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Gareth Hoskins Architects, Glasgow
Gareth Hoskins - Galleries Entry : Information
Princes Street Galleries, Edinburgh : Competition
Gareth
Hoskins Architects : information on key projects / buildings
Spirit of Scotland
Gareth Hoskins wins Spirit of Scotland Art Prize, 28 Nov 2008
A vibrant new civic focus for edinburgh
The Princes
Street Galleries project has the potential to bring a new quality
of retail back into the City of Edinburgh to reinvigorate its currently
dwindling commercial centre.
However for the project to happen within Edinburgh’s City centre,
a setting of such World heritage significance and sensitivity, it
needs to be more than simply another anonymous shopping mall. Whilst
the provision of such new retail space is key to enabling the much
needed revitalisation of a strong retail heart within the City, for
it to be allowed within such a clearly significant site, it needs
to be valued as a sensitive and positive addition to the city’s heritage
and character rather than an as act of ‘commercial vandalism’.
The scheme needs to bring a wider civic benefit to the people and
the City of Edinburgh. As such the Galleries should be more than another
Waverley Market (now Princes
Mall - Ed), they need to create a new place within the city that
makes both a vibrant and attractive environment for shoppers and retailers
and a thoughtful and appropriate addition to the amenity and rich
urban fabric of Edinburgh.
The colloquium demonstrated that Edinburgh has historically evolved
through a series of bold urban developments that have resulted in
the rich picturesque contrast between the fabric of the Old and New
Towns. The debate also reinforced that there were areas within this
fabric that, whilst significant in terms of their city centre location,
fail to contribute greatly to the character or public quality of the
City. The East Gardens, the site for the Galleries, was described
in such terms by the consultants developing the consultation plan
for the Gardens; a place valued sentimentally as any ‘green’ spaces
are within a city, but far from the original vision and with the clear
potential for change that improves their character, public amenity
and use.
As such our design for the Galleries is a bold new addition to the
urban fabric of Edinburgh that interweaves the practicalities and
demands of the retailers with a considered rethinking of the sensitive
setting of Princes Street and the East Gardens. Our proposal is for
an open civic space focused around the Scott Monument, which forms
a vibrant new place for retail within the City; a place that connects
between the existing retail and urban fabric of the New Town and the
green space of the Gardens, to create a visible and urban alternative
to the covered mall.
This open retail ‘street’ has a number of significant advantages over
an enclosed mall; greater presence and visibility for the retailers,
a more attractive and accessible environment for those shopping and
living within the City, a clearer relationship to and continuation
of the character of the existing fabric of the City, and simpler operational
needs and commercial flexibility. With the lower capital and revenue
costs associated with the scheme, it has the potential to implement
a wider rethinking and reinvigoration of the Gardens and the city
fabric around the East end of Princes Street.
The design proposes a bold, complimentary addition to the unique fabric
of the City of Edinburgh. It is a design that looks beyond the conceptions
of a shopping centre, to create a place of public activity that contributes
to the economy and culture of Edinburgh - a design that creates a
vibrant new civic and retail focus of an urban scale and presence
appropriate to one of Europe’s major capital cities.
Princes Street Galleries text from Gareth Hoskins: Competition
PR 2003
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Gareth
Hoskins Architects Building: Saughton Visitor Centre, Edinburgh
Contemporary
Architects
Glasgow School of Art Competition

Scottish
Architecture
Glasgow Buildings
Gareth Hoskins Architects : Contact details - see Glasgow Architects link
Princes
Street Edinburgh
Gareth Hoskins Architects: Museum
of Scotland refurbishment, Edinburgh
Glasgow Transport Museum


Glasgow Architecture : homepage
Buildings / photos
for the Princes Street Galleries Architecture pages welcome:
info@glasgowarchitecture.co.uk
Princes Street Galleries - page: adrian welch
/ isabelle lomholt |
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