Malcolm Fraser’s open letter to the Politicians, Amenity Group Leaders and general Edinburgh Worthies named as “Proposal of Application” recipients to building owner PGIM Real Estate (UK) Limited and applicant EIP Jupiter Sarl’s PAN advance Planning notification of their intention to lodge an application to demolish Argyle House, home to CodeBase and other useful and industrious tenants, and replace it with hotels and flats.
Economic
The strongest part, in many independent economists' views, of Edinburgh and Scotland’s economy is the unheralded and self-generated tech and crafts infrastructure - teccy start-ups, crafts daubers, fiddlers and dreamers - occupying cheap space and doing the real innovation, and generating the innovative jobs, that Government aye begs for. Argyle House has nurtured two unicorn companies - ie now capitalised at over a billion dollars. Do we really think it's progress to put them out onto the street for more hotels and executive flats?
Heritage and Placemaking
Argyle House is a distinguished modernist building, in a city that continues to erase its recent heritage. In its sturdy, grey monumentality it is characteristically Edinburgh; plus in placemaking it does a nice thing in stepping back from the tight junction at the head of West Port, a move that Patrick Geddes, doyen of Town Planning and Edinburgh Hero, would have surely approved, given his adage of “letting some light in”. Plus I recall a Hibs Supporters Forum where Edinburgh taxi drivers praised it to the skies - local folk with good taste.
Carbon, Waste and Climate Doublespeak
It is madness, given the seriousness of the Climate Emergency and the ocean of waste that we condemn to landfill, to knock down a sturdy, solid and useful building, condemning huge amounts of embodied carbon. As an architect I find it particularly distressing to see the plans being advanced by a former President of my professional institute, who has proclaimed himself a “Climate Champion”.
