Blog: Union Terrace Gardens, Aberdeen.
Architect: Stallan Brand
Year Completed: Ongoing
Union Terrace Gardens is currently undergoing some major and exciting development works that hope to improve the relationship of the city’s main thoroughfare, Union Street, to the sunken garden space. I lived in Aberdeen for 6 years during my Architectural education and a year post education, and in that time there were very few architectural schemes to get overly excited about. With the opening of the refurbished Art Gallery and the various other projects happening nearby (some more successful than others) it is an exciting time for Aberdeen and it’s residents.
The Union Terrace Gardens were always a strange feature of the city centre. A fair few cities have gardens near their centre, but where most of them are bright and busy with people and dogs, Aberdeen has always struggled to get many visitors to the Gardens out-with event times such as yearly Robert Gordon University Graduations or attending an Aberdeen Festival. It doesn’t help that the development of the underpass below Union Street, the previous Den Burn River (now Denburn Road) that flowed nicely through the gardens was removed along with all its connecting bridges to the lower levels of Belmont Street, meaning that the gardens always felt very closed off and a bit of a dead end in the city. The obvious and I assume the main reason for the lack of public interest in visiting this area was because it never felt safe. The significant drop in ground level from Union Street, Schoolhill and Union Terrace always felt a little dark and to anyone who lived nearby became an area associated with the occasional assault.
Visiting the city recently, I walked around the new development and became very excited and was keen to stick my nose through the hoarding fences to see how things were looking. The brass/bronzed materials, new walkways, accessible route, creating interior spaces in the viaducts and rounded forms of the three new buildings were all very exciting and look to be a well thought out pieces of architecture and landscaping will hopefully make a unique and open space for people to visit daily. The form of the three new buildings I assume have been developed help connect the current street level with the lower levels of the gardens – a very good move.
I look forward to visiting and probably writing about the finish product later in the next year or so. I hope the project is able to improve the link from Belmont Street better to Union Street as to allow the flow of the city to improve from its main shopping street to its cultural hub. The successful highly Aberdeen Art Gallery refurb has clearly had a positive influence over the city and perhaps its prospects at being a known city for contemporary architecture.
