I was guest speaker at the Dundee Institute of Architects awards last week.
On view were some fantastic designs and materials for new developments and extensions, by both established and up and coming practitioners.
All had an air of solidity and permanence.
And in a world moving towards greater sustainability and less waste I couldn’t help thinking how much has been squandered in Dundee in terms of building and housing, much of it fairly young in relative terms.
Vast sums of money, expended on designing and building property, have been chucked down the drain.
Older Dundonians talk nostalgically about the old Overgate and Wellgate areas.
Both of those had great communities, at one time teeming with life.
With some vision and foresight they might well have been modernised to retain their historic appeal, as has been done in some other cities like York.
Instead those areas and others were laid waste for architectural nonentities like the Overgate centre.
Time and the rise of out-of-town shopping have left these places moribund and facing calls for the demolition squad.
But I’m also thinking of the much newer destruction of vast swathes of property, in some cases (but not all) badly designed and poorly thought out, which have also fallen prey to the bulldozers and wrecking balls.
Memories lost in Dundee demolition
I sometimes feel my entire history has been wiped from the city map.
My Granny’s council flat, where I was born, in Kings Cross Road in Beechwood was turned to stoor long ago.
The old tenement, where I was taken for the first two years of my life, in the Hilltown’s James Street, bit the dust not long afterwards.
The tenement in Dunmore Street in Kirkton, where I lived until I was 16, met the same fate as the nursery I attended in Balgowan Avenue.
My old primary school, St Columba’s, in Kirkton was also flattened.
And my Alma Mater Lawside Academy, next to the crematorium, met its end a few years back too.
To cap it all the multi storey that the family moved back to from Kirkton, Bucklemaker Court in the Hilltown, was also felled by explosive charge in 2013.
Many will have a similar tale to tell, with significant parts of their histories expunged too
Whitfield, once Dundee’s largest housing scheme with a population of 12,000 – twice the size of Brechin – saw big areas razed and new-builds go up to replace the Skarne blocks and multis.
Meanwhile, schools in the city have come and gone like ships in the night.
Kirkton High, Linlathen High, Logie, Menzieshill High, Stobswell boys, St Saviours, St Margaret’s, St Vincent’s, and others have all disappeared.
There has been profligate waste, both in building badly designed, poorly thought-out housing, but also in levelling properties which in some cases were less than 50 years old, mere striplings surely in building terms.
Have the next generation learned the lessons from Dundee history?
Some ill thought-out dwellings were so badly conceived that their removal was probably unavoidable and for the best.
But the Beechwood flats, for instance, were elegant and roomy, with verandas and kitchens large enough to eat in.
They were solidly built and the scheme was well laid-out.
The area had some problem tenants – and that’s a whole different column for another day. But the casual discarding of quality housing stock, and the money spent on badly designed schools and other buildings, remains a blight on those charged with spending public funds in Dundee.
The awards for innovative and handsome new designs at the Invercarse last week suggest valuable lessons have been learned in design and planning for the future.
That is a huge bonus, after the many costly errors of the past.
Conversation