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April 17, 2005
Demolition of Edinburgh tower blocks
Edinburgh’s early 1960s Capelaw Court tower block in Oxgangs was demolished today. Two more blocks, Caerketton Court and Allermuir Court, will be knocked down later.
While I understand the reason is the state of the housing rather than the external ugliness of the building, this is still great news. I just hope that other blocks nearer the centre will suffer the same fate.
I used to assume that the old buildings of Edinburgh had been intentionally preserved, but a closer look at the city suggests that this was not the case. For example there seems to have been little resistance to the architectural vandalism perpetrated by Edinburgh University around Potterow, Crichton Street and George Square.
Any nominations for other buildings we might like to disappear? Mine is the Appleton Tower.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4452293.stm
www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/explore/demolition/index.asp
UPDATE 19 April 05
Here is the Appleton Tower.
Appleton Tower from the Crichton Road car park / Photo S Holledge
Appleton Tower showing the deterioration of the fabric of the building at the top / Photo S Holledge
And here is the building Gary Smith (Big Stick Small Carrot) is nominating for demolition: St Nicholas House, Aberdeen:
St Nicholas House, Aberdeen / Photo G Smith
Posted by Simon Holledge at April 17, 2005 04:46 PM
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Comments
Appleton Tower is apparently one of the nominated buildings in Channel 4's 'Demolition' programme.
Posted by: doctorvee at April 18, 2005 02:44 AM
I'd nominate St. Nicholas House in Aberdeen. A spectacularly bad building by any standard.
Posted by: Garry at April 18, 2005 05:09 PM
I am going to put up a picture of the Appleton Tower later.
Garry, thanks for the information! If you have a picture of St. Nicholas House, I will put that up as well.
Posted by: Simon Holledge at April 18, 2005 06:02 PM
Duncan,
Was the Channel 4 programme just a 'wish' list? i don't know how much yeterday's demolition cost but the whole project is apparently costing 10 million.
Posted by: Simon Holledge at April 18, 2005 06:08 PM
Well they claim they'll be going ahead with the demolition.
http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/D/demolition/index.html
I jumped the gun a bit though - the article I read in the Student newspaper just says that Appleton Tower will be a "prime candidate".
Posted by: doctorvee at April 19, 2005 01:14 PM
Thanks for the link.
When do we know whether the building has 'won' the Channel 4 competition?
Posted by: Simon Holledge at April 19, 2005 03:03 PM
I've uploaded a picture I've taken of St Nicholas House to my Flickr account here . Given it's location I'd imagine it would have to be taken down very slowly and carefully. I doubt it would make for very good TV. (Simon, I'm not sure if you can lift the picture straight from the link? I can email it to you if that helps.)
The Appleton Tower really does look pretty awful.
Posted by: Garry at April 19, 2005 05:34 PM
Garry,
Thanks. I guess St Nicholas House was built about the same time as the Appleton. Unfortunately I can't drag the picture off the page, Flickr seems to do something to prevent this. Perhaps you coulw email it to me?
Posted by: Simon Holledge at April 19, 2005 06:05 PM