WHILE some of its neighbours boast grand facades and flamboyant detail, the Bhs department store on Princes Street doesn't exactly scream "save me".
Yet some argue passionately that it is the epitome of 1960s shop design which, if not protec
ted, may soon be lost forever.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," concedes Deborah Mays, accepting that not everyone can see beyond the concrete and glass box to fully appreciate its merit, craftsmanship and clever use of quality materials.
Deborah is head of listing at the government agency Historic Scotland – dubbed Hysterical Scotland by some thanks to its rash of curious decisions.
Few have been more curious than the move to consider protecting the Bhs store, putting it alongside the Granton gasholder "eyesore" in a box marked "historic treasure, must save for the nation".
A 1960s department store, a heap of scrap metal on a one-time gasworks site, the brown glass boxes that make up the Scottish Widows offices on Dalkeith Road, and its flat-roofed neighbour, the Royal Commonwealth Pool – all have fallen under the watchful gaze of the Historic Scotland quango. But the obvious question is 'why?'.
Take the Bhs building. Built in 1965, 63-64 Princes Street is as eye-catching from a distance – perhaps for all the wrong reasons – as it is boringly bland up close. Yet in Deborah's opinion, it's a unique structure that deserves to be at least considered for the special tag of 'listed building'.
"In years to come, if someone asks a group of schoolchildren to point to a classic 1960s department store that is absolutely right for its time, they will point to that one," she insists.
"Buildings don't necessarily have to be old or very beautiful to meet the criteria and set of principles used since 1948 for listing.
"You have to realise that when listing buildings started, Victorian buildings were largely reviled and being knocked down – they were treated the same way as these 1960s buildings, seen as being of little value and not worth keeping.
"So we have to be open-minded, because once these buildings are gone, they are gone forever."
Learning to love the Bhs store – or at least not to laugh off suggestions that it should be handed special status and placed alongside the likes of the Mercat Cross in the High Street, grand townhouses in Anne Street, and Edinburgh Castle – involves learning its history.
It was specifically designed to meet an ambitious plan at the time – to create a continuous second street above Princes Street. Yet only a tiny number of buildings rose to the challenge laid down by a panel of Edinburgh planners, and the proposed walkway never happened. Of the few buildings which were constructed under the idea, the Bhs structure was certainly the largest.
"This was a flagship store for the company, so it used very high quality materials. It is a very important example of thinking at the time, designed by one of the leading post-war practices," stresses Deborah, who is currently in talks with the store's owners over its potential listing.
The building is expected to receive a category A listing, placing it as being of national importance.
While some eyebrows have been raised at Historic Scotland's decision to consider such a listing, there has been support too, principally from leading architect Malcolm Fraser, whose projects include the award-winning Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile.
"It's popular for people to look at the 1960s and think everything was rubbish, but we need to understand there are also some good buildings from that time," he said.
"If you look along Princes Street, 75 to 90 per cent of the 1960s buildings are dreadful and need to go. But in Scotland we always seem to get rid of the best ones first."
The Bhs building, he argues, used better materials than many others, was done with more finesse and better care.
Designers RMJM, who would later work on the Scottish Parliament building, were also responsible for other city icons such as the Commonwealth Pool – handed special status from Historic Scotland in 1996, just 27 years after it opened.
There, Deborah and Andrew Martindale, the agency's principal inspector for the south-east, talk with mounting enthusiasm of preserving key elements in the face of a planned £37m redevelopment.
Its A listing status, they stress, should ensure the pool's unique character – its "frozen in time" design – is preserved, while allowing vital modernisation.
The pool might not look particularly dramatic from the exterior, yet Deborah argues it deserves to receive Historic Scotland listing status.
"The pool has very distinctive changing rooms, everything was done to the nth degree, it was built to be exceptional and special," she explains, glancing up towards dark timber ceiling running the length of the concourse which, granted, few new buildings are likely to feature.
"This was Edinburgh showing an international audience of visitors a pool that responds to that worldwide focus. It is streamlined, low and long, in response to the Crags beyond. It met the requirements of the time."
The nearby Scottish Widows building is equally streamlined, low and long, a distinctively modern series of brown glass cubes and rectangles. Is it an eyesore or a national treasure?
In fact, it has the highest listing available, A, meaning it is recognised among the top eight per cent of listed buildings as being of national importance. That puts it in the top one per cent of the nation's building stock.
The official wording on the listing papers waxes lyrical, applauding the brown boxy slab of offices as "a major achievement of international status" for its designers, led by Sir Basil Spence and the leading landscape architect of the time, Dame Sylvia Crowe. It says: "This building is an expressionistic response to Salisbury Crags married to a Functionalist programme."
Then there's the defunct gasworks at Granton. It is defined as a regional historic treasure, and has B listed status.
It sits slap in the middle of a brownfield site earmarked for development, which raises questions over just what value a Victorian gas relic has in a modern housing and office estate.
Deborah and Andrew say that's for the developers to figure out, but they argue that its historic importance is clear.
"It was designed at a time when Edinburgh needed a new gas provision and they didn't just throw up any old thing – this was high quality design," says Deborah.
Andrew points to gasholders which have been imaginatively reused in Dublin and Vienna, their basic metalwork structures retained to encompass exciting, modern buildings, cleverly merging the past with the present.
Retaining a symbol of the area's past has a deeper impact, however. "It's about belonging to a place that has history," explains Deborah. "If you belong to a place completely redefined then the crime rate shoots up, people become anonymous numbers, they don't feel it is part of them.
"The gasholder is an interesting segue to Granton's history – it connects people with the past."
How do you get on the protected list?AROUND 75 per cent of the properties in central Edinburgh are listed by Historic Scotland as either A, B or C category.
There are some 47,000 A- listed buildings in Scotland – Edinburgh Castle is among them – considered to be of national importance or major examples of a building type. They make up eight per cent of the total listed buildings in the country, and just one per cent of the nation's buildings.
Buildings which receive B status are regarded as being of regional importance, either major examples of their type or designed by a leading architect. Some 51 per cent of listed buildings fall into this category.
The remaining 41 per cent are C-listed, meaning they are structures of local importance.
Buildings can be nominated for listing by individuals or groups. A consultation period follows and Historic Scotland can recommend to the Scottish Government to include a building if it meets the criteria.
The full article contains 1355 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
