Loved and hated by locals in equal measure, the iconic Edinburgh Scottish Widows building on Dalkeith Road now stands empty - and even the fish ponds have been drained.
The building, designed specifically for the company, has stood there for nearly 45 years, but Scottish Widows moved their 2,200-strong staff out in 2020 as part of a drive to rescue their “property footprint”.
Built in 1976, the modernist building was designed by controversial architect Sir Basil Spence and landscape architect Dame Sylvia Crowe, who were both given honours for their contributions to their fields. It won several major awards, including the 1977 RIBA Award for Scotland and the American Landscape Award in 1978. It is now an A-Listed building, meaning that whatever happens to it next, it cannot be demolished.
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In 1970, The Scottish Widows Fund and Life Assurance Society bought the six-acre site backing onto Holyrood Park and commissioned Spence’s firm to design it after he had successfully designed their St Andrews Square building in 1962. This second building was more ambitious, with its distinctive hexagonal interlocking blocks of different heights which represent the basalt-heavy local geology.
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The Royal Institute of British Architects puts Spence’s work into the context of the area it was built in: “Clad in a continuous curtain wall of brown solar glass with York stone boundary walls, its design emphasised harmony and scale with its site; special consideration was given to its aerial view as it could be viewed from the nearby Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags.
The relationship with the exterior continued inside the offices, with planting echoing the gardens designed by landscape architect Sylvia Crowe .”
The Scottish Widows headquarters was one of Crowe’s physically biggest projects. Known for her flawless ability to merge nature and architecture, she said that “Landscaping is often what you leave out, not what you put in. You need absolute simplicity to knit the landscape back again.”
Her design for the roof garden used native Scottish plants to work with the local environment and ensure the overall building, though stark in design, cohered with its impressive backdrop.
She was an enormously influential figure who shaped post-war landscaping and garden design significantly.
The Landscape Institute’s biography is at pains to point out that just focusing on her individual designs does “not fully reflect the influence she had already exerted on the projects, persuading interdisciplinary teams to recognise the significance of views, landform and local character in determining the location and impact of new interventions in the landscape.”
All this, despite having been warned by several major landscape architects that the Scottish Widows project would be too technically complicated for Crowe, then 75, to pull off successfully. There is no record of Spence, who was only six years younger and who she had already worked with extensively, being warned in a similar fashion.
He was, however, a deeply divisive figure whose buildings were criticised as often as they were praised.
Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser said of him that “the best of Spence's work is of a clarity, simplicity and power that towers over the wilful egotism of today's gratuitous, post-modern shape making.”
Writing in the Guardian, however, Matt Weaver warns that “attempts to re-examine his work should honestly acknowledge that he built some dreadful buildings as well as some good ones.” Even then, comments like Graham Greene’s describing his work as “monstrous” might be a little over the top.
As well as the Scottish Widows building, Spence also designed Coventry Cathedral and the famous New Zealand Parliament building known as the ‘Beehive’. In Edinburgh, his work can also be seen at the University of Edinburgh library on George Square and Mortonhall Crematorium as well as the Great Michael Rise and Laverockbank Crescent social housing developments in Newhaven.
No matter what you think of it, the building has been an Edinburgh staple for almost half a century - it was even immortalised in cake form at Edinburgh Cake Fest in 2015. And former staff still reminisce about working in the building. One Redditer says “The staff restaurant had amazing views to Arthur's seat and the crags” and another talks about the “incredible views” from their coveted desk by a window.
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It is currently unclear what the future holds for the building - or the goldfish that were in the pond - but Edinburgh residents are understandably sceptical that it will be a positive move citing concerns that it will be turned into student accommodation or a hotel. Even in those worst case scenarios it can’t be torn down - the influence of Basil Spence and Sylvia Crowe on South Edinburgh’s skyline won’t be disappearing any time soon.
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