Salmond backs 'Project Edinburgh'

The Times, April 12, 2008

The First Minister, Alex Salmond, has given his backing to ambitious plans, designed to promote Edinburgh as a capital city “fit for the 21st century.” He believes that the city’s status was not properly recognised by the previous Labour administration, with its West of Scotland bias, and is anxious to promote its role as the capital of the whole nation.

His endorsement comes as a new manifesto for 'Project Edinburgh' is launched by Sir Terry Farrell, the leading architect who is the city’s design champion, and who has in the past charged local councillors and officials with being in the grip of “the forces of lethargy.”

Mr Salmond has had two meetings recently with Sir Terry and is said to be keenly interested in his ideas - though he has not yet seen the detail of his 12-point “action plan for change.” He is, however, known to be enthusiastic about the new mood within the city, following the recent change in its leadership, and is determined to promote its image as a great European city.

Last night Sir Terry said: “As the capital city in a Scotland which is increasingly self confident, Edinburgh has a crucial role to play and I told Mr Salmond that he had a role to play too. He understood and I think accepted that, and I was impressed by how much he had accelerated his knowledge of the issues involved in just a few weeks.”

Sir Terry, who was appointed to his council-sponsored position in 2004, revealed late last year that he had felt a sense of failure in the post, after working under the former Labour administration in the city, and its “atrophied” planning procedures.

But he said the new SNP/Lib-Dem coalition, which was formed after last May’s elections, and the appointment of Dave Anderson as a new director of city development had transformed official attitudes to Edinburgh. Mr Salmond’s support, he added, was a turning point for the city.

However Sir Terry warned that Edinburgh still faced the challenge of overcoming complacency and a lack of vision.

A spokesman for the Scottish government said that Sir Terry was to be congratulated for “raising awareness of the importance of good quality development and urban design in delivering a successful future for the city of Edinburgh.”

Farrell urges critics to shape city's future

The Times, Friday, March 14

Sir Terry Farrell has hit back at critics of his role as Edinburgh’s design champion, and challenged his doubters to get involved in planning the future of the city rather than bellyaching on the sidelines.

Farrell was speaking after it was revealed that he had been re-appointed for a fifth year to his unpaid post by Edinburgh City Council. That move prompted complaints from some unnamed local architects who questioned his contribution to the city, including one who suggested that Farrell and his company had “gained much more from this relationship than the city of Edinburgh has.”

Farrell vehemently rejected those allegations, pointing out that since he took on his public role in 2003, he had “not sought” nor accepted any commissions for work in the city.

Last night he went a step further, announcing that Edinburgh would host an international conference on “urban design and city making”, which will focus on Edinburgh itself.

“I have been acutely aware of the need to engage local architects more in public affairs in Edinburgh as they have often self-marginalised themselves … Unfortunately there has been a minority (who have invariably expressed themselves anonymously) and who have it seems been somewhat negative about the benefits and imagined conflicts of my role," said Farrell.

“There is a long tradition in most other major cities of local architects being involved in public life. There are procedures set out and well monitored, for avoiding conflicts of interest. It is universally recognised that it is essential to engage active, well-informed people with knowledge of their city in voluntary work to help make it a better place."

His comments come at time of continuing public unease over a number of controversial development within Edinburgh’s historic city centre. These include the installation of a £400 million tram system and Caltongate, a £300 million mixed development in the Old Town that is bitterly opposed by conservationists and residents.

Some critics have suggested that Edinburgh could follow the unfortunate lead of Dresden, whose world heritage status is under review by UNESCO after the city revealed plans for a new and intrusive bridge.

This public dissatisfaction was reflected by Farrell himself last November when he told The Times that “Edinburgh is a town which has dire need of regeneration.” He complained of “the forces of lethargy” hampering his work and added: “There’s no-one beginning to think that they even need a vision. Not just at [council] officer level – it’s very apparent there – but also in the elected leaders. There is no belief that they need do anything other than sit back.”

Changes in council personnel have led to a significant thawing in relations. Mr Farrell said he had been “delighted” with an increased recognition for urban design.

This had culminated he said in a meeting with Jenny Dawe, the council leader, Tom Aitchison, the chief executive and senior elected colleagues. They invited the architect to remain in post for another year “and they did so in terms of enthusiasm and commitment that were at a new level for the city,” he said.

