THE BUZZ
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The people of Aberdeen voted in support of the £140 million City Garden Project at a referendum in March. A total of 45,301 people, or 54% of the vote, cast their vote in favour of the plans which has provided a democratic mandate for the proposal to transform the heart of the Granite City. However, following recent council elections the project has been placed in doubt as the new largest party at Aberdeen City Council, Labour, has vowed to axe the scheme. If this decision is pushed through it will be a huge disappointment for many of the people and businesses who believe in the economic, cultural and social ambitions for the city which the City Garden embodies. Energy industry bosses have described how an attractive centre would ensure the future of the North-east for years to come. Sandy Clark from AMEC said: “The North Sea, once the fifth largest oil producer in the world, is now eighteenth in the world. Other offshore provinces are over-taking us and unconventional oil and gas such as shale in places like North Dakota are now vying for our share of investment and talent. If Aberdeen is to have an oil and gas industry in the long-term and anchor existing businesses and jobs here, it must have a vibrant attractive city centre as a focal point for its many other quality of life attributes. Our poor city centre is often cited as a major obstacle in attracting people and investment. With the City Garden Project unlocking wider city centre regeneration, we have a unique opportunity to radically improve our city centre.” Colin Welsh of Simmons & Co added: “The UK recently became a net importer of oil for the first time since 1978. This is a wake up call for the people of Aberdeen. We cannot be complacent about the future of our city. Unless Aberdeen shows a willingness to make changes that will improve the quality of life for its residents and make itself more attractive to incoming investors we limit the prospects of sustaining the wealth generation that currently exists and will reduce opportunities in the future for our children.” Mark Patterson from Nautronix was keen to highlight the multi-million pound investment that stands to be unlocked in our city centre. He said: “As with any new development there is an element of risk involved but the risk of doing nothing is much, much higher and future generations will end up paying a very high price if we fail to embrace change now. “Companies like mine are competing for skills from places such as Perth, Australia, Dubai and Houston. Aberdeen must have something that sets us apart from other cities. It is no longer enough to rely on our recognised ‘quality of life’ we have to continue to invest in it and evolve to be able to compete.” The City Garden would be home to new outdoor and indoor cultural facilities designed within the surface of the park with a range of uses. The Butterfly would house a new cultural and arts centre with the Forum providing an indoor black-box theatre with seating for 500, linking to an outdoor performance stage with amphitheatre for 5,000 people. Local dancers and choreographers gave their backing to the project which they see as having the potential to revolutionise dance performance and appreciation across the region. Angela Towler, renowned dancer and choreographer said: “As a major city Aberdeen’s name resonates around the world for many things but sadly not the arts. At least not to the level it should. We lose too much of our young talent to London, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and now Dundee. We have so many talented people in our beautiful city but we need to provide for them and encourage them to want to stay. The City Garden Project is a massive step in making that happen for all art forms. It is a truly exciting project that I am so very proud to read about and support where possible. “For me, the City Garden is the beginning of an exciting journey that will bring world class talent to our beautiful city and more importantly, help keep that talent here." Oil and gas operators TAQA Bratani and First Oil pledged to sponsor a series of free major open air concerts and events once the City Garden Project goes ahead. But it isn’t just businessmen and performers who are excited about the potential benefits, the garden would be transformed into an exciting year round destination with cultural activities and seasonal programming bringing the city centre to life even in winter. The Learning Garden would occupy a sun-drenched portion of the site west of the Triple Kirks tower within the City Garden. Part of the plans would include the creation of a garden space, wholly dedicated to educating people on growing vegetables and herbs and creating awareness of contemporary approaches to sustainability. While the garden is open to all visitors to the park, school children, residents associations, pensioners groups would all be encouraged to actively participate in shaping and cultivating the Learning Garden during all seasons. Architect Charles Renfro said: “This next generation of the traditional botanical garden would be a first for Aberdeen. It would aim to give everyone, but particularly those living in the city with no access to a garden, the opportunity to learn about Aberdeen's ecology, gardening, horticulture and producing local, seasonal and healthy food.” David Strachan, managing director of Tern Television, the producers of the Beechgrove Garden said: “One of the many successes of Beechgrove is its involvement in community gardens. In over 200 projects across Scotland we’ve found that when people are given the chance to become involved, they relish the opportunity to create and then maintain something new and beautiful. Transforming underused space transforms communities.“ Aberdeen Football Club manager Craig Brown has jetted all over the globe during his career. He said: “Every city of note needs a vibrant centre and I think it’s fair to say that right now, in Aberdeen’s case, the city centre looks a bit jaded to say the least. “Thanks to football, particularly at international level, l I’ve been lucky enough to visit numerous cities around the world. Many have been transformed as a result of grasping a bold vision and having the foresight to see it through to fruition. “I believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that will bring long-term benefits to the people of the north-east of Scotland on a whole raft of different levels, including regenerating the heart of the city centre, and will be a wonderful and fitting legacy for future generations of Aberdonians.” The arts and cultural centre and facilities within the City Garden design also excite Professor Paul Harris of Gray’s School of Art. He said: “The City Garden Project could realise a new cultural ambition for the city. As a focal point, it would make the culture and creativity in our city more concerted and more visible. The Butterfly arts centre and the indoor Forum with black-box theatre would be amazing new spaces for art and all expressions of performing art. Aberdeen City and Shire desperately needs to establish a vibrant cultural reputation nationally and internationally which will enrich the social fabric of our city but also put us firmly on the map as a major destination.” It is hard to envisage another time when the region will have a similar opportunity to make the most of such an important development which has been recognised for its benefits to business and culture whilst also winning high praise for its striking design and architecture.
