Architecture & Design Scotland (ADS) has given qualified support to aspects of the proposed hotel scheme for the old Royal High School building on Regent Road.
On 9 September, ADS’s design advisor Johnny Cadell wrote to David Given, a senior planning officer at City of Edinburgh Council.
He began with an important proviso: ‘… [D]evelopment of the scale and type proposed may only be considered acceptable should it be clear that the proposals address a number of critical policy tests, both national and local, and in particular that development is the minimum necessary to secure the re-use of the original Thomas Hamilton school building.’
There is, therefore, an enormous and contentious invisible if at the outset.
Cadell does not begin to assess whether these critical tests have been met. That is the centre of the battleground between opponents and supporters of the scheme, and the area where most of the early skirmishing has been focused so far.
Five areas for revision
Cadell does make clear that if the plans are later found to have passed these critical tests, then ADS considers the current proposals to be otherwise acceptable subject to five areas for revision:
- Public art in and around the building should be provided, and preferably also along the pedestrian route up Calton Hill.
- Developers, CEC, community groups and neighbours should cooperate on public realm improvements on Regent Road and the pedestrian route up Calton Hill.
- Opening windows in the hotel blocks should integrate better with the rhythm of the façade. Planting on upper roofs should blend more naturally with the wider landscape.
- Public access to the Hamilton building should be encouraged by attractive lighting and art along arrival routes. Interior design should be welcoming and inclusive.
- Interiors of the hotel blocks should be welcoming, daylit, and with ‘spatial and visual events’ to break up long corridors.
You can read the letter in full here.
ADS's role and earlier involvement
This latest assessment builds upon an earlier, similarly cautious welcome issued on 1 June before the latest set of proposals was submitted for planning consent.
That report also deliberately skirted the ‘suitability of the proposed use of the building [or] policies related to the conservation, demolition and restorations proposed, [or] the case for and quantum of enabling development justifiable in connection with restorations’. You can read it in full here.
Established in 2005, Architecture and Design Scotland describes itself as 'an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government which provides advice to the government and bodies involved in commissioning, designing and regulating new buildings and places'.
It has been involved from an early stage in the behind-the-scenes Design Forum workshops between the developers, Council officials, and various heritage bodies in advance of the first PAN public exhibition in March.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
For the most recent coverage on this story and further links, see:
'Historic Scotland will oppose Old Royal High hotel plans' (18.9.15)
'Community Council condemns "quart in pint pot" hotel plan' (8.9.15)
---------------------------------------
Bill Dunlop Not happy with this. At all.
Broughton Spurtle A knowledgeable source this evening pointed out an interesting parallel south of the border. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (the ADS equivalent in England) recommended the Walkie-Talkie building in London [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street] contrary to the advice of English Heritage. And, in a world of ever-intersecting Boolean coincidences, it turns out that ADS's chief executive– Jim MacDonald – is also on the Board of the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust, representing them in the struggle to reject limestone for the St James Quarter. So too, though, is William Gray Muir, founding member of the Royal High School Preservation Trust. Och, Edinburgh, Scotia's darling seat – one closely knit family, happy as a sack of pinemartins.
@theSpurtle surely that first *if* fails given the st marys music school plan could save @oldRoyalHigh without all that new build?
No expert, but 'Minimum necessary to secure reuse' seems to favour RHS Preservation Trust if truly fully funded @CityCycling @oldRoyalHigh