Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser speaks out on why 'eyesore' Argyle House should not be demolished
One of Scotland's most prominent architects has spoken out against the proposed demolition of an Edinburgh 'eyesore'.
Malcolm Fraser said Argyle House in Castle Terrace - often described as one of the Capital's ugliest constructions - was "a distinguished modernist building".
And he said it was "madness" to bulldoze a building which was "sturdy, solid and useful".
Argyle House is currently home to tech incubator CodeBase, which has around 80 firms based there with a total workforce of over 900.
But building owners PGIM Real Estate have given notice they will apply for planning permission to demolish the 11-storey office block and develop the site for residential, hotel and office use.
CodeBase had no prior warning of the plans, but had recently renewed its lease for 12 months, so occupants of the building have been assured they are secure there for at least a year.
In an open letter, Edinburgh-based Malcolm Fraser set out "3 reasons not to demolish Argyle House.
He said many independent economists believed the strongest part of Edinburgh's and Scotland's economy was "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".
He continued: "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?"
Argyle House was designed by Edinburgh architect Michael Laird and completed in 1968.
Mr Fraser, who has won awards for his work, which includes the Scottish Storytelling Centre in the Royal Mile, the nearby Scottish Poetry Library, and Dance Base in the Grassmarket, gave his own assessment of the building branded "one of the worst eyesores in the city centre".
He said: "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; and 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 Hibernian Football Supporters Forum where Edinburgh taxi drivers praised it to the skies - local folk with good taste."
And finally Mr Fraser turned his attention to the environmental implications of the proposed demolition.
He wrote: "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."
Mr Fraser said he had sent the open letter to Edinburgh civic bodies, politicians and others, inviting them to join him in viewing the proposed demolition as "a remarkably retrograde step”.