Mr Farrell added that new senior officers on the council, including Dave Anderson, the incoming director of city development, would put “pro-active city making high on their agenda”. The international conference – which will focus on the future of Edinburgh itself - he said reflected “this accelerated commitment.”

He added: “How well [the] changes to the City are planned and designed is critical to Edinburgh’s future. Will they match and build on the achievements of the past, or could they diminish these achievements? It is time to prepare and to plan ahead. This conference will be an exciting step forward.”

A good vision doesn't die

The Scotsman, 7 December, 2002

An intricate little model of a desk and chair sits on the table top, as if ready to be placed into a miniature debating chamber. Next to it lies another tiny construction, strips of soft wood twined together with extraordinary precision, to make a perfect miniature of an open and oddly welcoming perimeter fence.


There are models like this everywhere, on the working surfaces in front of the 30 or so designers, and nearby in the dark recesses of a corridor many more are piled up together: scale replicas of buildings, whole or in part, sections of walls and rooftops, tiny pergolas and neatly-finished balsa wood bay windows.

Still more of these delicate constructions are laid out in the airy old drawing room which looks over the rooftops towards La Rambla. One is a vast construction of Utrecht town hall - the building which was realised from this model has already won three architectural awards. And, next to it, four townscapes placed together represent just a few months in the evolution of the Scottish Parliament.

These are the Barcelona offices of EMBT - Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue - the architects responsible for the design of the parliament buildings. And many of the structures, so haphazardly on show, represent the practice's work at Holyrood in Edinburgh.

It's a toytown environment, something from Gulliver's Travels, but straight away the office interior gives the lie to one of the myths which has developed around the new Scottish Parliament. Its architect, Enric Miralles, may have died more than two years ago, but those who suggest his influence on the building has been lost are wrong. The models emphatically prove that his design team, his philosophy and his grand plan - those upturned boats, those poetic little leaves - remain the foundation of th e Scottish Parliament.

Plans for the site are much changed since EMBT won the design competition in 1998, in association with the Edinburgh firm RMJM, but according to Benedetta Tagliabue, this is natural and expected. Ultimately it will create a building of great symbolism and significance, designed to last 300 years.

Tagliabue is Miralles' wife (she deplores the word "widow"), the mother of their two children, Caterina, seven, and five-year-old Domenec. She was also his business partner who by now has heard so many objections to the project, they wash over her. "Criticism is infinite," she says. "There are so many opinions, but you can't let them destroy your life."

Since her husband died with dreadful swiftness from a brain tumour in July 2000, she has often remained in the background of the Edinburgh project, leaving the day-to-day work on site to EMBT's joint project directors, Joan Callis and Karl Unglaub.

But, as the Parliament emerges from the ground, she has this week stepped back into the limelight, with a public lecture in Edinburgh, looking forward to the future of the new Holyrood.

She is adapting well to her unaccustomed new prominence. Now 38, Tagliabue was an award-winning architectural student at Venice and Columbia Universities. But Miralles, eight years her senior, was simply a stellar figure, Professor at Harvard and Frankfurt, a design philosopher with admirers all over the world.

"It is true it was sometimes difficult to live next to him, he was a genius, a strong personality," she admits with a smile. "When you are next to a person who is a strong personality, well, you are invisible.

"I was always next to him, and I had this role, which I accepted absolutely, of being next to him but being invisible, because he took all the light, let's say. Sometime I would think 'Do I change Enric?' But, it was not him choosing that this was happening, because he wasn't egocentric, it was just he was so special that it happened."

Now she is "visible" at least the first lesson she has learnt is this: "Visibility is not very important. You just have to be able to change and adapt."

That she is at ease in the limelight was made plain on Thursday in her lecture in Edinburgh, delivered to an audience of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland which had gathered to discuss the future of Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

It was an acutely sensitive address, which began with slides of her own home in Barcelona's old town, linking deeply personal experience with a wider philosophy of design. She was wearing - as always - a necklace made by her children of colourful plasticbeads; to demonstrate the essential linkage between the natural and built environments, her visual aids included family snaps and free-hand sketches of Edinburgh made by Miralles from his hotel room.

For cynics, it was stuff to mock; for those impressed by the passion and sensibility which Miralles brought to the design of the Scottish Parliament it was a heartening restatement of belief.

