Maitland Mackie

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The Hanging Gardens of Aberdeen

Maitland Mackie - Mackies of Scotland

What a wonderful opportunity to do something splendid! It’s not every day that a City gets offered a £50 million present to spend on a beautification program. Sir Ian of course has had a big vision for the Union Terrace Gardens for over 20 years. I remember him well, talking  the then new Grampian Enterprise Board,  Ian was its first chairman, into spending £800,000  to ‘pile’ the base of the new road and underpass, “in case the City wanted sometime in the future to cover it over and develop the gardens as a core of the City Centre ”.  How’s that for long-term planning!  

Been watching the debate with interest and some concern. Given this marvelous opportunity  we need to let imagination run riot. We have the chance to have a lot more than just a “nice” City Centre. The web material I have had a look at is nothing more than that, and offered for comparison, simply other “nice” City Centres.   Given this chance we can do much better than that and the starting block is to let imagination run wild. (The ideas developed by RGU’s budding architects, P & J Saturday 27th, is a good start!)  We have to deliver something for the future as it is likely to be, as we would want it to be,  not simply an outcome of past or passing values, in which belongs the ‘also ran’ pro-business argument.   Certainly an iconic creation is likely to stimulate the private sector to take interest in the nearby classical and historic build, returning it to a modern equivalent of its past glories and particularly redeveloping Belmont street’s West side. But that is simply a side benefit.

We need to encourage and help  deliver  a future that espouses an environmentally conscious society, enjoying  the humanities, the cultures, the artistry, the craftsmanship, the socialising,  and eschewing  the ‘current greedy for more’ society!

The focus should clearly be on the “WOW” factor, the creation of something marvellous that becomes a national and international must see, and a place full of locals, and a multitude of visitors, enjoying the now wonderful world class garden,  the numerous  cultural,  craft, artistry, and studio  enclaves craftily tucked away  here there and everywhere,   the cafes,  (and certainly  the wee ice cream parlour), with direct underpass access to the Museum,  the Theatre, a renovated Caley, and a new Trump type, “historical pastiche”, Belmont street hotel!  We need to let loose the imagination of a Tim Smidt, (the Eden Project creator), a Titchmarsh, (Gardner’s World)  ably abetted  by a Jim McCall, and a wild architect and engineer or two challenged to deliver the “WOW”.  

A wild idea would be  not to lift the garden deck  per se, but to dome it in,  a la Eden project, and so offering a weatherproofed space in which to outdo Nebuchadnezzar in the creation of the “Hanging Gardens of Aberdeen.” Dome it in at the height of the eaves of Union Terrace and Belmont street, so that all looked up at it, not down on it, and went “WOW”

Domed in, it moves from a few weeks, to  an all year round cultural playground for the masses.   From the environmental point of view it could lead the world. We challenge the engineers to use the latest technology, to  collect the sun power, through solar  and photovoltaic panel glass to add to the offshore and on shore renewable energy projects currently being planned.  A particular challenge would be to ensure the whole development had a negative carbon footprint!

The last thing we want in our City Centre is more cars and buses. Our new icon, this 8th wonder of the world, the Hanging Gardens  of Aberdeen, should certainly not have a car park component. But our imaginative engineers, architects, and Sir Moir Lockhead should be challenged to deliver another “WOW” in the shape of a renewable energy driven  high level monorail transport system, to link  it with all the current  nearby car parks, bus and train stations, and the  retail Centres from Bon Accord  to Union Square.  And a fanciful,  maybe second stage addition, would be to run this  monorail all the way to the airport!   What a traffic and delay frustration that would eliminate.

These are but a sample of the ideas that the extraordinarily generous offer by Sir Ian unleashes. There will  be many more imaginative ideas out there. This is the time to pour them in.  Having been so stimulated by Sir Ian,  it will be a crying shame if all we finish up with is just a nice plaza!

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