Not sure how much "the capital" cares.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
"Fears capital could lose its World Heritage Site status"
(43 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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Seriously - people are actually comapring the impact of the Caltongate development on Edinburgh to that of the Waldschlößchenbrücke on the Dresden Elbe valley world heritage site. This is a large, concrete bridge that can be seen from miles away, built in the heart of a "cultural landscape". There is no comparison that I can see.
The Edinburgh World Heritage Site was chcked out by UNESCO in 2008, which concluded re Caltongate that:
"...the mission expresses some concerns about the detail of the Caltongate development. It concludes that to avoid the development having an impact on the Outstanding Universal Value, authenticity and integrity of the World Heritage property, it recommends the integration rather than demolition of two listed buildings, the total redesign of the town quarter Jeffrey street/Eastern Market Street to keep the interactivity between the urban structure and the open space and important views in the urban landscape, the redesign of public spaces to better respect social needs, and the review of any impacts on views from Carlton Hill."
Details: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2009/whc09-33com-7Be.pdf
I'm all for good design, and Caltongate could be substantially improved - although it seems at least some of UNESCO's concerns have already been addressed, but this is hyperbolic nonsense of the highest order.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I don't know, hyperbolic it may be but it could be a bit of a straw/camels back thing. Another destined-to-lie-empty office block here, another 13 story glass hotel there. It all adds up.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"
AN official report into Edinburgh’s world heritage site has called for urgent action to safeguard its status in the face of poor-quality new developments.
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Posted 8 years ago # -
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Edinburgh’s world heritage site has been thrown into crisis over “deeply worrying” concerns by Unesco over the quality of new developments in the city and demands for an urgent overhaul of how it is protected.
Officials have told the UK government over their “strong concern” about the level of protection for the Old and New Towns in Edinburgh after being lobbied about a string of controversial projects.
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Posted 8 years ago # -
Not to mention all the ugly advertising hoardings...
Posted 8 years ago # -
Councillor Barrie's quote makes it sound like gap sites are just things to be filled with hotels until there are none left.
Which doesn't seem to be that far off reality actually!
I'm pretty sure the original (but stillborn) idea of a Science Centre / Museum here might have been a little bit more of a bonus for the city than another chain hotel clad in a generic fur coat of fashionable but cheap mock sandstone and glass.
Posted 7 years ago # -
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A major public consultation has been launched to canvass views on how Edinburgh's coveted world heritage site should be protected.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
In order to make a meaningful contribution, it would be useful to know what the criteria for world heritage status are, and in particular, what it was about Edinburgh Old and New towns that attracted the status initially.
Posted 7 years ago # -
ih - here you go:
Posted 7 years ago # -
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Edinburgh Council (@Edinburgh_CC)
05/07/2016, 10:29 am
Over 170 responses so far.....Have your say in the running of Old and New Towns of Edinburgh World Heritage Site"
https://planningedinburgh.com/2016/07/05/old-and-new-towns-of-edinburgh-world-heritage-site/
Posted 7 years ago # -
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FEARS have been raised over the management of Edinburgh’s celebrated World Heritage site.
A city-wide consultation found residents were concerned about the impact of new developments and the maintenance of buildings and streets within the historic area.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
Who exactly "celebrates" WHS?
Typical Evening News guff.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Cockburn Society? The front of the much criticised development at the old sailor's ark is looking good. A large handsome new archway has gone into the row of buildings.
The side is delayed a little but if the road stays one way we will need to watch. The ventchie remains an eyesore and the waste ground of the former bus station remains waste ground.
So probably still not great but could have been worse? The Indian restaurant still not open. The costa coffee shop mobbed. If sitting in, please go 100 yards along to baba budan. Better coffee, independent cafe/donutterie.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
Adam Wilkinson, director of Edinburgh World Heritage, said: “We often think of inappropriate new development as the major threat to our World Heritage site – but the complacency that leads to poor building maintenance is an equal threat.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
“
Spurred to act quickly after Unesco threatened to put Venice on its endangered list unless Italy permanently banned cruise ships from docking in the world heritage site, the government said on Tuesday that vessels weighing more than 25,000 tonnes would be barred from the lagoon from 1 August.