Good news of any sort is long overdue for the buildings' supporters. The first cost estimates of �40 million - albeit for a cube of a building in central Edinburgh - have increased tenfold according to the worst calculations. The opening date at Holyroodremains unknown and the next session of the parliament has been booked into the Hub at the opposite end of the Royal Mile, a decent place for a Festival party, but an unlikely seat of government.

Not all the criticisms which have arisen have been directed at the architects. Those sympathetic to Miralles suggest key people within the government machine were responsible for implementing a construction management process which was flawed, and this has been responsible for vastly inflated costs. To make matters worse, there has been a lack of clarity in the numbers game: some rises may have been justifiable - who knows? - the information has not been made easily available.

Yet for the first year of the project, all went smoothly, as EMBT developed Miralles's initial concept into a workable design for the Scottish Executive. But, after elections in May 1999, the parliamentary body came into being, and the architects had a new client - the parliament itself.

Things changed rapidly as MSPs developed a vision of their own for their new home. Staff accommodation, which had catered for 400, now provided facilities for over 1000; the debating chamber was enlarged, and its shape changed. Press and broadcasting suites grew in size; and an education department was developed, so that children could come and see how their country was governed.

MSPs expressed their nationalistic pride in other ways. Scottish granite was specified for cladding, though the stone had not been quarried commercially in Scotland for years. Portuguese granite was available off-the-shelf at a fraction of the cost. Yet all of this change was possible within Miralles's scheme because the design was "elastic" says Tagliabue. Surely though this never-ending design spec, within a pliable design, impacted on the fundamental questions of delivery and cost?

"But it's not simple," she interjects with a smile. "This was a process which was chosen to be an open process, with a manager of construction, managing a huge number of builders. The choice was made to make this open. So you have more open possibilities, and things are not necessarily fixed in time."

Even the opening? It is not, she says, her role to comment on the opening. "There is nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of," she says. "The building is there and it will be there."

The important thing was at the outset to win the design competition, as a kind of preview for the project itself. Then "we really had a situation", she reckons.

"It would have been absurd not to have listened to MSPs' demands. If they needed more space, if they needed a different way of working, if the shape of the chamber needed to be changed - this was the first time they realised how they would work together.

"My husband and I were happy to implement these things. And we are able to do that. It is not losing its fundamental idea, it can change a little - and so it did change.

"But it is an Enric Miralles building, absolutely."

Cost considerations, she adds, have sometimes held her team back. "You have to imagine us working with every part of the package. We were told always, 'You have to finish the drawings for this part of the building'; or 'The contractor has looked at the drawings and he found that complicated - please go and speak with him.' So we have sat down to find solutions. All the time we have had to stay on top, to find the best solution for the people working on site. This was our task and it is still going o n."

There is a strength of vision here that has been evident ever since EMBT have been concerned with the project. Back in 1998, the panel who witnessed the final presentations by the three shortlisted architects were unanimous for Miralles, despite the factthat his competitors Richard Meier and James Stirling-Michael Wilford had a much higher profile.

"He believed passionately in the project, who saw the connection between the environment, the building and nationhood," says one prominent observer of the process. "There was no question that Miralles was by far the most impressive presentation. He was head and shoulders above the rest."

Above all, the Catalan architect - perhaps with an understanding which comes from being a member of a small national group - struck a bond with the then first minister, Donald Dewar. Tagliabue recalls the EMBT presentation.

"There was point at which Enric became almost aggressive towards Donald Dewar. The conversation became very deep. Mr Dewar had put a problem to Enric - I don't remember exactly what - but he asked him how he would react as an architect to such and such asituation. Enric responded strongly. He said: 'You are a politician, you know how to work in your profession; I am an architect, I know how to work in mine. This way of working is very similar'.

Mr Dewar was very serious in what he was doing - I have great respect for him still - and Enric was very serious, very deep and with an ideal. This is not easy to find, in any profession, but they shared this ideal. And in that moment, which was not an easy moment, they both discovered that."

It was a real bond? "This was the point," she replies. "They understood. It was a political ideal for Mr Dewar, a dream, and for Enric it was too, to fulfil the desires of a nation and to make architecture which was capable of making everyone happy."

But now it is time to put ideals into action, and if Tagliabue has not made her points plainly enough in her office, she can demonstrate them ably in the city beyond.

