Scottish Architecture and Design Centre competition - overview of prize-winning entries and special-mention projects

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 1996

Last year, The Architectural Review sponsored a competition for the Scottish Architecture and Design Centre, promoted by the City of Edinburgh District Council. It is intended to transform a key but run-down site in the centre of the city. From the 206 entries for the first stage of the competition, six were chosen by the jury(*) to be worked up in the second. Of these, four were premiated.(**)

Here we print the report of the first stage jury. On subsequent pages, we show the six second-stage schemes and the five projects mentioned by the jury, whose comments are reproduced in full.

We were impressed by the quantity and variety of entries to the competition: over 200 schemes from more than 20 countries.

Both site and programme were complex and difficult. The brief called for a heterogeneous mixture of functions, principally the Scottish Architecture and Design Centre (SADC), the IMAX (the wide-screen cinema system) and a large speculative office component (to be naturally ventilated). The SADC itself contains a variety of uses, ranging from exhibition, lecture and library spaces to workshops and a cafe-bar. In addition, nine off-street bus stances were to be provided, and small retail units were to be incorporated if possible.

The site is one of the keys to the future of the city. At the hinge point of the western approach, it marks the end of the last phase of the Classical New Town and the beginning of the new development area vital for Edinburgh's future as a great commercial and financial centre.

The Haymarket, on the north-west corner of the site, is no more than a traffic junction which desperately needs to be restored to civic presence and dignity. It should be a real and pleasant piazza and it should offer easy connections between different modes of public transport, encouraging regeneration of the railway station (now the second in importance in the city and certain to increase in consequence as the financial district develops). Morrison Street, to the north of the site, is in similar plight to the Haymarket. To the south, the Colonies (a delicate area of innovative nineteenth-century housing) has to be respected, and adds another level of scale to an already complicated scenario.

The brief clearly called for the creation of a new set of places that will complement, add to and relate the existing surroundings to each other. The precious skyline of Edinburgh should be impinged upon with the greatest caution.

The selection of the second-stage entrants was partly guided by the requirement that the winning scheme be realistic and buildable. We found that we were guided in general by the following issues:

* There should be a strong visual symbol of the hinge between the traditional inner city and the new financial area growing to the west: hence the result should both celebrate urban gateway and signal a moment of importance in the life of the city.

* New public places should be made to ensure the scheme locks into and enhances the city's pattern of spaces - not only the obvious ones like the Haymarket and Morrison Street but the delicate domestic geometry of the Colonies to the south of the site.

* The piazza should become a new civic focal point both for the city and neighbourhood. Its treatment should take into account the nature of the Scottish climate and light.

* Individual elements of the scheme should be given clear articulation, making sure that the SADC is given proper civic presence as the focus.

* The scale of the development should be urbane.

* The development should be capable of being phased in construction (as the brief required) to ensure that the project is economically viable.

* Organic connections between bus and rail travel should be encouraged; the bus stances, while being convenient, should not dominate the site.

* The office element should be exemplary in both ecological and human terms.

Extracted from the second-stage jury report

All the premiated schemes addressed these problems. None is without some points of difficulty, though we believe that in the case of the first prize-winning entry, problems can be resolved with further development.

We were strongly constrained in our decisions by a point that is perhaps far too little considered by competition jurors. We desperately want the thing to be built, both as an essential part of the growth of the city, and as a contribution to the debate about architecture and culture in Scotland. P.D.

FIRST PRIZE

NARUD STOKKE WIIG, OSLO

This entry was awarded first prize because of its kind and subtle relationships to its surroundings, as well as for the creation of what promises to be a fine open space that connects the railway station to the Architecture and Design Centre, and indeed makes the Centre a key moment in the organisation of the western approach to the city; the device of projecting the cafe against the road to both contain the piazza and to make a gateway to the city was hailed by us all (though some had reservations about the welcoming qualities of the resulting three-storey internal space).