UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
A Plan for a University
PREVAILING east wind and a prosaically urban situation have always tended to discourage in Edinburgh Univer- sity any suggestion of academic self-consciousness. We ourselves can confidently assign this stern contempt for outward show to certain cherished elements of the Scottish character. We are aware, however, that strangers, accustomed to those pleasing embroideries in which the scholarship of the more sophisticated south goes decked, are often led by their absence amongst us to disparage our unadorned but solid worth. The endurance of a little inconvenience and even hardship we have always been taught to regard as a valuable factor in our educa- tional system, but when on that account our whole reputation as a seat of learning is at stake we must all accept the necessity for change.
Our inconveniences, we must confess, are many. The univer- sity has long since outgrown the original Old College on the historic Kirk o' Fields site, which was granted by the Town Council in 1581. Around it the arts faculty straggles across the tram-lines of a busy town ; a few hundred yards away the medical school and the union are exclusive and aloof ; while a few miles further off the scientists labour unseen in the rarified atmosphere of a suburban hill. The buildings themselves range in unsuitability from the simple inadequacy of the Old College; whose design was begun by Robert Adam and continued by Playfair, through Victorian municipal horror to the calculated unpleasantness of the recent science faculty buildings.
These problems of accommodation and integration which have to be faced are naturally the concern of the university authorities. More surprisingly, however, questions of university development are also exercising •the minds of citizens of Edin- burgh and undergraduates Any large-scale development of the university within the city must, of course, be considered by the city as a matter of town-planning, but this particular item of town-planning appears to have aroused more than usual public interest, and this attention is focused upon one immediate project in the development programme—the extension of the medical faculty which it is proposed to erect in George Square.
Completed in 1785, George Square is the earliest example in the city of eighteenth-century town-planning, being the first de- parture from the tenemented closes and wynds'of the High Street and the Old Town, and a forerunner of the graceful squares of the New Town. Almost every house has rich associations with the history and culture of Scotland, and the necessity of preservation has been the subject of much discussion and Press. correspondence. The north side, however, for which the new building is proposed, was originally the least successful, and has since been almost completely spoiled. It is, moreover, the only possible direction for the present essential extension of the medical school. Yet even among those who accept the necessity for the encroachment of the university upon George Square there has been controversy over the design of the new building, which must not be allowed to destroy the essential character of the whole square.
The design for this, the first building of the new University of Edinburgh, was selected by an open competition, and the entries were afterwards publicly exhibited by the university. Just after this exhibition there was published with the univer- sity's undergraduate magazine, the Student, an interesting supplement entitled A Plan for the University. In this pamphlet the Student Architects Group, Edinburgh (S.A.G.E.), criticised the designs which had been submitted for the George Square extension, and discussed in particular the problems of new buildings sited among old ones. They deprecated any attempt at compromise, which was bound to be both meaningless and characterless. and they declared that in any such new buildings " for honesty in the expression of their age and structure, for the best solution of the functional needs, the character will be contemporary."
A Plan for the University is, in fact, a rejection of that kind of compromise which is timid and dishonest, and is a plea that " the new University should be a symbol of clear and courageous thought, a contribution to our age and not yet another apology for it." It is by no means, however, a thoughtless rejection of all that we of today, especially in Edinburgh, can see to have been valuable and permanent in cur past, for it goes on to say that " we would erect buildings which would be of this century, expressive of their age and function, respectful of. but not servile to, their traditions."
It was in this spirit that S.A.G.E. went on to present their own full plan for the new University of Edinburgh, for it is a plan which recognises that there is no easy solution ; the university cannot merely be uprooted and rebuilt in some spacious and convenient suburb. They have realised that the university depends for its character and being upon its relation- ship with the city which created it.
The plan covers an area of some forty acres in the heart of the city, bounded on its south side by the large open space of the Meadows, on the west by the broad tree-lined walk which separates the medical faculty from the Royal Infirmary, and on the other two sides by the busy streets of the city itself. This is an area which has already been provisionally allotted for university development, and it will involve the clearance of some dwelling-houses, some already scheduled for demolition, and the re-housing of some seven hundred families, as well as the diversion of traffic-routes. For obvious reasons such projects cannot be undertaken at the moment, and so the plan has been conceived in four stages, of which the earlier involve the least possible demolition and interference. Certainly as few as pos- sible of the present university buildings within the area will be demolished, although one or two of them will undergo a change of function. The Old Quad would be in an extreme corner of the area, and could not now pretend to be a focus for the many large units which would make up the university.
As well as providing almost double the present accommoda- tion, one of the main purposes of the plan is to bring all the scattered elements together and so recreate the unity which the university has lost. In view of the irregular shape of the area and the need to preserve many existing buildings, it would not be possible to have any simple focus as in a formal symmetrical scheme. Instead, the effect must be achieved through more subtle methods of grouping and arrangement. There would be a central precinct in the space in front of the present medical school, graduation hall and union. From it would radiate the new faculties of arts, law, divinity and music. Also around this area would be grouped the chapel, theatre, recreation buildings and shops. A second quadrangle would be formed to the south of this by George Square. The new medical building would, of course, ocupy the north side, but the remaining three sides would be used without alteration of the facade as staff residences. To the south of the square, overlooking the Meadows, would be the large student hostels which are so badly needed in a non- collegiate university, and to the east would rise the new buildings of the science faculty.
Commenting last February upon the S.A.G.E. plan in the Architects' Journal," Astragal" wrote: " The overall plan is of the rather bold type typical of students, but it is nevertheless a courageous and imaginative effort which, judging by past examples of re-planning, it is extremely unlikely will be bettered." That is an authoritative professional judgement on a professional matter. But A Plan for the University deserves comment for other reasons. It is notable because it reflects with remarkable accuracy the origins and history of a university whose founda- tion by a great city is unique. It is important because it is a students' plan for the university which has a long record of student initiative. If Edinburgh University lacks self-conscious- ness, it may yet be achieving self-realisation.
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