So we begin a tour of EMBT work in Barcelona. A short walk through the teeming streets of the Old Town, brings us first to Mercado de Santa Caterina, a vast and complicated renovation of an historic building.

"Everything here was to be torn down or destroyed," says Tagliabue, looking beyond the ancient perimeter walls to the cleared site beyond.

"But it is important you keep memories."

It is a project as close to Tagliabue's heart as it is to her home, and she and her husband became involved with the project at first simply because it was on their doorstep. Miralles conceived the solution, setting the medieval framework of the crumbling market against his signature pergolas. It's making waves, causing excitement; the market will be complete in 2004.

After the tight spaces of the Old Town we move out of the city along the Avenguda d'Icaria, where again, great twisting forms jut into view, Miralles's pergolas punctuating the space of the avenue. "They gave him this project in the year of the Olympics," says Tagliabue. "He was young, they had to give him something." The development has just picked up a retrospective award for the best architectural project in Barcelona in 1992.

Finally we arrive at Parque Diagonal Mar, opened this year, in redeveloped land which bears a passing resemblance to parts of London's Docklands. Here EMBT have used groundwater to create a lake and the illusion of the sea lapping up to the foundations of the bleak tower blocks which surround the site. Fountains burst from hard standing, and massive flower pots are suspended in the air to create foliage over their metal supports; rolling greenery surrounds the artificial waterway.

"It's about inventing a part of the city," says Tagliabue. "It was just a drawing when Enric died - but people are very happy."

The park has been developed by the American property giant Hines, and in a children's playground at the south end of the 14-hectare site, the corporation's chairman, Gerry Hines, has built an unfinished wooden house, his tribute to the dead architect.

When we have returned to her office, this last revelation makes it easier to turn conversation to Tagliabue's own sense of loss after her husband's death.

"Maybe I will understand his legacy in more time. He was a genius also in dying," she says, with a smile. "But it's true. He was incredibly strong during his illness, absolutely conscious he was going to die. I was always hiding things from myself, thinking there would be a medicine, or some natural remedy. But he was very controlled - he knew he would die from the very first moment, even if his condition improved, but he was very serene."

For a brief period during his illness the couple stayed at Hines's house in Houston. It was, remembers Tagliabue, a beautiful time.

"It was short, but seemed very intense, a different part of our life. We had friends, many of them doctors, coming to us, we could be almost happy in this tragical moment. Enric was the first to say: 'Don't think about sadness, think about being happy, staying with the children and all those things.' It was an incredible lesson to me. He left me strong. I lived this experience, I lived no other. I think he prepared me and everybody else to survive well, which in a way is very generous."

And, of course, beyond all this trauma, she has, in her own terms, become visible. "I came through this very tough lesson, let us say, with this understanding: one day to another, we change, the unexpected happens. We are here now, we are not here tomorrow. I think it is important to understand life first. To understand that we are in life."

She laughs again. "It is enough. We are alive."

What's wrong with Edinburgh?

Two posts below about some of the changes which are happening to Edinburgh, one of the world's most beautiful capital cities. The first is an interview with Terry Farrell, a world-renowned architect who was appointed design champion by Edinburgh City Council three years ago, to help them develop a vision for city. As you can read, Farrell is not impressed with the mentality of many of Edinburgh's civic leaders, and sees failings in both the public and private sectors which are in grave danger of damaging the city. The second piece itemises recent work by Allan Murray Architects who are involved in a large number of new building projects in the city centre. These two articles appeared as a double page spread in The Times Scottish edition last month.

Murray responded to these articles with an essay of his own in Prospect magazine, which is dedicated to Scottish architecture. If anyone can supply a reference, I would like to link to it from this website.

City at risk from the forces of lethargy

It was the city “that Paris ought to be” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, a place so beautiful that George Eliot thought she “had waked in Utopia”. But now Edinburgh has been subjected to a damaging analysis by its own architectural supremo, Sir Terry Farrell. He says it in “dire need of regeneration”, gripped by “the forces of lethargy” and in danger of becoming “second rate”.

Farrell was appointed design champion in 2004 by the City of Edinburgh Council, but after three years of mounting frustration in the role, he has rounded on the council, attacking its leaders for their lack of vision, its “atrophied” planning process and a prevailing complacency which could “damage” the city.

