Robert Gordon's know how to crawl!

You know, I find it hard to say the words 'Robert Gordon University' - I will always associate Robert Gordon's of Aberdeen with the Plumbers College they really are. I also appreciate that they are a private school responsible for producing a nasty strain of public schoolboy that is well out of place in the fishwife dominated environment of Greater Torry.

Of course the guys who run Robert Gordon's are not stupid - even though most of the students are - and I was thrilled to read the other day that they will award my all time hero Donald Trump with an honorary Doctor of Business Administration on the 8th of October. That's no doubt a date for most of your diaries. Dr Trump will deliver an acceptance address in front of an audience of invited guests and students and I for one will be hanging on every word. The 'University' has chosen to confer this degree on Donald in recognition of his business acumen, entrepreneurial vision and the long-term future his company is planning in the North-East of Scotland. Isn't that fantastic?

So you see, flattening the sand dunes, crushing the newts and toads and ignoring the planners actually works. All praise to Dr Donald for establishing a new business ethic in the north east of Scotland, revolutionising planning and ploughing the scrapyards and small holdings into the eighteenth hole. This is the way it should be!

Scott Wilson devoured - who cares?

You know, I've been pondering this week over the disappearance of famous engineering consultants Scott Wilson who were swallowed up by American giant URS, who previously gorged themselves on Thorburn Colquhoun and many others. Of course Scott Wilson weren't just engineers - they were a truly multidisciplinary company with a reputation for being mediocre at all sorts of things ranging from project management and transportation to landscaping gardens and most importantly, town planning. A cross between a Goliath and a dinosaur.

Now we all know that when a snake has a meal it sleeps afterwards. Scott Wilson spent much of their time feasting on other companies, making irresistible offers to folk who were close to retirement, scunnered with their hopeless staff and unable to sack them because of employment laws. They should have been getting on with the work instead of empire building - getting work for themselves instead of buying other firms' clients! Well Scott Wilson fell asleep and now they have paid the ultimate penalty for their greed and that was careless. Now they've gone - how cares? Well I do.

I'm old enough now to remember a very different consultant picture in Scotland - names like Crouch and Hogg (famous for the elegant Kessock Bridge - above), Babtie Shaw and Morton or even William Gillespie and Partners, Brian Clouston and many others who I can't recall but who all worked with me at the Scottish Development Agency.

But wait! It's entirely possible that some of my current day heroes will also disappear. Folk like Archial and 3DReid, those masters of commercial design, would provide a great meal for an ambitious company. Halliday Fraser Munro - those victorious heroes who will be infilling Union Terrace Gardens in Aberdeen - may also find themselves digesting in the stomach of a larger predator though the sheer talent in HFM could prove to be a very rich dish. But ultimately this would be bad for Scotland - I could stomach the loss of some of these companies but one thing is for sure - Keppie Design will never surrender to a snake in the grass.

They are too big and too talented to let that happen and with their heritage stretching all the way back to the nineteenth century, working for toffs and building most of Glasgow, they will surely lead our country through this century as a design leader and inspiration to all of us.

PS I've just noticed in my personal copy of Planning that the goons in the RTPI are mightily upset because Scott Wilson were their Consultant of the Year in 2009. Well what a shame but it goes with the territory - EDAW were winners in 2001 then eaten by AECOM a few years later. So if you want to remain alive, don't have anything to do with the RTPI!

It's all go for tower blocks around Aberdeen!

You know, I almost choked on my Rice Krispies this morning as I read my personal edition of Planning. The fantastic news is that Aberdeen City Council have announced plans for more than 20,000 new homes to be built over the next few years, focusing on Aberdeen Football Club's amazing new space age stadium - somewhere in the green belt. My goodness! The good folk of the Aberdeen property development industry don't even think about limits. Fresh from the success of Union Terrace Gardens they just get on with things. If the rest of the country was like that, Scotland would be a world leader in ploughing up green belt instead of being cosy with frogs and newts. Our First Minister, wee fat Alex Salmond would be thrilled.

