Architect advises making more of city highlights
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
INVERNESS has all it needs to be a great destination city - it just needs to be more confident in asserting its individual character.
That’s the view of city architect Calum Maclean of AIDH:NORTH whose recent work has seen him taking an even closer look than usual at exactly what the Highland Capital has to offer.
"I’ve been working on an illustrated guide to the architecture of Inverness for the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland," he said. "It’s been very instructive in terms of just how difficult it can be even to take a decent photograph of some of the buildings, either because of the state they are in, or of what’s around them.
"Inverness has excellent examples of just about every age in architecture, but so much of it has been neglected or can’t be fully appreciated because of big bins littering the street or plastic banners flapping about and detracting from their impact.
"When you talk about ‘reinvention’ a lot of people’s initial reaction is to start coming forward with plans for big new attractions and major changes, but I really believe in Inverness improvements could be made with just minor alterations and a change in headset about our approach."
Raised in Thurso Mr Maclean went to university in Edinburgh and thinks Inverness could take lessons from both, as well as Glasgow, in how to look after its built heritage.
"Empty buildings are clearly a problem and I think there needs to be more opening up of opportunities for start-ups to make use of vacant space," he said. "It’s something that was done in Thurso and really helped bring a sense of vibrancy back.
"I loved Edinburgh as a student, though in a lot of ways Glasgow has surpassed it in terms of what it’s done with its architecture, preserving it but also making it part of today through the way it’s used.
"Edinburgh can feel a bit like an open-air museum and we want to avoid that, but if you look at the Royal Mile, which has a great cafe culture, I think that’s the sort of thing we could really learn from.
"Castle Street, for example, has a load of closes leading off of it that could be opened up and made much more of to provide a really cosmopoiltan, attractive location."
Mr Maclean believes a chance was missed following the 2015 Academy Street fire to simply pedestrianise that area and that still more needs to be done to make Falcon Square a true civic gathering place.
"It’s about recognising what you already have and showing that off to the best ability," he said. "It’s about the basics of just cleaning things up and decluttering.
"I recently came across an old Highlands and Islands Development Board report where the thrust was that settlements of more than 60,000 can bring real problems for people accessing city centres and the drive has to be to share development out.
"I don’t think many people would argue Inverness isn’t becoming too congested and while part of the answer has to be looking at the city infrastructure you also have to think about the relationship with the wider region and whether continuing simply to build up within the city itself is really in Inverness’s own best interests."