His comments come as Edinburgh embarks on the most far-reaching building programme since the New Town was commissioned in the late 18th century. This will see the creation of a new seafront development in Leith, the rebuilding of the reviled St James shopping centre and the development of areas around Haymarket and Waverley Stations. It also includes new building on three sites at the heart of the Old Town which could have a dramatic impact on the city’s traditional architecture.

Farrell had not even been shown the plans for Caltongate, one of the most controversial of the Old Town proposals, but said he was dismayed by the almost every aspect of the council’s moribund approach to planning. This he contrasted with the dynamism of Manchester and the Medway towns in Kent, where local authorities and business leaders had combined to retivalise failing urban centres.

“Edinburgh is a town which has dire need of regeneration. But nobody believes it – because there is a fantastic festival and the world heritage site is in the middle,” said Farrell. “There’s no-one beginning to think that they even need a vision. Not just at officer level – it’s very apparent there – but also in the elected leaders. There is no belief that they need do anything other than sit back. I despair of Edinburgh recognising that city making, which is the greatest tradition in Edinburgh, is ongoing.

“Towns on their knees like Manchester after the IRA bomb, or Medway after the royal naval dockyards closed, can see it. They are in there playing the bigger game. Here I can’t make any headway.”

Visionary city making and wealth creation would only come through proactive planning said Farrell, but the Edinburgh system works in the opposite way, devolving big projects to private developers who sought approval for their plans through the council’s development control department.

This entirely reactive process encourages “shooting and sniping” he said. Changes in full-time personnel and in the political leadership of the council were unlikely to improve the situation, particularly as the authority faces a £14million deficit this year.

The last Labour administration approved several big projects by the architect Allan Murray. While Farrell had no criticism of Murray he said that proactive planning would attract architects of the highest calibre.

Farrell added that £600m tram system adopted by the council had likewise been selected with little consideration of its visual impact. Its carriages require raised platforms and intrusive safety poles. “If you do it wrong, it will be detrimental,” he said.

When he embarked on his unpaid role as design champion, Farrell’s ambition was to help Edinburgh “get its act together,” he said. “Now it’s in danger of becoming a bit of a failure. The impediments to getting things done in a local authority set-up are major. One is up against the forces of lethargy. They are so great. You need a city leader, you need chief officers, a supportive council – it’s like Tony Blair turning Labour round, for good or ill – you need that kind of will and a group of people behind it. Edinburgh needs that.”

If Farrell had his way, Princes St would exploit its position as “the best urban promenade in the world”, abandon its attempt to compete with out-of-town shopping centres, and retain substantial retail only at its east end. Pavements should be wider, al fresco dining encouraged and apartments and boutique hotels should flow into upper floors currently used for storage by chain stores.

Moira Tasker of the Cockburn Association – the Edinburgh Civic Trust – welcomed Sir Terry’s intervention. “There must be more coherence, vision and leadership, and less short-termism,” she said.

Farrell added that often only a crisis provoked civic leaders to take city-making seriously. “Manchester had the bomb. Then they had to do something,” he said. “What will make Edinburgh people feel they’ve got to do something?”

A spokesman for the council said: “Sir Terry’s appointment indicated that the council was passionate about design and determined to secure the highest standards in design for an international capital city with World Heritage status.”

Man whose vision will dominate Edinburgh

Allan Murray’s work is not yet cherished like some of his illustrious predecessors in Edinburgh, but soon it will dominate some of the city’s most beautiful and famous streets.

Murray cut his teeth as an architect in America, returning to Scotland to establish a private practise in 1992. He has since put his stamp on a series of very visible and potentially controversial projects many within the area designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

It is Murray’s vision which will raise a new hotel – The Bridge – high on the Royal Mile, on the site of the old Lothian Regional Council offices. And it is Murray, who, with his plans for the Cowgate Bridge site – cleared by fire in 2002 – will create “a vibrant new city district”.

He is also the lead architect on the £300 million Caltongate development that requires the demolition of two listed buildings. These proposals have outraged conservation groups and residents and the project has been referred back to planning.

His practice handles an extraordinary volume of work. His buildings dominate Leith Street and Greenside Place. His masterplan gave the city the plate-glass façade of the Omni Centre and he designed the adjacent Calton Square offices. Recently he was appointed to prepare designs for a new St James centre and has planning permission for offices on the site opposite. Between 2002 and 2004 he completed the Tun on Holyrood Road, the adjacent clock tower and the Cowgate Nursery.

