Scottish Widows development plan draws criticism

[THE 20TH CENTURY SOCIETY has strongly objected to new proposals for a £100m residential redevelopment of the former Scottish Widows HQ in Edinburgh, which would see almost half the Category A-listed building demolished. The plans include: • Demolition of five of the 12 • hexagonal building modules, • reducing the scale of the existing • building by nearly 50% • Complete replacement of the • aluminium bronze framed • curtain wall glazing system • The loss of most of the Sylvia Crowe-designed landscape

The Scottish Widows HQ was built between 1972-76 by the practice of Sir Basil Spence, Glover and Ferguson. John Hardie Glover and John Legge were the partners in charge, Norman Arthur the project architect and Ove Arup & Partners the structural engineers. Dame Sylvia Crowe, a leading landscape architect of the period, was involved in the laying out of the six-acre site.

Situated beneath Holyrood Park and Salisbury Crags, its design of interlocking hexagonal blocks in differing heights represented the basalt-heavy local geology. The building received a RIBA Award for Scotland in 1977, with the assessors describing it as ‘a notable contribution to the design of large office building’. The site also sits within the Edinburgh South Side Conservation Area, facing the Royal Commonwealth Pool by Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall, built from 1967-69 – also Category A-listed – on one side, with traditional 19th century stone tenements on the other. Scottish Widows vacated their purpose-built HQ in Autumn 2020 after 45 years on the same site and it has remained unoccupied since. The building’s owners, Schroders Capital, are now proposing to redevelop the site for residential usage, demolishing much of the existing listed building and landscape, to be replaced with three new hexagonal blocks and two L-shaped blocks of up to 200 residential units.

According to the 20th Century Society: “It is the society’s view that the scheme in its current form would result in substantial harm to a listed building and if this scheme came forward as an application, we would strongly object. We have urged the project team to consult the society at pre-application stage to allow us to better understand the aims of the development and to enable us to offer heritage advice.”

Its president Cath Slessor added: “As it happens, I used to live in Dalkeith Road when I was studying in Edinburgh and I cycled past Scottish Widows every day. It’s a terrific ensemble of building and landscape, spreading organically across the site through its radical hexagonal plan, which is inestimably enriched by Sylvia Crowe’s sensitive and now matured planting and trees.

“The colour and vertically striated geometry of the cladding alludes to the geology of the Salisbury Crags which form an imposing backdrop to the overall ensemble. In fact, there’s something altogether geological about the architecture, like the formations of the Giant’s Causeway.” q