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Posted 2 years ago # -
And in the Beeb...
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Liverpool stripped of Unesco World Heritage status
Posted 2 years ago # -
It's known as Normalisation of Deviance, and is what led to things like the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster becoming possible, and then becoming real.
Distinctive skylines famed for their spires and towers and chimneys, and architecture alike, suffer from death by a thousand cuts as new builds are allowed to soar inexorably, with relentless unhappy modernity crowding out the traditional or the vernacular. The elegant massing of pale brown and red sandstone of the old RIE for example is lost to angular green glass. The turd seeks to be the eastern centrepiece that the St James Centre before it was supposed to be, forgetting that the George Street plan, like the shape and form of St Andrew's House as viewed from the southwest, and the entrance to Waterloo Place, was laid out to frame and respect Calton Hill.
Edinburgh Castle will not be enough on its own to justify WH status, just as The Three Graces, and their range of docklands: simultaneously sparkling modern marinas, anonymous eateries and derelict jetties, were not.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I'm torn. On the one hand I think almost all modern architecture is a bit hideous, but on the other hand I don't think we should keep huge parts of our cities frozen in time (for example, having to have drafty single-glazed windows while we scrabble to phase out gas boilers and the climate implodes)
Posted 2 years ago # -
I think the Norman Foster steel and glass between the old RIE buildings looked quite good when it was only a single modern building in between each old one. But they spoiled it by building too much steel and glass to the West of the old buildings and now it is completely dominated by grey boxy modernity. They also spoiled it by not making it permeable from the gate on NMW and also by not providing proper bike paths and bike parking throughout the site.
The real thing that's criminal is that they converted it into flats, instead of creating a glorious new hospital on the same site with similar new buildings.
(Please don't tell me that new steel and glass hospital buildings would have been any more expensive to build than the flats they did build)
The central location would have avoided the need for masses of (now controversial and overfull) parking at the new RIE.
Posted 2 years ago # -
On traditional windows:
Properly draught-proofed single glazed windows aren't as bad for losing heat as was once thought (over-hype by double-glazing salespeople?). Especially when combined with wooden shutters and thick "thermal" curtains.
I'm torn on the concept of replacing traditional single glazed sash&case with modern double glazed units. The hardwood used in the original windows is far far superior to any modern wood. So are we just going to chuck tonnes and tonnes of perfectly servicable hardwood into landfill, just to get marginal gains on insulation / CO2 reduction?
Sure, if the sash or case is rotten, then it should be mandatory to replace with slimline (or conservation) double-glazing. But I don't think we'll solve climate change by throwing out perfectly good stuff and replacing with new. We have to make do with what we've got / make do with less
Posted 2 years ago # -
@neddie The problem with sash & case isn't so much the inherent R value of single glazing(although that is in fact awful, and sealing yourself off inside an artificially-lit box with shutters and huge heavy curtains that are a pain to keep clean is hardly an ideal solution), it's that it's impossible to "properly draught-proof" them.
Insulation is important to achieving energy efficiency, but one of the biggest impacts you can have on making your home less energy intensive to heat is improving its airtightness - there's a reason that one of the most important qualifications for Passivehaus certification is 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 pascals - and you can put as much draught stripping as you like in these old sash & case windows, they leak air like a sieve and always will by nature of their design. In fact old windows are one of if not the biggest impediment to achieving the ENERphit near-passive retrofit standard for these old buildings - they usually have plenty of room for insulation and air tightness measures thanks to the high ceilings, and you don't actually need a *huge* amount of additional exterior wall insulation to make thick stone walls work(the main issue with that is moisture/breathability).
Not to mention the expense - being able to present themselves as "preservationists" allows the companies who handle trad sash & case to charge premiums well beyond what the work itself entails, because they know people in Conservation Areas and Listed structures basically have no choice but to pay up.
