Scotland+ Venice

PAST + FUTUREBEING THERETHE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

is credited to the following contributors and guests:

James GrimleyDirector at Reiach and Hall Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor at The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Chris Lowry Lecturer in Architecture, The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Fergus DavidThe Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Sophie CrockerThe Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Irvine WelshScottish Novelist, playwright and short story writer

Toby PatersonArtist

BEING THERE, THE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Introduction: The Fierce and Beautiful World

Chronologies of three practices

Scottish Provident by Rowand Anderson Kininmonth and Paul

Housing in Leith by Alison and Hutchison

A Fresh Angle - Housing by Alison and Hutchison - Reflections by Toby Paterson

Housing in Muirhouse by Rowand Anderson Kininmonth and Paul

Recollection by Irvine Welsh

Gala Fairydean by PeterWomersley

Churches on the Periphery

Conclusion

List of Illustrations

Credits

3

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

22

24

26

27

This publication covers Edinburgh and the Southeast of Scotland. Due to the large number of potentially relevant buildings, we have narrowed the width of our gaze to look simply at works built during the 1960’s by three extinct architectural practices; Peter Womersley, Rowand Anderson Kininmonth and Paul, and Alison and Hutchison. Only a handful of modernist buildings in Scotland are known outside Scotland – some of the projects featured here are barely known out-with their local communities. Like virtually all modernist buildings of the era, the intentions of the architects and the reaction by the public were often completely misaligned. Through exposure, engagement and use, the projects now stimulate topophilic, as well as topophobic responses – familiarity breeds affection as well as contempt. We comment on the current dissonance in Scottish Architecture and ask if the needs of our collective memory are effecting a timely re-evaluation and re-presentation of our recent architectural past. Many believe that the buildings of the 1960's have failed - but as roger Connah said: 'failure isn't always quite what we expect it to be.'

E D I TO R I A L

CONTENTS

PAST + FUTURE 1

2 BEING THERE

THE FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD

LIVING, WORKING, PLAYING AND PRAYING IN THE BUILDINGS OF 1960s SCOTLAND

On a recent visit to Lisbon we ‘discovered’ the Sagrado Coracao de Jesus Church on Rua Camilo Castelo Branco, designed by Nuno Teotonio Pereira and Nuno Portas, which in turn led to further discoveries in areas like Olivais on the outskirts of the city. The buildings and architects are virtually unknown in the United Kingdom which led the team to ask, “If we didn’t know about such talented architects abroad because they haven’t been widely published, who are the unsung modern architects and buildings we should bring to the attention of visitors to Scotland?”

This paper discusses buildings designed by three relatively unknown architectural practices in Scotland from the 1960s; Alison and Hutchison, Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul, and Peter Womersley. The buildings include housing, a football ground, churches and an office - scenes of everyday life built during a time of architectural innovation and optimism. In response to the buildings, the team below has produced a varied body of work.

Chris Lowry, a lecturer at Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) has responded by producing a series of sciagraphic studies of the buildings. They clearly capture the rigour, control and compositional skill of the original architects employed in designing the buildings.

Glasgow based Artist Toby Paterson provides a subjective response through a series of sketches produced whilst exploring the housing blocks of north east Edinburgh and supplements the sketches with recollections/reflections on his time spent in Leith twenty-five years ago.

Irvine Welsh, highly acclaimed Scottish author of piercing works of fiction that are simultaneously brutal and side-splitting, recalls an eventful childhood visit to “Terror Tower” when he lived in Muirhouse .

Fergus Davis and Sophie Crocker, Master’s Students at ESALA, sought out invaluable historic documents and extracts from hard to find publications that provided much of the material for the enclosed texts.

James Grimley, a practicing architect and director at Reiach and Hall in Edinburgh, set the scene for the research, photographed the buildings, provided much of the text and collated the responses of the other team members.

“Only the superficial judge the real spirit of a city by its well-known avenues and its public squares, obligingly advertised by the tourist agencies. For old residents and thoughtful visitors, a city reveals itself most often in the outskirts where the tourist buses do not go. There, away from the noise and the congestion inside the city limits, you can feel the city’s enduring quality. The outskirts reveal the true meaning of the center more than the center shows the meaning of the outskirts. The coarse, sorrowing life of the outskirts is always more open, more revealing, than monuments or many-storied piles of glass and steel”

Introduction to Andrei Platonov’s The Fierce and Beautiful World

PAST + FUTURE 3

CHRONOLOGIES OF THE THREE PRACTICES

R O WA N D A N D E R S O N , K I N I N M O N T H A N D PAU L

P E T E R W O M E R S L E Y

1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962

A L I S O N A N D H U TC H I S O N

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

4 BEING THERE

1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969

From 1950-1970 some of Scotland’s most talented architects designed remarkable social housing, churches, offices and schools in and around Edinburgh. Housing schemes by Alison and Hutchison, Basil Spence, Eric Hall, Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul - poweful, brutalist compositions, living cheek by jowl with the terraces and tenements on the edges of the historic city. The Banana Flats in Leith and Martello Court in Muirhouse were visionary buildings designed during a golden era of social confidence and architectural idealism.

Over the last thirty years the buildings, particularly the housing, have been vilified as manifestations of all that was wrong with modernist architecture. Contemporary Scottish society is currently demolishing brutalist housing, health care buildings and schools on an unprecedented scale and some brilliant buildings have been lost. It’s not that the buildings are no longer useful - many of them were well designed and, with appropriate

investment, could have lasted for many more decades. Simply put - we are losing the buildings because the private sector now provides much of the finance for the delivery of many public buildings in Scotland (are they then still public buildings?), and refurbishing existing buildings doesn’t give the same level of financial return as building from new. But the problem for the buildings is deeper than fiscal consideration. The Scottish public have little sympathy for ‘Modernism’ and often regard it as ‘bad’ when applied to buildings, and ‘particularly bad’ when applied to towers or slab blocks of housing. The tower and slab blocks have come to represent geographically concentrated levels of poverty that Scottish society prefers not to dwell on.

