November 28 2022

A revised submission has been filed for a replacement 200,000sq/ft office block at Rosebery Place, Edinburgh, to address planning concerns around scale and massing.

3DReid Architects and AVIVA Investors have elected to reduce their plans by one storey from those initially submitted while taking the opportunity to introduce greater articulation to the south elevation and change window arrangements.

To maintain floorspace rooftop plant on the seventh floor has been rearranged to permit wraparound office space together with a reduced roof garden, communal meeting point and events space.

In a design addendum, the architects said: "... a significant reduction in scale has been enacted in this revised scheme. This is largely centred on the stepping down of the building from west to east, in order to lessen its mass when viewed in the context of the Category A-listed Haymarket Station. This level of reduction has had to strike a delicate balance between a smaller development and the according viability of this.

"Through careful modification of footprint and 3-dimensional form, we have sought to minimise the extent of loss of net internal area."

Set back upper floors will take the form of a framed glass module extruding the window bays of the main mass.  

3 Comments

#1 Posted by town planner on 29 Nov 2022 at 15:33 PM

In my view a poor planning decision, that as the photo blurb says accurately, introduces a "chunkier" design to the original proposal's detriment. Even if technically it has been reduced by only one story, visually it looks like alot more than this with the new design, and we have yet another bland groundscraper to add to Edinburgh's collection.

#2 Posted by Randy Hall on 29 Nov 2022 at 16:22 PM

A David Chipperfield knock-off crashing into a value engineered 2 dimensional Dundee House.
The proportions of the DC building look off - could do with a meaningful base and an expressed top to rid of the parapet which looks incredibly heavy.

#3 Posted by Ed on 14 Dec 2022 at 17:41 PM

It looks like a re-imagining of the formidably stalinist Job Centre across the road I had to attend in 1979, on Clifton Terrace, re-skinned as various 2* hotels. This sort of neo-AMA rubbish from the 2000's just depresses.

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