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD NEWTON OF OLIN, THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS FOR THE ABERDEEN CITY GARDEN
How do you envisage the gardens on completion and how quickly will the new gardens look mature? The garden’s planting will be green and lush with trees of many ages including specimens up to some 10 metres tall that will thrive and grow to maturity. One of the delights of a garden is to watch it grow and mature. On completion the gardens will provide a rich variety of spaces and greenery to enjoy immediately. From quiet and secluded gardens to the vibrant and open lawn individuals can escape the bustle of the city for lunch or enjoy throwing a Frisbee with friends. Shrubs, perennials and groundcovers will fill the beds and provide varying colours and textures through the year. The diverse plantings will offer new experiences as season’s change, while the flower garden will be a showpiece for Aberdeen City’s long tradition of spectacular seasonal planting across the city What excites you about this project? We are excited to help shape the City Garden that will greatly expand opportunities for all Aberdonians to enjoy the culture and outdoors of their remarkable city while connecting them back to their regional landscape and culture. Our fundamental mission is to expand and enhance the public realm of cities, making them more accessible to a wider constituency. For many generations designers have suppressed the expression of nature in urban environments. This suppression has left our cities hard and unrelenting, varying little throughout the year. The new landscape of the Granite Web will provide a significantly different and softer urban experience, providing colour, drama and stimulation. Can you tell us more about the planting and types of species? Plants in an urban environment do need to be treated with great care so we will pay great attention to the choice of species and the conditions in which they are planted. The planting approach proposed draws from Aberdeen’s regional landscape to make a series of gardens uniquely suited to the City and its climate. . We have identified species that will enhance the ecology of the City Garden; all of the detail will be worked through during the next phase of the project. We have learnt from our experience of making vibrant healthy landscapes in many places throughout the world that there is no substitute for local knowledge. To that end we will work closely with a small group of local horticulturalists and ecologists, including those with Aberdeen City Council, to develop a diverse family of species that will thrive in the city and stimulate the senses throughout the year. How do you move and re-plant large trees? Successfully moving and replanting trees especially large trees requires proper preparation in the nursery, careful transportation and the best possible growing conditions in the garden. There is now considerable experience of planting large trees in Europe and the United States. Much research has been conducted in recent times to understand how trees grow and thrive. The trees for the City Garden will be selected well in advance of replanting so they can be appropriately prepared. The trees for OLIN’s work at Canary Wharf in London were regularly root pruned and replanted in the nursery to encourage the growth of an extensive fibrous root mass that allowed the trees to become quickly adapted to their new situation. This is an intensive process and the team will ensure the trees selected for the City Garden will remain healthy during their growth in the nursery and by closely monitoring the transportation of the trees from the nurseries and their placement in the garden. How will you plant new trees in the gardens? There are many factors, aside from the choice of species, which contribute to successful planting. Amongst these is employing good nursery practices in growing, preparing and transporting the trees. For Aberdeen’s City Garden every tree will be individually inspected in the nursery by the landscape architect to ensure that it is healthy, free from disease and has good form. Trees, through their roots, rely on the soil for moisture, nutrients and air as well as structural support. Each tree planted in the Garden will be provided with a suitable volume and composition of soil. Each of these factors is an essential consideration in making excellent growing conditions for the trees. In a public garden however one of the most damaging factors is the compaction that occurs when many hundreds of people use the park. To protect the plantings a variety of surfaces will be selected suitable to the areas anticipated use and soil formulated appropriate to the plantings and capable of withstanding the impact of adjacent uses. Of equal if not more importance is the provision of a high level of maintenance. In this respect from day one we will develop maintenance regimes that will ensure that the