The buildings in this paper represent the efforts of a talented generation of architects that we barely remember. Some of the buildings are world class. Rarely do students of architecture in Scottish Universities look at, or learn any lessons from any of these buildings.

PAST + FUTURE 5

SCOTTISH PROVIDENT BUILDING

5th May 2014. Monday morning, 5:30am

Taxi Driver - where are you off to at this time in the morning?

To photograph the Scottish Provident Building in St Andrew’s Square before it’s demolished.

Taxi Driver: They should demolish it - it’s horrible - like that St James’ Centre - I wish they’d demolish that too.

Some people like it - they say it’s one of the best modern buildings in Edinburgh.

Taxi Driver: I don’t know why - it’s horrible.

On the 19th of June 2014 demolition work started on the Scottish Provident Building...

The building, like most of the buildings in this paper, has divided opinion ever since it was built. Architects generally consider it to have been one of the finest works of 1960s modernism in Scotland and it was recently voted number 8 in the list of 100 best modern buildings in Scotland by readers of the architectural magazine Prospect.

Whilst the demolition of the building was being photographed weeks later, a passer-by commented; “I just don’t understand why they don’t design buildings to look like the Georgian buildings - even if it was only the front of the buildings it would be better than all this glass. Why did they always have to build them in concrete?” I point out that it was clad with a particularly beautiful stone. The contractor who is responsible for the demolition informed me that the stone is gneiss, a word of German origin meaning that it ‘sparkles’. It didn’t sparkle most of the time on the Scottish Provident building because the elevation faced north. At a recent public consultation event regarding the design of the façade that will eventually stand on the site, a planning consultant stated that he had ‘detested’ the building and was delighted it was being demolished. Of course, the demolition of the building and the restructuring of the site are not driven by any consideration of architectural merit, ideology or taste - they are being driven by the logic of capitalism. At the end of the day, capital did not consider the building favourably and therefore it failed.

Modernism has never been well absorbed in Edinburgh. There is a strong and active conservation lobby (interestingly, architects and conservationists are united in condemning the destruction of the Scottish Provident Building). A commonly forwarded

argument against modernist design is: it doesn’t fit, because it’s not in keeping with the neighbouring buildings. Edinburgh has a very strong urban image brand. In Almost Everything Caruso St John describe Edinburgh as a city of stone where there is; “a strong expression of cultural consensus within the built fabric.” True, but the reality is that a vast amount of the fabric of central Edinburgh is pastiche and most visitors to the city would struggle to distinguish the authentic from the fake. Nowadays it seems hard to believe that anyone ever questioned the magnificence of Georgian Edinburgh but John Ruskin, author of the effusive paean The Stones of Venice, wrote at length of the “dull and monotonous stones” of Georgian Edinburgh arguing that Neoclassical architecture was morally wrong. In a lecture delivered to an Edinburgh audience in 1853 he dismissed the repetitiveness of the Neoclassical streets, stating “you do not feel interested in hearing the same thing over and over again;- why do you suppose you can ever feel interested in seeing the same thing over and over again? There is no law of right which consecrates dullness.” The Scottish Provident building was not the same thing and it was not dull. It’s designers skillfully respected its role as a part of an inhabited urban wall, controlled its dimensions and balanced its horizontal and vertical forces sublimely. It was strikingly different and will be sadly missed.

Later that day, another taxi driver said; “Scottish Provident - I didn’t like it much - not my kind of thing, I prefer the stone Georgian buildings - but other people know better about this stuff. You can’t live in the past, but we should keep the best bits.”

PUBLIC PERCEPTION v ARCHITECTURAL ABSTRACTIONTHE TAXI DRIVER’S WISH

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

6 BEING THERE

PAST + FUTURE 7

HOUSING IN LEITH

ALISON AND HUTCHINSON

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

Throughout the 1960s, the decade that, “History must surely record as one of the most dismal periods in Scottish housing development”1, in a concentrated area of Leith, in north eastern Edinburgh, Alison and Hutchison and Partners designed a remarkable assortment of experimental housing. Leith is a fiercly proud, traditionally working class area, that until 1920 was a seperate town in its own right. It is now home to a varied community of middle and working class residents who can access a variety of bars and Michelin starred restaurants. Amongst the predominantly Victorian, sandstone tenements, Alison and Hutchison designed developments at the Kirkgate, Giles Street, Coltfield Lane, Linksview House, Tolbooth Wynd, Couper Street, Thomas Fraser Court, John Russell Court, and - directly across the road from the exclusive members club The Whisky Society - Cables Wynd House. In a concentrated geographical area, the variety of typological output in such a brief period of time is astonishing; two-storey terraces, ten-storey slab blocks, twenty-storey tower blocks, three-storey access decks, all more or less successfully placed in to the heart of Leith. The designs are collective and optimistic, despite being suffocated by poor budgets and bureaucratic control (Scotland invested less than any other European Country in Social Housing thorough the 1950-70s)2.

