Marischal Square is so fabulous!

the fantastic new Marischal Square development
-Halliday Fraser Munro at their best

You know, when one of my fans sent me a message on Twitter last week suggesting that I comment on the latest developments at Marischal Square in Aberdeen I was immediately excited. In fact I was all lubed up and ready to go!

You will recall that I wrote an excellent appraisal of this fantastic development back in September 2013 but much has happened since then. The development has matured over the past 18 months. It has been stripped back to produce more profit for those loveable rogues Muse Developments who are at the helm of this magnificent erection, aided and abetted by the amazing Halliday Fraser Munro and a team of pimps, place-men and puppets. You see the Council has invited Muse into bed with them so someone has to clean the sheets afterwards!

As readers of my lovely wee blog will know, when Big John Halliday waves his enormous pencil around in Aberdeen, everyone appreciates the sheer length and breadth of his talent - that goes without saying! Of course he has many other tools at his disposal such as GCI which, for the ignorant, is a computer program that creates life-like pictures of future proposals. It’s like the old fashioned artist’s impression - but completely different! It’s a means of convincing the great unwashed that either the development has already been built and there is nothing they can do about it or that it is going to be so great and filled with so many beautiful people that they say ‘Big John, you are so talented and deserve my respect. Truly you are the Scottish Le Corbusier!’

Isn't this just great? I'm sure the old couple are loving it!

Of course the plebs don’t like this development much and that includes many architects. Look for example at the comment pages of the trashy and ill-informed Urban Realm website where the treacherous John Glenday orchestrates dissent and hatred of all new development. In this case, Wonky, Don Diamante, Andrew Broon, Boaby Wan, and Stevie Steve have all contributed their best efforts at architectural criticism, entirely unaware of the fact that they simply don’t matter! Poor souls - even Glenday himself hasn’t the heart to moderate the comments. Of course he needs all the publicity he can get for his gossip rag so the more ignorant and inane the comments, the better it is for Urban Realm.

Anyway, let’s look at the latest GCIs from my expert planner’s point of view. Well - where do I start? This is one of the biggest erections seen in Aberdeen in the last few years and certainly a tasty mouthful. It’s the essential meat and two veg in any planner’s lunchbox and definitely fills a big gap!

the fantastic new development on the right - spellbinding!

I’m looking at the amazing view from George Street up to Marischal College: the imperious grey facades of the new development on the right immediately look superior to the dingy granite of the traditional buildings on the left - which will hopefully be swept away soon. I am confident about this because there is no place for sentiment in Aberdeen. Unbelievably, this great view prompted more than 4,000 campaigners to sign a petition calling for the plans to be rejected in favour of more open space. You couldn’t make it up, could you? It was so obvious that the original proposals were just a cunning trick to give the impression that Muse and HFM actually cared about what was built when in truth they only care about the bottom line!

I honestly cannot understand why developers bother trying to convince the Aberdeen public at all. What eventuates on this site will be the sole business of Muse - and that’s the way it should be! What possible contribution could a bunch of ignorant fishermen, riggers and ex-farmers make to this project anyway? It is completely wrong-headed!

So my hearty congratulations go out to Muse Developments, Halliday Fraser Munro and Aberdeen City Council - together with their team of pimps and stooges. It’s a magnificent victory for the development industry and for the planners who will approve this fantastic erection. It earns a gold star and nine out of ten in my little black book. If they hadn’t bothered with consultation it would have been a clear ten!

All the best from Auchterness - I’ll be back soon!