garden will thrive and continue to look its best in perpetuity. How will new eco-systems be created? A particularly important goal of the Granite Web is to expand and diversify the Garden’s habitat potential. As with the choice of species for the garden we will work closely with local ecologists and horticulturalists to design the layout and associations of species to form a diverse and vibrant regional ecology. We have identified four regional landscape types as starting points and work with our ecologists to refine and add habitats that are uniquely suited to the garden’s urban situation. Understanding how habitats support particular fauna is crucial and forming plant associations that mimic those in the region will allow us to make a healthy and diverse eco-system that will bring the gardens to life throughout the year. Education and research will be an important consideration, especially in the Learning Garden. Developing a system of interpretative signage throughout the gardens will allow school groups an opportunity to engage with the garden’s new urban ecology. What experience do you have of this type of project? Since the inception of our studio we have been know for successfully creating landscapes over structure mostly for major public places. Examples include Canary Wharf in London that is one of the largest green roofs in the world and where more than 500 trees were planted. Many of these trees were over 12 metres high and, twenty years later, they continue to thrive and provide an oasis of green in a dense urban environment. Bryant Park in New York City is an intensely used and valued urban park located over three floors of the New York Public Library archives. It is used extensively throughout the year for events including, in the winter, having a skating rink over the lawn. On top of the main auditorium of our conference center project in Salt Lake City, which incidentally is large enough to hold a jumbo jet, we placed a fountain in which trees were planted together with a meadow surrounded by conifers that reflect the vegetation of the surrounding mountains. An outgrowth of our 30-year experience is a standard textbook on green roofs “Green Roof Systems, A Guide to the Planning, Design and Construction of Landscapes over Structure” coauthored by one of OLIN’s Partners Susan Weiler.
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"A park for the people"
I know that the City Gardens are an emotional topic. I understand why this is so. I remember the drama of looking down into it from Union Terrace Gardens, but I also saw a railway line and wide road that felt like an open wound in the landscape. I have been to Aberdeen a dozen times in the last year and have looked at the Gardens in all seasons. I have rarely seen anyone use them. There are moments in a city’s history when it has to be courageous and that time is now, just like Aberdeen once was when it built Union Street one of the best streets in Britain, but sadly now in decline. Most projects that we now think of as great and much loved were once contentious and argued over. Think of the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and even Diller Scofidio, Renfro own immensely successful High Line linear park in New York, which in one year has become the most visited attraction in the city loved by citizens and visitors alike. These are all people places where the city finds its heart. Aberdeen needs to be bold in thinking about its future, because there are severe threats on the horizon. The city may seem superficially well off, but the situation is fragile. I know this, because I have recently done a study of the city. Many of your young, especially some of the most talented are leaving, revenues from oil and gas will not go on forever and with it the expertise and skills that give the revenue to provide education and social services, and Aberdeen’s heart around Union St. is suffering badly. You want to keep your expertise and companies so that they provide new products, perhaps in renewable energy, and services that give the city its wealth. Aberdeen has immense potential. It is a clever city, its people are tenacious and inventive, it has interesting companies and a vibrant cultural scene and we do not want this to disappear. Why will rejuvenating City Gardens help Aberdeen and why do I know it can? For over 30 years I have been watching how cities succeed and flourish and how others decline and fail. From my experience I know that cities like Aberdeen need to make strong statements about their ambitions and show confidence to the outside world as this attracts all kinds of resources – money, good people and visitors, equally importantly it encourages your people to stay. This income in turn pays for the services a city needs to survive well. I have looked at countless renewal proposals and the proposal for this park is truly exceptional. It will become, I am confident, much used and loved by locals and citizens alike.
