Newcastle University

Rebecca Frost, graduating this year from the MA in Urban Design, has written an article entitled Designing in Historic Environments for the quarterly journal Urban Design. 

Rebecca writes:

The article gives an overview of my design thesis, which formed part of my MA Urban Design at Newcastle University. The project looks at a sensitive brownfield site, formerly named Caltongate, in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. The aim of this research was to establish whether it was possible to learn and adapt previous thinking of place – such as the townscape movement, urban morphology and value of heritage – to current concerns, and to understand how urban design could improve historic environments.

Extensive desk study baseline analysis was undertaken to explore the features of the site. Beyond this, a thematic analysis was developed based around the townscape movement (topography, character areas, listed buildings, serial vision and memory of place), urban morphology and value of heritage in order to understand the other influences on the site. Additionally interviews and questionnaires were held with stakeholders and local community members. As part of this mind maps were used to get an understanding of the genius loci (character) of the area. These were particularly useful in finding out perceptions of the Royal Mile and the Caltongate site – which was often missed off or incorrectly labelled.

There was a need for a concept that looked at the city-wide scale, current regeneration schemes and the strategic location of the Caltongate site, to set out the site’s role within its context. In order to establish links at a more detailed level, two levels of concepts were developed for the site, so that the design related to and developed from the context rather than just fitting in.

The end result is a more robust design that relates the site to its context in terms of streetscape, tradition and views. A key aspect of Gordon Cullen’s townscape movement was understanding cities through what he called ‘serial visions’. It was a very useful way to express the variety of spaces (in terms of use and size) through the site, as well as relating the scheme back to the human scale. 

The article will appear in Urban Design, Issue 127, Summer 2013.