Just look at that stadium - the Red Ultras will have a great time there. But wait. Isn't there a huge opportunity here to build these 20,000 homes as tower blocks. A thoroughly modern city grouped around a football stadium is an enticing prospect and matches the visions of the Great Donald Trump and Sir Ian Woods at Menie and Union Terrace Gardens.

This is exactly the sort of development that should have been proposed at Grandhome by the Reverend Andrew Duany instead of the Highland Housing Expo Scottish nonsense that will be happening there - big mistake. Look at this fantastic proposal below - this is the sort of futuristic housing that Aberdeen will build given a fair wind.

This one was done by a firm called FAT who I've never heard of. It's good but I think Keppies, Archial or even 3DReid could do a better job. Anyway we will just have to wait, but everything looks to be in place to make Aberdeen a genuine replacement for Leith as the real epicentre of dynamic property development led growth in Scotland. A gold star and a big tick for all those involved!

Highland Housing Fair is a joke

You know, life is full of disappointments - some great and some minor. I drove across to the Highland Housing Fair the other day, 'Scotland's Housing Expo', to see what the great and the good had produced as examples of our new nation's great residential architectural skills - complete with the sustainability label of course. Boy was I disappointed! I expected something modern and exciting with a taste of the future - a bit of Dan Dare I suppose. Instead I saw a collection of pokey wee pseudo Scottish sheds - more Brigadoon than even Andy Stewart would like. Honestly, they'll be filming the White Heather Club there in a wee while and digging up Harry Lauder to do a turn.

I know a great deal about Scottish architecture as you know and it was very sad indeed to see that hardly any of my favourite designers had bothered to put pen to paper for this event. There were some bright moments though - the ever excellent Keppies have produced a masterstroke with their lovely three-storey home.

It is indeed a stately home and makes all the other houses look completely ridiculous. It is a pointer to the future while all the other houses are looking to the past of byres, black houses and butt 'n bens. Here's another wee photie of Keppies work just to make the point.

Truly they are one of the greatest design firms around today - famous and accomplished in architecture, masterplanning, landscape and cost cutting. This is work that merits a gold star and a big tick from me.

Also there is a wee building there by a firm I hadn't heard of before called Bracewell Stirling which is modest yet shows great promise. It has the look of a building that was designed some time ago - maybe they pulled it out of a drawer and dusted it down - but this is in fact what most great practices do anyway. So good luck to Bracewell Stirling - your future is bright. And to all the others apart from Keppies - you are hopeless.

PS - I heard this morning that one of the homes has been sold off to a contractor working on the site and that the rest will be sold to local councillors or their relatives at a reduced price. Isn't the Scottish development industry so great.

Union Terrace Gardens are go!

Well didn't I tell you so? Clever people with money and power have won the day while has-beens like Annie Lennox can go back to their alternative lifestyles or tax havens as appropriate. The great unwashed of Aberdeen and its surrounding bogs and mire can return defeated to their black houses, railway carriage homes and but'n' bens on forsaken hillsides while sensible people celebrate and drink themselves unconscious in the fine bars of Aberdeen tonight. The news is explained here for people who can read.

It's a great day for Aberdeen, for Scotland and for the art and science of town planning - no less than that. You see, when very rich people get involved in regeneration it always ends well - just look at Glasgow Harbour or Edinburgh Waterfront. This time we have seen an alliance of the north east's finest brains like Sir Ian Wood and that lovable rogue of the mass produced housing for the plebs, Stewart Milne who also supports Aberdeen Football Club, one of the most successful teams in the Scottish Premier League this year! It's all just too much. I can scarcely believe how lucky we are to have such fine people involved in planning the future of this great city. And with my hero Donald Trump just up the road, you can see that no other part of Scotland is so blessed.