Charles Landry Director of Comedia and author of "The Art of City Making"
"An engagement with our history"
The Diller Scofidio + Renfro plan squarely reinforces that fundamental position. I don't mean by this that that they merely preserve much-loved antiquarian objects, though they do. Aberdeen has been pretty good at that kind of thing, and so too is the new design. All the statues stay, the balustrades remain the main perimeter of the garden, and the beautiful arches under Union Terrace move indoors to become an integral part of the cultural centre which will be a new hub for Aberdeen life. As for the garden's plantings, they become an arboricultural and horticultural reflection of the flora of the North-East. But there are much more subtle things going on in this design. The old Denburn was changed completely when our ancestors laid the railway and built the existing garden to cover the stream, as well as blocking the prospect to the Dee estuary by carrying the ingenious arched viaduct which is Union street over the single-span bridge with the little leopards. But the new design emphasizes the centrality to the city of the surviving valley. That's important, because to many of us - certainly to me as a little boy - the Denburn was the psychic funnel which carried us into the glamour of downtown and ultimately the harbour. That won't change. What the Diller Scofidio + Renfro scheme does is treat the Denburn in a completely new way. It suspends the whole garden area, now expanded, from a monumental web of walkways, the filaments of which connect to the main lines of human flow in and out of the surrounding city. These lines also engage directly with our heritage. They create links from the Denburn to the historic world of Belmont Street and on to the Mither Kirk; carry people up to the old Schoolhill route to Marischal, and on to the branch viaduct of Rosemount; and handle the spill of people on and off Union Street. The backs of the Belmont Street buildings, with their new plaza, are given an entirely new life. The great arch of the bridge is retained. There will be new opportunities for creating routes to the Green and ultimately the harbour and railway station. All this is an engagement with our history. The valley itself, under the cat's cradle of walkways, takes on a completely new life. The upper part, below the Theatre boulevard, becomes a huge natural amphitheatre. The southern end of the valley combines a wide gateway to Union Street and greens for community play with exits which will eventually carry people below and beyond the arch over the railway. The centre section of the historical valley is put indoors under the Butterfly structure at the apex of the web, to become a new facility emphasizing the centrality of the Denburn to the city's life. Beyond the garden, the historic townscape is used as the fundamental backdrop for the whole plan. The walks through and above the garden, as well as the glassed spaces inside the cultural centre, are designed to give constantly changing views of the Theatre and St.Mark's, the back elevation of Belmont Street, and the grand buildings of Union Terrace. All pedestrian routes, high and low, are to be furnished and finished to provide varying walking rhythms, and places for rest and reflection with the historic tapestry of the city all around. The whole complex both ends and continues at the Bridge and at Union Street. We all have our own perspective on Aberdeen, where it has come from, and where it is going. Doubtless we will have principled disagreements over the new design. But I am certain of two things. One is that this is anything but a plan to cover the garden or put a lid on it. It is as three-dimensional as the Denburn ever was. My second certainty is that the design doesn't abdicate our history and heritage. It is an ingenious projection of Aberdeen's rich history on its dynamic future.
Sir Duncan Rice 23 January 2012.
"A vision that competes with our most progressive international rivals"
Bold vision is not new to this city. The daring construction of Union Street, with its elevated thoroughfare and bridge leaping across the Denburn Valley, was also a leap of faith. It courted controversy at the time, yet to this day continues to be instrumental in Aberdeen’s development and identity. Bold architectural visions are inherently controversial. Even Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral was dogged by controversy at the time of its building. Why? Because we form emotional attachments to places, and are suspicious of change. The competition winning proposal by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, a firm of architects of world renown, creates a dynamic new parkland that draws people into its heart through connecting pathways and bridges. The park is varied, from lawn to meadow to woodland to city square. Tucked into the folds of this new landscape is a cultural centre and outdoor performance space offering the opportunity to bring an enriched cultural life to everyone through music, art, and dance. The design retains a memory of the valley, and cleverly interprets the three-dimensional nature of the city’s development. It is a scheme that understands Aberdeen’s history and architectural qualities, yet which is absolutely of our time. This is positive change and, importantly, one that signals to the wider world that Aberdeen has ambitions as a 21st century city. It is time to step back from the heated debate and calmly look at the reality of our city centre. It is in a state of decline, and no longer conveys the civic pride that we all share. If this development does not go ahead it will simply deter any progress, probably for the next generation, while other cities near and far continue to advance. The alternative is an imaginative new parkland and cultural provision that complements the existing cityscape, extends existing amenity for all, and which will enhance the vibrancy of the city centre through a vision that competes with our most progressive international rivals. In summary, this is exactly the catalyst that Aberdeen needs to secure its future.
Dr David McClean Head of the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture & Built Environment RGU |
Give yourself time to consider this remarkable proposal to renew the City Gardens with fresh eyes. I think you will find that it will enrich Aberdeen and become the place where people from all backgrounds, young and old come together as one. I think it will generate pride amongst citizens and give them a sense of well-being.
There are many, many Aberdeens. Each of us sees it through a different lens, and each of us has an Aberdeen of his or her own. But for most of us, whether in exile or at home, Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn are always at the centre of our mental map of what the city means to us. It will continue to be so.
I come to this as an independent citizen of Aberdeen, my home city, albeit one with a particular interest in its architecture, form, and future development.