The most notorious of the buildings is the ten-storey block at Cables Wynd, knicknamed the “Banana Flats” due to its curved plan. The fact that it contains over two hundred council owned flats in an area that has seen persistent efforts at gentrification since the 1980s is mildly comforting given that in 2013/14; 36,457 households made homeless applications to their local council in Scotland, with 29,326 of those households accepted by their local authority as being homeless or potentially homeless. In the City of Edinburgh, 3,930 households were assessed as homeless in 2013-14 3. Since 1998 the Council has had to sell almost 6000 houses to tenants in Edinburgh. So far, only four properties have been sold in Cables Wynd House, for prices that are a twentieth of the prices of the architecturally

questionable, developer-built houses across the road. In A New Kind of Bleak, Owen Hatherley

describes the Banana Flats as “the architectural event of Leith... a fine, even heroic work of architecture on a magnificent scale.” He’s right. Whilst nearby Linksview House is Unité derived in many respects, the Banana Flats, with its faceted curve two-thirds of the way along its 150 metre length, are more indebted to Le Corbusier’s Algiers Obus Plan from 1932-42. Both blocks lack the social condenser spaces, rooftop pools, pharmacies, barbers, nursery and restaurants included Le Corbusier’s designs. Perhaps it doesn’t matter as the schemes are located in the historic heart of bustling Leith, not on a peripheral estate, but as the December 1966 issue of the Architect’s Journal stated in reference to the tower block and deck access housing at Coupar Street “It is regrettable that the colour and vitality of a few shops were not included in this scheme, which without them, is undoubtedly the poorer.”

The Couper Street development, including the twenty-storey towers of Persevere Court and Citadel Court, were part of a scheme to replace the slums that had originally occupied the site. It was intitially well received and appreciated by its tenants. However, within five to ten years, the ‘wrong kind of tenants’ were put in by the Council. In Glendinning and Muthesius’ book Tower Block, a former tenant describes the almost total breakdown of social order in the block that lead to a ‘hell in the sky’ that is a setting for suicide and murder - Victorian, sandstone, tenement slums replaced by modern, concrete, high-rise slums.

Many housing schemes by Alison and Hutchison have been associated with deprivation and anti-social behaviour - the Banana Flats are home to the anti-hero “Sick Boy” in Irvine Welsh’s modern Scottish Classic novel Trainspotting and recently a tenant’s angry pit bull mauled five other residents in the block. No matter how well the architects in the UK learnt the lessons of the European masters, no amount of compositional skill, typological or diagrammatic reference on

behalf of the designers was going to sort out the deprivation.

In the book Utopia on Trial, a research unit from King’s College London led by Alice Coleman attempted to ‘prove’ that bad design causes antisocial behaviour - a point also made in Reiach and Hurd’s Building Scotland. In Architecture Depends, Jeremy Till points out that Margaret Thatcher’s government took up Coleman’s ideas because “not only did they dissociate symptoms of urban decay from societal causes (poverty, social division, collapse of public infrastructure) but they then tied them in with the failures of the era of state housing, and so by association with the failure of socialism”. Another reading of Coleman’s book could lead one to believe that Thacher’s government were blaming architects for the ills of the housing scheme.

Mark Thomas from Shelter states: “It is sometimes suggested that social housing is somehow a cause of deprivation. We wouldn’t see it like that. We would see it as a vital safety net that actually provides people with an affordable, stable base from which they can go on and prosper, and build up other aspects of their life, without which it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to do so.”4

Things that have helped, such as a concierge, a newly installed heating system, and a proper maintenance regime, have gone a long way to improving the experience of living in these buildings. The obvious area for further improvements are in the public realm.

1. Douglas Niven, The Development of Housing in Scotland pp129

2. ibid

3. Information provided by Keith Robertson at Fresh Start. See also http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing_policy/get_your_housing_facts/city_of_

edinburgh

4. Owen Jones - Chavs, The Demonisation of the Working Class pp207

8 BEING THERE

HOUSING IN LEITH

PAST + FUTURE 9

Not that I knew it at the time, but I first became acquainted with the work of Alison and Hutchison in 1990 at the age of sixteen whilst involved in two parallel activities; one being something of a loose, collective and ongoing exploration of the built up areas of central Scotland for the purposes of skateboarding; the other, a more structured experience of a fine art foundation course. The latter took place at Leith School of Art, just over the road from West Cromwell Street and its ensemble of deck access and high-rise 1960s housing. This introduction was prior to the crystalising of my view of the built environment into something more that just a passing interest, but the presence of the twin towers of Persevere Court and Citadel Court nevertheless made their visual presence felt.

Leith undoubtedly had an ‘edge’ to it at this point in time, feeling palpably different to the Edinburgh I arrived into every morning at Waverley Station. It seemed to me to have more in common with my native Glasgow than with the rarified squares beyond the top of Leith Walk. Certainly, the cultural overcast of misguided faux-working class romanticism I was beginning to feel the need to

A FRESH ANGLE

ALISON AND HUTCHINSON’S HOUSING IN LEITH

TEXT BY TOBY PATERSON

escape from under threatened to stereotype this place just as much as it might Govan or Maryhill. Contrary to prevailing middle-class prejudices and despite being dressed preposterously, I never encountered the slightest bit of bother on my Leith forays, this only reinforcing in me an intuitive suspicion of received wisdom about the safety or otherwise of places with a supposed reputation.

The part of Leith where Alison and Hutchison’s housing is clustered is rich and varied, it’s distinctly non-orthogonal street pattern and mix of building types, materials and scale offering an unexpected intimacy. It is into this mix that the architects added their 1960s work; work that, regardless of its actual scale, still manages to feel more like intelligent in-fill than tabula rasa. The towers I looked at every morning in 1990 do not dominate; indeed, I now see that everything sits at a gentle angle to everything else, Victorian tenement to deck access flats, tower blocks to millennial apartment development in a way that achieves density without oppression. The resulting compositions are part design and part chance; these processes played out over the course of more than a century, their perspectives offering great visual and spatial variety. Even the massive torqued slab of Cables Wynd House has its surprises, not least the illusion that it seems much less massive than its vital statistics tell us it is.

