1-3 Brown's Close, Canongate, Built 1969

Category

Library Item

Item no

42022

Title

1-3 Brown's Close, Canongate, built 1969. Architect, Basil Spence, Glover and Ferguson

Artist / maker

MacLean, Kevin

Date

2016

Type

Digital image

Location

Edinburgh and Scottish Collection

This is one of three residential and commercial blocks on the Canongate designed by the architects in the 1960s, combining geometric forms with traditional references and materials. All three blocks are characterised by an informal arrangement of monopitch roofs, harled and rubble facings, a variety of horizontal and vertical windows, slightly projecting segmental-arched canopies to ground floors and cubic concrete balconies to the side and rear elevations.

Basil Spence's Canongate development is an important example of Scottish post-war housing occupying a critical and historically sensitive location on the Canongate. The three relatively externally unaltered blocks (comprising 30 dwellings with shops and a public house to ground floor) share the same unified themes, employed in a variety of ways to achieve a sense of rhythm and movement across the length of the site. The Canongate flats utilise contemporary Modernist approaches and are part contextual (attempting to harmonise with their older neighbours) and part confrontational.

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Related subjects

Architecture > Architectural features > Balconies

Architecture > Architectural features > Stairways

Homes > Residential buildings > Tenements

Places > Edinburgh areas > Canongate

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

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