Metzstein takes on Edinburgh Castle in support of Murphy’s Haymarket hotel
the contentious Haymarket hotel development by Richard Murphy
Professor Isi Metzstein has described the importance of Edinburgh Castle to the city’s skyline as “overrated”.
Professor Isi Metzstein
Metzstein was giving evidence at the two-week inquiry into the contentious Haymarket hotel development by Richard Murphy, which began on Monday.
The 19-storey scheme will have 17 storeys above ground on a site close to the city centre, a Unesco World Heritage site.
The plans are opposed by local residents and conservation bodies including Edinburgh’s civic trust, the Cockburn Association, which says the scheme is too tall.
The Scotsman newspaper reported that Metzstein said the castle “did tend to give the impression that everything must be subservient to it”.
Metzstein offered support for Murphy’s hotel, saying he believed it could be a “dynamic” addition to the skyline.
“It is provocative, interesting and stimulating,” he said. “In modern times we don’t build cathedrals and churches; something has to come along to leaven the bread.”
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Readers' comments (5)
Metzstein offered support for Murphy’s hotel, saying he believed it could be a “dynamic” addition to the skyline. Well well, forty years of reverence now up in smoke
The scheme is a disgrace, it's not it's height that's the problem, it's the desperate fenestration, detailing and so so late 1990's corporate styling. Banal.
Well said Kevin! As much as one can understand The Cockburn Society and their allies logically choosing to lead their objection with the obvious-and-measurable issue of height, the real issue here should be that the design is just appalling. Not for the first time the office of Richard Murphy have demonstrated an inability to design appropriately to the scale of large buildings. While he, in the author's opinion, has excelled at domestic and small public-scale, when anything larger lands on his desktop it seems to receive exactly the same treatment, but just with more floors stuffed between basement and roof. Bland, corporate facades aside, just look at the roof: it's a 17 storey hotel with the upscaled overhanging eaves of a bungalow for goodness sake. It's neither "dynamic", "provocative", "interesting" or "stimulating". It's clumsy, dull and you know what... it probably is too tall.
Certainly we need architecture to reflect our times, but Murphy here does nothing to 'leaven the bread' with his exceptionally depressing 1991 business park caper.
I have a lot of respect for Metzsein, but all seems to go now. Apart from questioning the lack of objetivity from Mr. Metzsein being great friends with Murphy this building is a bad piece of architecture and design. It is sad to see a good architect like Murphy falling for developers to build any crap at any cost. And I find even worse that an enquiry is questioned by asking a close friend of the architect, in which way is this an independent enquiry. The building is horrible, you do not need to belong to a conservation bosy to say that. Carlo Scarpa (Murphy's idol) would say the same if that carbuncle will be built in Venice. But at the end who cares, every city has what it deserves.