I think I absorbed something from these geometries, they somehow fed into my teenage appetite for Expressionism and they showed me something I now realise I hadn’t previously seen. In coming from Glasgow, I knew modern architecture in housing terms to be either the abortive fresh start of the inner city Comprehensive Development Area or the vast, unknowable peripheral scheme (the

latter being generally the rule in Edinburgh too). These buildings are a clever and underrated attempt to add cumulatively to the city, with the expectation that further additions will follow. With hindsight they seem less tainted by period rhetoric and ideology, and in equal measure by subsequent backlashes; instead, simply fulfilling their remit and providing both living space and a sense of place.

Sitting between the extremes of the potentially precious products of the ‘artist-architect’ and the crushing homogeneity of rote system-built sprawl, they’re visually interesting but not iconic. They’re formally bold yet, with perhaps a few exceptions (the daring but obviously problematic single-storey ‘bridge’ at Tollbooth Wynd for example), liveable. For the sake of both their residents and the wider city, their currently overlooked value needs to be better recognised. They should, as I think their designers intended, be permitted to become a meaningful strata within Scotland’s rich architectural geology.

10 BEING THERE

A FRESH ANGLE

PAST + FUTURE 11

An area that has seen little attempt at gentrification, but considerable effort at regeneration, and that also contains a menagerie of architectural typologies is Muirhouse in north Edinburgh. At 23-storeys, Martello Court, designed by Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul in the early 1960s, is Edinburgh’s highest residential tower block.

Tower blocks are an endangered species in Edinburgh after a relentless programme of demolition that has seen towers in Leith, Gracemount, Sighthill and Broomhouse blown up with all the attendant TV crews and school children drafted in to push the detonator buttons. In Glasgow, a recent, tasteless suggestion to blow up high-rises at the start of the Commonwealth games gave credence to Lynsey Hanley’s idea that the phrase “tower blocks” has been larded with even more negative meaning than “Council Estate”1. Just as Victorian literates baulked at the Spartan harshness of 19th century factories and workers housing, so late 20th century Britain generated a hegemony of demonisation towards overtly poor, working class environments. In particular, high-rises and slab blocks. In Militant Modernism, Owen Hatherley points out that council estates built in “woolly trad-modernism” contain as much violence poverty and desolation as any overtly modern estate. In Edinburgh most people can’t describe the difference between Pilton and Muirhouse, but the difference in architectural typologies are striking for anyone interested to see. In amongst the mass houses built by developers like Wimpey there are some architectural gems, quietly existing, like their residents, on sites out of mind.

The buildings represent a time when a strong political left still existed and influenced public institutions and expenditure; when, as a country, we readily understood class divisions. Then, in the ’70s, Margaret Thatcher vigorously promoted the right to buy council houses, and in 1997 John Prescott told us “we’re all middle class now”, further segregating and demonising the poorest who could not afford to buy their council houses.

Anuerin Bevan, the father of Council Housing in the UK, stated, “Segregation by social class in housing is a wholly evil thing”, but Edinburgh has a long history of segregating by class. The Georgian New Town, built from 1766-1840, is an

architectural wonder, built for the rich and admired the world over. But even it has been home to poverty and slums - Jamaica Street, St Stephen Street, Cumberland Street in the late ’60s and early ’70s - thus questioning the bluntness of Alice Coleman’s or Hurd and Reiach’s assertions about housing typologies creating bad behaviour.

To what extent is it possible to dissociate architecture from the social reality of its existence? To an architect the proportion, composition, and diagrammatic purity of Martello Court or the Banana Flats is impressive; however, to a teenager in Muirhouse or Leith, the buildings could be read as being aggressive and hostile because they represented trouble. They generate a topophobic reaction in response to the tales of aggression and disfunction that circulated around the buildings. But as Toby Paterson has stated about the buildings of this era “they were not dysfunctional in and of themselves, they had simply acquired the label of failure by association.”2

Like most social housing schemes built in the ’60s, the problems for Martello Court didn’t really start until a few years after construction was complete. Soon though, the police were constantly being called to deal with violence, prostitution and vandalism, eventually leading to all the tenants being driven out of the building. It was saved by being too expensive to demolish and then in 1979 it was bought by a property developer who sold all of the flats to first time buyers. A defensive perimeter wall was built around the base, a porter was employed, closed circuit was installed, the exterior was given a coloured coat of paint and a residents association was established in one of the flats. Vandalism greatly reduced and the epithet of ‘Terror Tower’ faded away.

KININMONTH IN MUIRHOUSE

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

1. Lynsey Hanley, Estates, An Intimate History, pp.972. Toby Paterson, Consensus and Collapse, pp.116

12 BEING THERE

PAST + FUTURE 13

MARTELLO COURTTEXT BY IRVINE WELSH

I grew up in Muirhouse Avenue, which is actually very close to Martello Court, but to kids from the top end of the scheme, it seemed far away, a sinister sentry that watched over Muirhouse like a nightclub bouncer flanked by its two smaller sidekicks, one of which was Fidra Court, if I remember correctly.

It gained it’s ‘Terror Tower’ reputation as a focal point for all the disaffected youth of the area, who were drawn to it by its sheer size and scale, compared to the rest of the (relatively) low rise scheme. It was rumoured that the Mental Drylaw street gang had an initiation ceremony which involved climbing over the balustrades and swinging into the balconies below. I suspect that this was an urban myth, which probably gained currency through a couple of individual acts of bravery/stupidity.

