Friends don't let friends build trams

"I still don’t think that the fact that this is a capital city, and a world-class one at that, resonates enough at national level," wrote Sir Terry Farrell in a statement printed in the Scotsman last week. The comment constituted part of an effort to provide the public with "a more constructive and positive" reflection on his time as ‘design champion’ for Edinburgh than that offered by the leader of the city's council, Jenny Dawe, who damned him with faint praise in naming him the capital’s ‘critical friend’, following his public denouncements of Edinburgh City Council.

Nonetheless, Sir Terry’s latest opinions provided ample foundation upon which the local authority leader could base her valuation of the eminent architect. Both the source of some of Edinburgh’s most exciting modern buildings and developments, as well as one of the city’s most virulent critics, Sir Terry offers measures of both positive influence and biting denigration to merit recognition on both counts.

The renowned architect is famous in the UK for landmark designs such as the SIS building in Vauxhall and has been awarded many distinctions in his long career, including a knighthood in 2001.

Having started out in his profession with the modest, if practical, task of designing two ventilation shafts, Sir Terry progressively reached loftier professional heights, establishing his own firm in 1965 and going on to produce consistently acclaimed work in cities across the globe.

The 'design tsar' formulates his distinctive style using postmodern concepts that combine high art with contemporary high-tech culture, and his portfolio boasts some fascinating architectural achievements. Among these is the TV-am building in London, which exhibits a row of giant eggcups on the rooftop with satirical reference to the breakfast shows broadcast from inside its walls; with typical postmodern irony, these egg cups also function as a play on the architectural motif of urns on classical buildings.

As a specialist in urban regeneration, planning and development, his vision has notably tended to see architecture as part of a wider landscape, and indeed as integral parts of the city as a whole. This all-encompassing approach to urban space has often seen his work take the form of long-term development plans, opposed to a series of autonomous, short-term, architectural projects; Edinburgh’s urban landscape is gradually bearing the imprint of this fundamental ethos.

Since accepting the role of Edinburgh City Council's 'design champion' in 2004, Sir Terry has pushed his vision of a modernised city centre and has been an integral presence in the urban development that is sweeping the capital. His long-term development projects, including the Princes Street tram system and regeneration of the Leith ‘waterfront’ area, have had a noticeable impact on the local geography.

The controversial tram-works (by which Princes Street has descended into a temporary state of chaos) was a major component of Sir Terry’s plans to expand the city centre and improve accessibility to areas such as Haymarket and Leith. He has persistently earmarked the latter locale for future regeneration as an area with the potential to resemble a European or Mediterranean boardwalk. Impressively, he even goes so far as to herald the waterside area as that of the new New Town—the future centre of wealth creation for the city.

Yet, despite the extensive changes Sir Terry has succeeded in bringing about, the doyen of architecture has persistently and publicly lambasted Edinburgh City Council for what he feels is an "almost non-existent" rate of progress. In his very vocal opinion, this has principally caused the city to fall embarrassingly behind in comparison to the development and growth of other UK cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle.

A stubborn commitment to his artistic values, however, is nothing new for the ambitious architect, who has recently launched a fierce resistance to new proposals to expand the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC). He has vehemently insisted that any modification to the original design of the award winning building, of which he was the master planner, would threaten the architectural integrity of the iconic building.

In addition to making swipes at the ‘pervading inertia’ and complacency of the local authority, Sir Terry has also flagged up conservation groups as a major blockage for progress and change. Vocal and active opposition in Edinburgh has been against the urban and postmodern development that has swept over newer cities like Glasgow. Edinburgh, with its unique cocktail of gothic, Renaissance and neoclassical architecture, is steeped in history; the question that really needs to be asked is whether Sir Terry's style is compatible with a city like Edinburgh which has managed to preserve its medieval plan over the centuries and into today's urban environment. If not, how does Edinburgh cope with the rising population and increasingly congested city centre?

Temperamental as the relationship between Edinburgh and Sir Terry may be, there are some areas in which his strong and enthusiastic visions for change are taking shape with minimal contention. His views on a unified and inclusive city-making process, involving both public and private stakeholders alike, has manifested itself in the production of a city-making forum, whereby it may be possible for much of Edinburgh’s future to be driven by a collective effort and reactive exchange of ideas and visions.