As for the Peacock Arts Centre, I hope they are out of the game now - thank goodness. Aberdeen has no time for their arty tosh and weird sandal wearing lifestyles. Goodbye losers! That's all I will say for now - I am staying over in Inverness tonight and this wi-fi is costing me a fortune but I will still go out to celebrate the fact that all this was done despite the public. Soon they will appreciate this fabulous and generous initiative. Hurrah for Sir Ian! Hurrah for Stewart Milne!

Building Scotland Magazine is so great!

You know, I've raved on about Building Scotland magazine in the past but I'm almost completely overwhelmed by the fantastic collection of developments in my personal edition of this learned journal which I received this morning. Right from the opening pages it's an architect's dream - I gorgeous collection of beautiful projects and people that are worthy of the highest accolades. If you look at the wee photie above you'll see what I mean - cutting edge design delivered with panache and sensitivity to context. It certainly gets a gold star and a big tick from me! No wonder that Scotland is the envy of the architectural world.

Now just look at this building above - it's St Kentigern's Academy at Blackburn in West Lothian. It only cost £6.6m and amazingly, the architects were too humble to put there name to it - but my guess is that Keppies or Archial were responsible for this visual treat. Anyway, I'm sure the lucky children who will be educated in this building will have a great start in life.

Now just look at this! It's a critical road improvement scheme built by Highland Quality Construction and surely an award winning project for it's use of colour, integration with the landscape and sheer craftsmanship - look at the smooth curves of the white-lining! And the delicate use of big black bollards is a lovely touch. Building Scotland really has an eye for these great projects and should be heartily congratulated. This is so great!

Finally I have to mention Andy Walder, Director of the National Construction College, who has two articles in this issue on building a sustainable future. I'm with you there Andy - very important for the planet and our children. Both articles are identical though (page 16 and page 29) and I assume this is a clever editorial technique for emphasising the importance of what this great (if glum) man has to say to Scotland. Sometimes you have to say things twice. So well done Building Scotland Magazine - great work!

Total Luddites

Gillespie Investment Group, the Glasgow-based commercial property arm of the Gillespie mining and haulage family firm, has received permission for a £200 million data storage development on a 164-acre part of the Drumshangie site, a former open-cast coal mine at Greengairs. You know, the goons in London - otherwise known as the RTPI - will be getting the message loud and clear at last. There's a fantastic story about it in the Herald today (and I make no apologies for using their image and some of their text). Actually I was personally informed of the situation in North Lanarkshire through a message we received courtesy of Bell and Scott whose daily newsletters about the latest terrific developments in Scotland's rampant property development industry have surveyors and land agents fighting to get to their PCs round about lunchtime every day. Well of course it's not everyone who gets this and to be honest, this was forwarded to me by a friend who works inside the cage at North Lanarkshire Planning Department. Boy are they down in the dumps! Here's why.

One of the most ambitious integrated developments of a former industrial site ever planned in central Scotland has received a key planning permission from North Lanarkshire Council despite opposition from council planners, who were described by local MSP and Scottish Government housing minister Alex Neil, as “total Luddites”. Great - people are speaking the truth for once.

Now I haven't seen details of this great development but I'm sure it is very good - and certainly more than a dump like Greengairs deserves with its open cast coal mines, rubbish tips and slag heaps. Really, the Bucky Bhoys won't even notice. The plans on display behind Cammy Fraser (top picture) look tantalising though and were probably produced by Keppies or some other top firm who know how to get the best out of the planning system and who have always been thought leaders in green belt redevelopment.

But the real story here is how the planners were completely over-ruled by a collection of enlightened elected members who are wise enough to live elsewhere and who poured scorn on all the usual planning issues and went for development at all costs - excellent! Scotland is dragging itself out of the dark ages with the help of Donald Trump and Sir Ian Wood in the Aberdeen area and now help has come from the most unlikely quarter of North Lanarkshire Council. It's great! They should be up for the RTPI's own Planning Award soon!