The only time I recall being inside Martello Court was when four of us went to see a friend of a friend who lived on the 22nd or 21st floor. After the visit, we decided that we would run down the stairs instead of getting the lift, and we started storming down them, picking up momentum as we went. Unfortunately one of the landings was smeared with human excrement and my mate Joe, who was in the lead, put his hand in a load of it on the bannister. It was a disgusting experience, even for gross wee boys. I remember (bizarre now, but this is how you think as kids) him washing it off in a broken sewer outside.

I would imagine the excrement had been put there by somebody who didn’t live in the building - these were the days before stair entry phones and security systems. If any building ever needed one of these, it’s Martello Court.”

14 BEING THERE

MARTELLO COURT

PAST + FUTURE 15

At Gala Fairydean, a local is having a cigarette beside the Netherdale stand. Inside, dedicated fans are having Sunday pints under the retrofitted, mock tudor, timber beamed soffit in the bar. Last week they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the stand with a game against East Fife FC - the team they played in a “Glamour Friendly” arranged for the opening of the stand in 1964. The local press described the game as “a rip-roaring match, pulsating with excitement.” The Fairydean won the match 4-2.

The government agency - Historic Scotland - have recently ‘upgraded’ the statutory listing status of the stand to Category ‘A’ and would like to see the building restored to its original condition. It would involve reinstating elaborate metal turnstiles and reconfiguring the bar area. The bartender recalls a story of how shortly after the stand opened the football club changed the position of the bar in the lounge so that it would work better. Upon hearing of the inferred insult to his design, a furious Peter Womersley stormed into the bar and demanded it be restored to it’s original juxtaposition, then threatened to take club to court unless they undid the ‘damage’ they had done to his masterpiece.

That all happened over a thousand games ago, at a time when a pint of beer cost 8 pence and the cost of admission to the game was about the same. According to The Office for National Statistics, average wages in Britain have fallen, relative to inflation, by over 8% since 1964. In the same period inflation has been 1,728%, whilst the

average price of admission to a premier league football match has risen by 12,000%, effectively excluding many fans from the stadiums. Little of elite footballs’ wealth trickles down to grassroots level, so the £5 admission price to the grounds in the lower leagues helps to ensure that football spectating remains an affordable pastime, and grounds such as Netherdale, centres of social comradery.

Netherdale follows the traditional football ground model with a grandstand to one side of the pitch and grass banks forming the other three sides. The design of the stand incorporated two turnstile houses at each end, one for admission to the ground and the other to the stand, reflecting the social ethnology of a traditional football ground - where the directors and middle class audience were annexed to the expensive seats in the stand whilst the larger working class audience stood on the terraces1. It is a refreshing design given the tendency of modern grounds to all look monotonously similiar with the exception of the colour of the painted steelwork and the seats being in the teams home colours. In the UK, the architectural briefs of safety, sightlines, access to toilets and a “cheap as possible” mentality, have become an excuse for designing indistinct sheds at all but a few grounds in the United Kingdom.

In the chapter Football and the Emotions: Topophilia and Topophobia, Guilianotti describes the deep affections that football supporters feel towards their team’s football stands and terraces. With

topophilia, spectators associate the football ground with the team to the extent that while the architectural quality is of tertiary importance at best, the ground, however indistinct, accumulates the supporters collective memories. The club’s founders, past players, major victories, horrible defeats, taunting chants and proud songs all form part of a series of experiences that bind the supporters together and engender a ‘quasi-religious passion’ for the club and the ground. That the Netherdale Stand was funded through ticket sales for a local lottery further enhanced its connection to its community. Perhaps the biggest encouragement for Scottish Modernism is the additional value, over and above the standard topophilic response, the football club and supporters place on the stand due to the fact that it is so admired by many in the wider world.

Graeme McIver, the Club secretary notes; “The stand is a constant source of conversation for both our fans and visitors alike. Since I became Secretary I always like to discuss the stand with visiting committees and supporters.

It would be fair to say opinions are mixed... the marmite effect... people either love it or hate it!

However, even amongst those who think its a bit of Stalinist brutalism I think there remains a degree of respect for its individuality... there is nothing else like it. There are very few other football stands anywhere that generate as much debate and discussion... and that’s what I love about it!”

MODERN IN THE BORDER REGION

GALA FAIRYDEAN, PETER WOMERSELY

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

1. Guilianotti, Football a Sociology of the Global Game, pp68

16 BEING THERE

PAST + FUTURE 17

18 BEING THERE

PAST + FUTURE 19

S P A R T A N SGALA FAIRYDEAN 1 - 2

09 AUGUST, 2014

20 BEING THERE

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITYGALA FAIRYDEAN 4 - 0

03 SEPTEMBER, 2014

PAST + FUTURE 21

During the 1960s both Rowand, Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul, and Alison and Hutchison were involved in the design of churches located on the periphery of Edinburgh and it’s outlying towns. RAKP at Brucefield in Whitburn and Craigsbank in Costorphine, A&H at St Gabriel’s in Prestonpans and St Andrew’s in Livingston. The churches share taxonomies - the use of curved walls to create drama, innovative use of daylight, the conceptual use of metaphor, and a debt to Le Corbusier at Ronchamp. The churches form the final piece of the current study.

