculation, it has now been reported that solar lily pads are likely to become a fixture on Glasgow's River Clyde.

The proposal has come from Peter Richardson of ZM Architecture, whose proposal to use the pads as floating solar pads to power the...

THE landscape of the city of Glasgow may be changing in ways less obvious Ð but equally as profound Ð than the arched bridges, media hubs and glassed hotels of the riverside and city centre, in part due to the quietly persistent and far reaching work of Citybuilding...

Glasgow's famous 'squinty bridge' is set to reopen after six months of repairs, the city council has announced.

In January, the Clyde Arc Bridge had been open for just over a year when a cable snapped. A subsequent inspection revealed a dangerous stress fracture....

The Glasgow School of Art Campus - with iconic Rennie Mackintosh school at its centrepiece - is to be redeveloped, provided that a business case can be argued to justify the funding package of £50 million that is being offered.

Edinburgh revisited This is an extended version of the article byTrevor Davies that appeared in Prospect 131

I was elected to the City Council in October 2001 at a by-election, half way or more through the life of that Council. All the councillors were happily...

How good governance leads to better place making In 2004 we, in association with the Carnyx Group, organisers of the Scottish Design Awards, were the first in the UK to create a PLACE MAKING AWARD. This has been running for the past four years and it reflects the importance...

City of Edinburgh Council design and planning team have their work cut out for them, both in their day to day planning decisions, and their overarching design strategy. The appointment of Sir Terry Farrell as the city’s architectural ‘design guru’ –...

My tenure has witnessed a period of considerable change in governance both at local and national levels, as well as many personnel changes. It has been a period in which Scotland has gained substantial political independence, with significant economic changes in its capital...

Sir Terry Farrell was appointed to the honorary position of the City of Edinburgh Council’s first “City Design Champion” in February 2004. His precise role was rather a mystery to those, such as myself, then in opposition and not a member of the Planning...

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive states that by January 2009 all countries within the European Union has to put in place systems to allow assessors to undertake Energy Performance Certificates for all buildings, both domestic and non-domestic, when either...

Despite the plethora of guidance and policy, it is clear that there continues to be misconceptions regarding the process and product of master planning and urban design. There are too many instances when “master plans” are presented which are little more than...

I like what Bill Gates said about predicting the future. We overestimate what we think we will achieve in the short-term and under estimate what we will achieve in the long-term. So to with master plans. We should be careful not to expect a quick fix from the master...

Architecture has always had something of an identity crisis – being in part science, part art; a mix of abstract ideas bound within the physical reality of bricks and mortar. The architect uses wide ranging skills and understanding in many subjects; history,...

It’s sensible to expect theoretical ideas to face harsh and unforgiving trials before they become a reality. Many would even say that criticism should be encouraged, as testing an idea openly will give it a better chance of success than if developed in isolation...

The 19 acre Quartermile is the most impressive construction site in Edinburgh at present. Due for completion in 2012 by which point it will house 2000 residents and 3000 workers. The former hospital site has been master-planned by Foster Associates to provide a mix of...

Edinburgh’s historic environment – its buildings, and monuments, its places and spaces – is incomparable and is, without doubt, worthy of its world heritage status. And yet an all-too-familiar argument has recently broken out in the press and in the...

Today we appreciate Cockburn Street both as an integral part of Edinburgh’s Old Town and a distinctive aesthetic and social environment in its own right. As a picturesque architectural fantasy, it owes as much to its sloping, serpentine course as to the conspicuously...

Many people’s reaction to the news that BDP is opening a new Edinburgh office is not “why?” but “why haven’t you before now?” This reaction is hardly surprising given that the practice has a long association with the city through a...

This is Edinburgh’s unluckiest building. It was once home to Scotland’s largest PLC: the mighty Distillers Company. Yet almost as soon as it was completed, Distillers ceased to exist. It was bought over by Guinness, and Diageo emerged from the shotgun marriage;...

“Good evening, my name is Riccardo Marini, I am an alcoholic” – If I was, and wanted to get better, the first step to recovery would be admitting to the fact, hence the introduction to all AA meetings. Admitting that there is a problem is sometimes the...

Over the last few years the Design Champion initiative has contributed to the debate on connecting up Glasgow and Edinburgh to form either a larger metropolis or a regional city. But whatever it is called, it is clear that there needs to be closer links between these two...

Throughout the world the post industrial landscapes of docks and dockyards has changed beyond recognition, presenting new development opportunities for all kinds of cities. Edinburgh is no exception, but its waterfront has the rare advantage of being arranged in an arc very...

Princes Street is one of the most spectacular streets in Europe. Its great drama lies in its setting facing the castle and the Old Town, together with its gardens, which have panoramic views, its south facing orientation and its generous, boulevard-style width. It is a...

YOU either have it or you don’t. Work in China that is, and depending upon which side of that line an architect stands appears also to be the basis on which their ethical positions are predicated. For Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, architects of the Beijing...

In the old, pre-Thatcher days of trade union power, the mention of a ‘work to rule’ was a well recognised threat to the effective functioning of the systems and processes that governed daily life. Put simply, if following the rules meant that things ground to a...

The visitor’s image of Edinburgh is of a great historical city with an astonishing array of urban design set pieces at its heart. For the most part it seems to be a complete city and its centre is well known as a world heritage site. Yet though this is an amazing...

The last quarter of 2007 saw the impact of the so called credit crunch bite directly where it was most visible, in the residential housing market. Speculative lending by US banks spiralled into a rapid, panicky deceleration that resulted in a loss of financial confidence...

Waverley is a remarkable piece of town planning. The notion of building a railway line along the bottom of Princes Street Gardens has created one of the most exciting and dramatic entrances by rail to any great city. As you arrive and emerge from the station, you move...

We feel there’s quite a bit of unfinished business on Lothian Road. The Exchange project has almost been completed and the effect of the former goods yard that acted as a barrier between Morrison Street, Lothian Road, Princes Street and Rutland Square has been...

Picardy Place is a depressingly triumphant example of the erosion of place through increase in traffic movement.

Often a place forms at the intersection of several streets, as it did with Picardy Place. Originally, this was a natural meeting place with a cathedral,...

There is no doubt that the tram and its integration into modern Edinburgh is going to be of the most challenging urban design and planning projects in the city for 100 years or more. Its difficulties are similar to that of bringing the railway into Edinburgh in the...

Though the Haymarket has always been central Edinburgh’s westernmost station, it has until recently been almost a suburban stop. Lothian Road was the first railway station in the city centre until it moved to Waverley, and Haymarket was always secondary to Waverley....

There are many examples of excellent initiatives across Europe (and indeed the world) of cities that have an urban exhibition centre that combines historical understanding with being a showcase for ongoing events and new possibilities. Among these are NAI in Rotterdam,...

This is an excellent example of how the Design Champion initiative successfully promoted the involvement of urban design skills within Edinburgh’s architectural and design community. The Design Champion’s aim is to broaden professional designers' involvement in...

I still have all my pantone pens, airbrush, .25 & .5 Rotring pens and even an AO drawing board...somewhere...I think. I know, how old fashioned. Truth is somewhere in the transition of architecture from pen to mouse something of the personal craft of art has...

It has been over four years since the Urban Design Group, of which I was a member, recommended the appointment of a City Design Champion for Edinburgh. Ambitions were high: serious urban scholars such as Spain’s Rafael Moneo, as well non-architects such as academics...

Jim MacKinnon heads up the new Directorate for the Built Environment, which now embraces planning, building standards and the Architecture Policy Unit. MacKinnon trained first as a geographer at Edinburgh and then studied planning on a part-time basis at Strathclyde. He has...