Being able to replace drafty old sash & case with modern, properly-sealing *triple* glazed units - without any drawn out planning consent nonsense - is simply necessary if we want to keep traditional housing stock and meet climate goals.
Posted 2 years ago # -
The sash and case windows we have have been professionally draught-proofed, and without getting a measuring instrument out, they seem pretty good to me. It's hard to see how any new sash and case unit could be better draught-proofed. Perhaps the issue is the fundemental design of sash and case?
In any case, you cannot make a building completely airtight, unless you mechanically ventilate it as well.
We are already suffering from condensation problems on the walls, thanks to increased airtightness, so there is no way we could make the property any more airtight without adding mechanical ventilation.
To fit triple glazing in a traditional tenement would be over-engineering and essentially pointless, because the surrounding exterior walls are inherently cold surfaces, containing moisture (the thin layer of lathe and plaster has cold air circulating behind it, between the lathe and the stonework). All that would happen is that condensation would form on the walls instead of on the windows!
To insulate traditional (moisture laden) exterior walls, you can't simply attach additional insulation to them, otherwise the original fabric of the building will remain damp and rot from the inside out.
Anyway, I am only speaking from the experience of a single property, so I would love to know more about how I can insulate it to a high standard *and* ventilate it *and* preserve the existing historic fabric...
I'm also aware there are a lot of charlatans in the building / damp / insulation / conservation industry, so it's very hard to know who to trust...
(And don't get me started about the *Royal* Institute of Chartered Surveyors [RICS] "rising damp in every property sold" scam - which usually involves injecting snake oil into stonework and tearing off traditional lime plaster to replace with plastic sheeting & gypsum plasterboard, thereby trapping moisture into the wall forever - yeuuch)
Posted 2 years ago # -
We are already suffering from condensation problems on the walls, thanks to increased airtightness, so there is no way we could make the property any more airtight without adding mechanical ventilation.
This isn't unexpected, to be fair. The maxim is "Build tight, ventilate right."
Posted 2 years ago # -
Exactly.
The main issue with insulating stone walls is more to do with condensation forming between the insulation and the stone than the interior of the structure, and yes that is a pain to solve unless you're willing to spend to get the right kind of sprayfoam done.
The latter issue is taken care of by installing an MVHR system that steadily removes stale air through one set of vents, runs it through a no-contact heat exchanger with the fresh air being pulled in to equalize the new air's temperature(they're not 100% efficient obviously, but if the air you're exhausting is 20c the air the system brings in will be about 17 or 18c), then pumps the fresh, dehumidified(in good MVHRs) air back throughout the house again. These units are standard in a lot of new builds with a good level of airtightness, and they're essential in an ENERphit or Passivehaus context.
As to the windows collecting moisture from the walls - not if the installation is done properly. A proper near-passive retrofit involves removing as many thermal bridges as possible, the new windows would be installed in such a way as to isolate them entirely from the surrounding stonework.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Deleted. Posts crossed
Posted 2 years ago # -
Given the prevailing level of competence in the general UK building sector, expecting them to successfully carry out complex thermal modelling and insulation/ventilation retrofits on a mass scale is a very tall order.
Until that is sorted (and it's likely to take a generation or two and possibly a requirement for insured guarantees for jobs above a certain size to inject the required level of rigour) I think I'll stick with my current "leaky tent"[1] and a £20 padded shirt if it gets a bit parky.
Like neddie I certainly don't plan to let some crew of halfwits from the latest energy-efficiency scheme loose on my house to "fix" the insulation.
If I was king, my ruthlessly-efficient secret police would ensure that any new houses built were of the correct standard and done properly. Currently the standards for those are *still* rubbish. Once there's a good pool of upskilled builders, then would be the time to engage with the more complex retrofit problem.
[1] I think that's the preferred disparaging term of the PassivHaus designers...
Posted 2 years ago #
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