The Church at Craigsbank by Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul was completed in 1967 and is now ‘A’ listed by Historic Scotland. It has a square plan with seats on three sides, stepping down to the alter. The form of the hall is an abstraction of a hollow in a hillside, the green carpet represents the grass - a metaphoric reference to the

CHURCHES BY ROWAND ANDERSON KININMONTH AND PAUL, AND ALISON AND HUTCHISON

CHURCHES ON THE PERIPHERY

TEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

22 BEING THERE

Coventers (Scottish Presbyterians who resisted the imposition of Episcopalian bishops by the English based Crown into the Church of Scotland) who held illegal, open air services, hidden in the hollows and ravines of the nearby Pentland Hills. It’s a serious space, worthy of its listing and recently refurbished by LDN architects.

A church should be simultaneously uplifting and a place of peace. A place where the interaction of space and light, brought to a symbolic spiritual climax, combines with a religious collective memory to generate a topophilic response within the congregation. Sadly for St Gabriel’s in Prestonpans by Alison and Hutchison, 1965 - and Scottish society as a whole - some buildings also generate a topophobic reaction amongst some members of the community. St Gabriel’s was too frequently subject to sectarian vandalism, arson attacks and abusive graffiti throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Thankfully the

priest, Father Jim, says that the vandalism is now a rare event.

Although somewhat detached from its site, St Gabriel’s is austere, yet playful and has a strong, morphic form representing a fish sitting amongst nondescript domestic neighbours. The congregation enter from the north-western, low end of the building, into the darkness, and move towards the light. The simple domestic scaled windows collect the sun and daylight and direct it towards the eastern end wall, as do the west facing skylights, to provide a powerful focus on the alter and the Crucifix. Most sources of light are hidden as you enter the dark end of the building apart from a continuous strip of window separating the walls from the black terrazzo flooring giving an ethereal quality to the space. The building literally wraps itself around its congregation.

The building is dedicated to St Gabriel of

Our Lady of Sorrows, an Italian Priest born in 1838.He died from tuberculosis at the age of 24 in Isola del Gran Sasso, in the province of Teramo, Italy. He is a patron saint of students and every March many thousands of school students visit his tomb 100 days before their expected graduation day and pray him in order to achieve good grades.

As the building approaches its 50th anniversary it seems, in a way, appropriate that St Gabriel’s, from Prestonpans has become a subject for study that visits Italy.

We wish thank Margot Brown at Craigsbank Church, the congregation of St Gabriel’s and Fr Jim Smith in particular for their assistance.

PAST + FUTURE 23

24 BEING THERE

St Andrew’s in Livingston, also by Alison and Hutchison and finished in 1968, is an even more dramatic building. The influence of mid-century Le Corbusier - La Tourette and Ronchamp - is overt.

Inside, one is also immediately reminded of the temple in the rock - Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki by the Suomalainen brothers, completed a year later, in 1969 - the circular plan, the timber, solar inspired soffit.

The main event in St Andrew’s is the tension created between the floor plan and the centre point of the concentric, circles of timber planks that radiate outwards from a point above the alter. The priest, Fr Jeremy Bath, recalls an anecdote that when the building was being built, the Bishop instructed that the roof be lowered by approximately 3m, to reduce costs. Irrespective of whether this actually happened, the ceiling feels low and combined with the misalignment of centre points, the effect is unsettling. The space has a

condensed, primeval, cave-like atmosphere, despite having plastered walls instead of the hewn rock of Temppeliaukio. St Andrew was a fisherman and there are distinct analogous references to the sea and a ship. The roof slopes gently upwards towards the alter, but also slightly upwards from west to east creating an unsettling effect like being on a ship riding a powerful swell. Externally, the building’s relationship to the ground is restless, as it loops and curves on the grassy bank on which it is placed. It pierces the distant horizon with a curved concrete blade - like a sail billowing in the wind. The building appears assertive and defensive, embracing and protecting its congregation whilst turning its back on its neighbours. It is laced with frills of anti-climbing spikes that add to its brutalist power.

In an area of Livingston characterised by unremarkable, new town housing - dateless, rendered boxes with punched windows and concrete tiled roofs - St Andrew’s provides welcome visual relief.

Livingston is Scotland’s fourth of five towns built as part of the New Towns Act of 1946. Although closer to Edinburgh than Glasgow, it was built to house population overspill from Glasgow. It is in the New Towns and other satellite towns, away from the big city centres, that many of Scotland’s architecturally finest churches reside: St Bride’s in East Kilbride, St Patrick’s in Kilsyth and St Mary of the Angels in Camelon - all by Andy Macmillan and Isi Metzstien of Gillespie Kidd and Coia. Others include Brucefield Church in Whitburn, by Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul and Kildrum Parish Church in Cumbernauld by Alan Reiach.

We wish thank to the congregation for their cooperation and Ingrid Okell and Fr Jeremy Bath in particular for their assistance at St Andrew’s.

PAST + FUTURE 25

The people who worked on the buildings featured in this paper can reveal valuable insights and anecdotes, and enrich our collective memories. Whilst preparing this work we were contacted by Ian Gordon, an architect in London who had worked for a company of heating engineers on the construction of the heated floors and ceilings in two buildings by Peter Womersley - the Bernatt Klien Studio near Selkirk and the Nufield Kidney Transplant Centre in Edinburgh. He racalled that the shuttering for the Nufield Building had been made of fibreglass which had an oil applied to the inside face to ensure a quality finish. On the Bernat Klien Studio he recalled there was so much glass - where could you put the radiators? Hence the installation of heating elements in the floors or ceilings.

He also noted that during the 1960s boom of system builds and prefabricated construction, the builders were accustomed to making buildings using traditional techniques and frequently struggled with the tolerances required of modern innovative techniques, but he also recalled that the era was philosophically different - there was an optimism in the architectural profession and in the construction industry - people felt they were working for the common good.

