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Aberdeen City Square campaigners win intellectual backing

March 2 2010

Aberdeen City Square campaigners win intellectual backing
I heart UTG, a campaign group urging Aberdeen City Council to reject plans to roof over Union Terrace Gardens, has found vocal and respected backing in the form of three leading critics.

Jonathan Meades, writer and presenter of a one hour television documentary on Aberdeen, argued for the status quo stating: "Sir Ian Wood's proposal is boorish. Its bullying insensitivity is only underlined by the subtlety and discretion of the Brisac Gonzalez project for Peacock Arts which is the scheme that should be adopted... probably; there is always the option of doing nothing at all."

Meades was in good company with Stephen Bayley, the Observer’s architecture critic, opining: “How dismayingly brainless to think in terms of shopping and car parks....just as shopping and car parks become things of the past. If, and it is, I am afraid, a rather big "if", we have learnt one thing from the last calamitous fifty years of planning, it's that great cities are created in layers and by accumulation, through nuances and unplanned stimuli. Not from heavy-handed urbanisation."

Completing Wood’s unholy trinity was Professor Stuart MacDonald who stated: “Post Copenhagen, any proposal to bury a historical green space in the centre of a city under thousands of tons of environmentally toxic concrete has to be subjected to the utmost scrutiny.”

The group is at odds however with Wood’s own trio of backers, three graduates of Robert Gordon University who produced mock ups last week indicating how Wood’s plan might be realised.

These were criticised however for obscuring views of St Mark’s Church from Union Street, showing fully grown trees on the superstructure and showing permanent structures above the buried rail line, which went against conditions set by Network Rail.

3 Comments

The Pirate
#1 Posted by The Pirate on 3 Mar 2010 at 14:18 PM
Yeah... but **** the trees - think of the money. Here we are squandering a one of only many opportunities to line member of ACSEF's pockets to the tune of £1Bn if that development goes ahead. Now have a heart, tycoons have a right to live too. Us citizens are being really selfish.

I myself have a master plan sitting on my desk. One day I hope to give some of my (yet to materialise) fortune back to the community, by building the worlds largest casino and titty bar on top of Duthie Park. The deal is this: I put up 0.05% of my own person hard earned venture capital. The tax payer funds the rest of the project which will only cost £150M* and in exchange I am forced to take sole leasing rights to the completed structure.

*that's just the cost of the foundations. There's another £350M to cough up but the tax payers could take a loan for that and spread the repayments over the rest of their working lives.
The Pirate
#2 Posted by The Pirate on 3 Mar 2010 at 14:25 PM
Oops, forgot to add. It will also be necessary to build 10,000 one bedroom exclusive luxury executive villas in order to fund my plan. But it will be an eco-village (the walls and roofs are made out of recycled paper), so that's OK then :)

People will come from all over the world to see my masterpiece and this will add £££zillions upon £££zillions to the local economy. It will Aberdeen the envy of the whole world. It will be just like the Taj Mahal but with slot machines and tits.
Dave Anderson
#3 Posted by Dave Anderson on 3 Mar 2010 at 15:27 PM
I think you mean this type of tits

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/e/e5/Fat_man_mcdonalds.jpg

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