The practice does not confine itself to the city centre. It has completed three corporate buildings on the Edinburgh Park estate, with a combined value of more than £25m, for New Edinburgh, a joint venture between the Miller Group and the city council. He is masterplanning the re-generation of a 32-hectare site in Fountainbridge and in Leith, Murray has designed phases one and two of Coalhill., for the developer Buredi.

With commendable chutzpah, he announced that the dome on the top of his South Bridge Building is inspired by the nearby Old College, designed by Robert Adam, Edinburgh’s great architect of the Enlightenment. Who knows, in 200 years, designers might be erecting plate glass walls in homage to Murray?

'Finest modernist building' saved

A masterpiece of modern architecture which has been left to rot for more than 25 years could soon be transformed into a “very interesting, weird” hotel, if an offer to buy the site is accepted by the Catholic Church. St Peter’s Seminary at Cardross, the first postwar building in Scotland to be grade ‘A’ listed, was completed by Andy McMillan and Isi Metzstein of the Glasgow architects Gillespie, Kidd and Coia in 1966. However, 15 years later, a structure dubbed “the finest modernist work in Scotland” was abandoned and the debate over its future has raged ever since.

Now the Manchester-based development company Urban Splash – which has made its name by regenerating some of most neglected and challenging sites in the north of England – has offered to purchase the seminary from the church.

The Archdiocese of Glasgow confirmed yesterday that it had received an offer and though Urban Splash would not be drawn on the details of its proposals, it is understood that senior staff favour conversion into an hotel.

The company is currently engaged in the £7.3m restoration of Morecambe’s Midland Hotel, a magnificent art deco building which had, like St Peter’s, fallen into decay. A new business, Urban Splash Hotels, has been founded to run the operation which opens in Spring and a second spectacular venue in Argyll and Bute is seen as a natural complement.

“I could imagine it being a very interesting, weird kind of hotel, not anything like a Holiday Inn,” said Mr Metzstein, who retired from private practice in 1987, but continued to teach at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. “If they imposed a standard hotel, it wouldn’t interest me at all. But if they conserve the essence of the building and the quality of the light, then I would be very interested.”

Mr Metzstein added that he regarded St Peter’s as “part of a life’s work” and said he regretted that it had been allowed to decay. But he warned that the seminary would make an unusual hotel.

“A building like that is a unique opportunity for an architect to say something beyond the utilitarian. It wasn’t designed to be adapted, it was designed to live forever,” he said. “It has a particular quality which sets the limitations on what you could possibly do with a building like that. It will not be easy. You will have to sacrifice some element of comfort if you want to turn it into an hotel.”

St Peter’s is regarded by enthusiasts as one of the most complete examples of the late modern movement in Britain, and contributed towards Gillespie, Kidd and Coia receiving the RIBA Gold Medal in 1969.

However, the outcome of the Second Vatican Council sealed St. Peter’s fate before it was even completed. The church decided that priests were bettered trained in the community than at remote seminaries, and students from St Peter’s were dispersed into Scotland’s towns and cities as the process of decay set in at Cardross.

Little more than a year ago, campaigners hoping to restore the seminary were in despair. Demolition had been mooted and a planning application to develop 29 houses on adjacent land had been lodged by the Archdiocese which would have generated enough money only to save the building only as a “consolidated ruin.”

But in June when St Peter’s was listed by the World Monuments Fund, a global organisation that seeks to protect the 100 most vulnerable cultural heritage sites in the world. Its citation stated that the seminary was “spacious and filled with light” and “in its state of severe decay it still has an evocative and powerful visual impact.”

Now a conservation assessment funded by Historic Scotland is being prepared by Avanti Architects for the Archdiocese. A first draft is understood to encourage the sympathetic restoration of the building. The final report is due to be published in December. One insider said: “A window is opening at last.”

Urban Splash’s coincides with a retrospective exhibition of MacMillan and Metzstein’s work at the Lighthouse in Glasgow.

Mr Metzstein said he had never been asked to consider alternative uses for the building, but suggested that if not developed as a hotel it could become music centre for young people or “a mini-conference centre” for scientists or artists to exchange ideas. “It could be a kind of retreat for very talented people, not double glazing salesmen,” he said.
* Gillespie Kidd & Coia, from 3 November, The Lighthouse, Glasgow