In his 1951 inaugural speech at the Helsinki University of Technology, Finnish architect Hilding Ekelund applied the words of the author Pär Lagerkvist to architecture. He asked;

“Are we near ourselves and the simple warm richness of life? Are we near the source?”1

CONCLUSIONTEXT BY JAMES GRIMLEY

In Scotland through the 1950-60s architects created buildings that were collective, imaginative and unambiguous. But the simple warm richness of life started to fade from many designs as the decades progressed from the late ’60s to the ’70s, then seemed to disappear in the noisy buildings of the ’80s. Ralph Erskine, the socially sincere anglo-swedish architect compared the prevalent British architecture of the ’80s to “standing on your head with your eye on a fork” - painful. A nostalgic view of the ’50s and ’60s is unhelpful - many mistakes were made - but whilst much of Europe and Scandinavia held its nerve through the architectural excesses of the 1970s-2000s and emerged with strong architectural cultures, Scotland blinked.

In Requiem for Communism, Charity Scribner draws on the works of Maurice Halbwachs to note; “we can only recapture the past by understanding how it is preserved in our physical surroundings”, and that “the loss of those surroundings can lead to mnemonic aporia”. The demolition and removal of buildings such as the Scottish Provident Building heightens awareness that something is missing from the present architectural culture. Lewis A Coser in his introduction to Halbwachs’ On Collective Memory writes; “For Halbwachs, the past is a social construction mainly, if not wholly, shaped by the concerns of the present... a society’s current perceived needs may impel it to refashion the past.”

In Architecture and Utopia, Tafuri writes that as the ideological role of architecture diminishes, architects “attempt to ward the situation off with the

most neurotic formal and ideological contortions.” Compared to the recent past, we are suffering from an architectural aporia. Scottish contemporary architectural culture is overtly diverse and indecisive - or to borrow another phrase from Hilding Ekelund, “like the passage of a chameleon over a tartan blanket.” The present trend for the reassessment of the value of brutalist buildings is prompted by the hope that looking back at our rich heritage of buildings, produced when people felt they were working for the common good, will give us faith in the present. Our loss of a viable political left and the consequent privatisation of the public sector, the recent death of two giants of Scottish Architecture - Isi Metstein and Andy Macmillan - accompanied by contemporary architectural doubt, elicits a need to find somthing solid to hold on to.

This paper scratches the surface to reveal a rich seam of recent architectural history in south east Scotland. Like the south east Scots people, the character of the best buildings is reserved, understated and confident, and like the best people, we can learn alot from them. It is time consuming and it sometimes feels impossible to find the facts, drawings and photographs of the buildings, but more research would doubtlessly enhance our understanding of where we’ve come from. A systematic study to further record the buildings seems pressing - to help us regain optimism, to instil belief in ourselves, to get back to the source.

1 Hilding Ekelund, , 1893-1984: Arkkitehti, Museum of Finnish Architecture

26 BEING THERE

CONCLUSION

PAST + FUTURE 27

p. 2Igreja Sagrado Coração de Jesus, LisboaNuno Teotónio Pereira and Nuno Portas1962-76Photograph© James Grimley

p. 3Coatfield Lane Flats, LeithAlison and Hutchison1962-72Photograph© James Grimley

pp. 4 – 5Peter Womersley, no.s 2-5Photographs© Rebecca Woles, Studio Dub

pp. 4 – 5Peter Womersley, no.s 1, 6-9Alison And Hutchison, 1-10Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul, 1-9 Photographs © James Grimley

p. 6Scottish Provident Building, EdinburghRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1961-69Drawing© Chris Lowry

p. 7Scottish Provident Building, EdinburghRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1961-69Photographs© James Grimley

p. 8Linksview House, LeithAlison and Hutchison1962Drawing© Chris Lowry

p. 8Couper Street Housing, LeithAlison and Hutchison1961Drawing© Chris Lowry

p. 9Linksview House, LeithAlison and Hutchison1962Photograph© James Grimley

p. 10Couper Street Housing, LeithAlison and Hutchison1961Photograph© James Grimley

p. 10Cables Wynd House, LeithAlison and Hutchison1963Photograph© James Grimley

p. 10Couper Street Housing, LeithAlison and Hutchison1961Drawings© Toby Paterson

p. 10Cables Wynd House, LeithAlison and Hutchison1963Drawing© Toby Paterson

p. 10Tolbooth Wynd, LeithAlison and Hutchison1964Drawing© Toby Paterson

p. 11Giles Street and Tolbooth Wynd, LeithAlison and Hutchison1961-64Drawing© Toby Paterson

p. 12Martello Court, MuirhouseRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1962Drawings© Toby Paterson

p. 13Martello Court, MuirhouseRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1962Photograph© James Grimley

p. 14Martello Court, MuirhouseRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1962Photograph© James Grimley

p. 15Martello Court, MuirhouseRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1962Drawing© Chris Lowry

p. 16Gala Fairydean Stand, GlalshielsPeter Womersley1964PhotographsCourtesy of Gala Fairydean Rovers

p. 17Gala Fairydean Stand, GlalshielsPeter Womersley1964Photograph© James Grimley

pp. 18 – 19Gala Fairydean Stand, GlalshielsPeter Womersley1964Photograph© James Grimley

pp. 20 – 21Gala Fairydean Stand, GlalshielsPeter Womersley1964Photographs© James Grimley

p. 22Craigsbank Parish Church, EdinburghRowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul1964Photographs© James Grimley

p. 23St Gabriel’s RC Church, PrestonpansAlison and Hutchison1965Photographs© James Grimley

pp. 24 – 25St Andrew’s RC Church, LivingstonAlison and Hutchison1968Photographs© James Grimley

