STICK WITH DORIC
Gavin Stamp suspects a threat to
Scotland's capital from New Labour's Albert Speer
IT WOULD be hard to imagine a better site or better architecture. The colonnades and terraces of the Greek Doric pile high on the side of Calton Hill overlook the city of Edinburgh — and can be seen from all over what that wonderful painter James Pryde rightly called 'the most romantic city in the world'. With its central hall con- verted into a debating chamber, the for- mer High School is all ready to go for the Scottish Parliament; indeed, it looks like a parliament house already in its austere, resonant grandeur. Yet Donald Dewar, Secretary of State for Scotland, has recent- ly announced that it is not, in fact, going to house the assembly and that, instead, there is to be a competition for a new building on a site as yet unspecified. Do I sense a conspiracy to foist a modern mas- terpiece on the long-suffering people of Scotland? I am afraid I do.
The old Royal High School, designed by Thomas Hamilton and built in 1825-29, is a noble structure of immaculate, precisely cut stone. For the great Alexander 'Greek' Thomson of Glasgow, it was one of what were 'unquestionably the two finest build- ings in the kingdom' (the other being St George's Hall in Liverpool). Its hall was fitted up with desks and microphones when devolution seemed imminent in the late 1970s. And if it is thought to be too small or inconvenient, then diagonally opposite is St Andrew's House where MPs can have their offices and which also happens to be one of the very best official buildings of the interwar years. Rising spectacularly from the living rock of Calton Hill, it was designed by another very good architect, Thomas Tait — from Paisley. All that is required is a connecting tunnel under Regent Road.
But these two magnificent buildings designed by great Scottish architects are seemingly not good enough for the Secre- tary of State. If the objection was to having the Parliament in Edinburgh — a reason- able point of view — then a fine new build- ing could, I suppose, be placed somewhere more central and appropriate: Monklands, perhaps, or, better, at Ban- nockburn outside Stirling. The model would be the new Australian parliament at Canberra, won in competition by the American architects Mitchell Giurgola. But, as far as we know, Mr Dewar wants the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, where, after all, it used to sit until bribed into extinction in 1701.
So perhaps the objection is that the old High School is not purpose-built for democracy? But why worry? The House of Commons began life in a Royal chapel, the Irish Parliament still sits in the Royal Dublin Society's old lecture theatre at the back of 18th-century Leinster House, while in Czechoslovakia Masaryk's Assem- bly used the Rudolfinum, a 19th-century concert hall, until the communists moved to something newer. But perhaps Mr Dewar thinks that Hamilton's masterpiece is somehow associated with the failure of devolution 20 years ago? If so, that is absurd as the High School has already become a symbol of the aspiration for a Scottish parliament. Democracies work best when they have traditions and roots; besides, given the former pre-eminence of Scottish education, what better than an old school building?
But Mr Dewar is right to be concerned about the meaning of architecture. Image is important, after all. The Canadians and the Hungarians both chose Gothic because of its associations with the historic parliaments at Westminster. But many new nations thought of the democracy of Ancient Greece when starting out: hence the austere Neo-Classicism of Benjamin Latrobe's origi- nal Capitol for Washington, DC, and the Greek Revival parliament in modern Athens. And the Finns have a fine piece of 1930s stripped Classicism almost as good as Tommy Tait's St Andrew's House.
So Scotland, in fact, is peculiarly blessed by having the magnificently sited High School with its Parthenon Doric order humming with democratic resonances. It is one of the very finest products of that European movement inspired by the architectural language of the Greeks and, after all, to quote Thomson again, 'the buildings which constitute the glory of Edinburgh, and which entitle it to be called the modern Athens, were the fruits of that movement and of the concentrated intelligence of British society, which at that time had its seat in our northern capi- tal'. And that is the point: Edinburgh was not called the Athens of the North just for its architecture. Its magnificent Greek Revival buildings were a product of its intellectual vigour in the 18th century, so that the High School is a tangible symbol of the great days of the Scottish Enlighten- ment. If, in a vapid, posturing desire to be modern, Scotland consciously rejects the associations with the era of David Hume and Adam Smith, then the prospects for success are surely bleak.
So why is the Secretary of State for Scot- land doing this? Now I try not to fall for conspiracy theories, but in this case I can- not help suspecting a malign influence act- ing on the government. For Mr Blair and Mr Mandelson have an architectural advis- er, a man who has already persuaded them to commit huge sums of public money to the huge and pointless plastic Millennium dome at Greenwich in the face of the man- ifest indifference — if not hostility — of the British people. I refer, of course, to the architect Richard Rogers, now, preposter- ously, Lord Rogers of Riverside, whose firm created that supreme image of the financial probity of the City of London, the Lloyd's building.
Lord Rogers is glamorous and plausible, while his Riverside Café in Hammersmith, run by his American wife Ruthie, has become the epicentre of New Labour. Rogers, in fact, probably exercises more political influence than any architect since Albert Speer. He is full of good ideas about how to improve the South Bank, how to improve Trafalgar Square, how to replan London. Might he not have suggested to the Prime Minister that a boring old listed Greek Revival school is quite the wrong image for a dynamic, devolved, New Labour Scotland? After all, he is not known for any particular sensitivity to his- toric buildings and I do not suppose he has ever heard of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Instead, we must have an international competition for an exciting, new, state-of- the-art modern parliament. After all, given the way things are done in Britain, there is a fair chance the Richard Rogers Partner- ship might get the job. This is the first good reason I have thought of for voting 'no' in the referendum next month.
'Is it good luck or bad luck when a fat cat crosses your path?'
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