List of Illustrations

pp. 26 – 27Cables Wynd House, LeithAlison and Hutchison1963Drawing© Chris Lowry

p. 27Couper Street Housing, LeithAlison and Hutchison1961Drawing© Toby Paterson

28 BEING THERE

Credits

First published in 2014 for

‘A residency at The British Pavilion as part of The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia’ 26th September - 24th October 2014

Scotland + Venice is a partnership between:

Scotland + Venice was curated by:

Reiach and Hall Architects

Neil Gillespie OBELaura KinnairdLewis Thomson

The Research Groups

Past + Future - An Introduction

Neil Gillespie OBE

Laura KinnairdLewis Thomson

Group 01: ‘Being There, The Fierce and Beautiful World’

James Grimley

Chris Lowry

Fergus David

Sophie Crocker

Group 02: ‘Embedded Modernism’

Alan Hooper

David Page

Andrew FrameChristopher DoveFraser MaitlandJamie Whelan

Group 03: ‘Land Works’

Fergus Purdie

Rowan Mackinnon-Pryde

Ashley Tosh

William Purdie

Group 04: ‘Outsiders’

Samuel Penn

Cameron McEwan

Penny Lewis

Hugh Lawson

Volha Druhakova

RSA (Elect) FRIAS RIBA, Design Director, Reiach and Hall Architects, Visiting Professor, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityAssociate, Reiach and Hall ArchitectsAssistant, Reiach and Hall Architects

Director, Reiach and Hall Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor at The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)Lecturer in Architecture, The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)The Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

Architect, Programme Leader, Department of Architecture, The Glasgow School of ArtArchitect at Page/Park Architects, Visiting Professor, University of StrathclydeUniversity of StrathclydeThe Glasgow School of ArtUniversity of StrathclydeThe Glasgow School of Art

RSA (Elect), Architect at Fergus Purdie Architects, Part-time Studio Tutor School of the Environment, University of DundeeArchitect at Reiach and Hall Architects, Associate AE Foundation Associate, Editor of MatzineScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityUniversity of Strathclyde

Lecturer in Architecture, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorLecturer in History and Theory of the City, Architectural Design Tutor, AE Foundation AssociateLecturer in Architectural History, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon UniversityScott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University

Partners

© Scotland + Venice 2014All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission by Reiach and Hall Architects.

Reiach and Hall Architects6 Darnaway StreetEdinburghEH3 6BG

Printed by Sharman & Company Ltd.

Note: Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. The publishers apologise for any omissions that may have inadvertently been made.

with additional support from:

Chief Architect, Planning & Architecture Division Scottish GovernmentPrincipal Architect, Planning & Architecture Division Scottish GovernmentPortfolio Manager - Visual ArtsCreative ScotlandVisual Arts AdvisorBritish Council Scotland

Further to those listed Scotland + Venice 2014 would also like to thank additional members of the partner organisations Les Scott_ The Scottish Government, Esther Hutcheson_The Scottish Government, Alistair Donald_British Council, Gwendoline Webber_British Council, Camile Mateos_British Council.

For their assistance in communications and when we return from Venice: Morag Bain_Architecture + Design Scotland, Anja Ekelof_Architecture + Design Scotland

For reference and use of Building Scotland, Past + Future, A Cautionary Guide by Alan Reiach and Robert Hurd in 1944, we thank Jim Tough and The Saltire Society, Edinburgh

We also thank our partners in Venice: M+B Studio SRL, Endar, Francesco Raccanelli_The British Pavilion

Finally we thank all those who have either contributed or assisted in the publications and events: Reiach and Hall Architects, Miles Glendinning_ESALA, Margaret Richards, Chris Rankin_rankinfraser landscape architects, Angus Farquhar_NVA, Dr Jonathan Charley_University of Strathclyde, Ellis Woodman_ Architects Journal, Murray Grigor, Toby Paterson, Irvine Welsh, Rebecca Wober_Studio DuB, Katherine Ross_Timeline Films, John Barr, Mark Baines, Professor Andy MacMillan OBE, Frank Walker, Seán McAlister_Matzine, Stephen Mackie_Matzine, Jamie Bell_Jamie Bell Design, Rory Cavanagh, Emanuel Petit, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Dirk van den Heuvel, Fergus Denoon, Michael Wolchover_A Slight Shift, Norma Shewan, Derry Menzies Robertson and John Barber.

Ian Gilzean

Sandy Robinson

Amanda Catto

Juliet Dean

Advisory Panel

Anderson Bell Christie Architects and Architecture + Design ScotlandCity Design Adviser, Glasgow City CouncilLecturer in Architectural History, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, AE Foundation Co-founder and DirectorHead of the Mackintosh School of ArtHistoric ScotlandDo Architecture

Karen Anderson (Chair)

Gerry Grams

Penny Lewis

Professor Christopher PlattRanald MacInnesAdrian Stewart

Past + Future

Scotland + Venice

PAST + FUTURE 29

How can we safeguard yesterday in the name of

tomorrow? Several generations of Scots were

educated, housed and worked in modernist buildings

that have been demolished - How is our memory

and sense of the present affected when we demolish

our past? What is the balance between opinion and

critical analysis when we assess buildings? Some

spatial forms are more enjoyable than others - but

how much can we dissociate architecture from the

social reality of its existence? Has architecture ever

cured a social ill? Who will write the books about

Womersley, Kininmonth, Alison and Hutchison?