Ah,
I do love a bit of Brutalism, that is as in the architectural movement rather than
some sort of savage violence. I know it
is not everyone’s cup of tea, but for me I find there is a sort of Sci-Fi utopian
appeal to it. Even now, some of the
buildings in that style look like something from the future. So, being in the mood for a look at some
heavy concrete, I took a walk through Leith to probably the most famous
Brutalist building in Scotland, Cables Wynd House, locally known as the Banana
Flats.
The
Banana Flats is one of those buildings that I remember having a certain
mythology around it in the 1980s. It was
a place where some of my teenage acquaintances ended up being housed after
being made homeless, having escaped violent and/or dysfunctional families. Bumping into them in the pub on a Friday or
Saturday night, they would regale me with tales of drug dealing, suicide, prostitution,
and strange and bizarre happenings around the building. And though I listened with fascination to
their tales, I grew to be terrified of the place, thinking of it as some Sodom
and Gomorrah, and hurrying past it if I was out in that area. Then
one drunken night I ended up at a party there, and it wasn’t that bad. Fair enough, some kid did try to threaten me
into giving him money as I was leaving, but he was about twelve and gave up
when I just ignored him.
Though
the building has had, and still has, a bit of a reputation, it was built with
the ideal of improving the quality of life for many of those living in substandard
housing around Leith. Between the 1950s
and 1970s, there was a huge slum clearance project in Leith that resulted in
the construction of several large public housing schemes. Cables Wynd House was
part of this project and was completed in 1965.
The building is of a Brutalist design and was designed by Alison &
Hutchison & Partners. The design was
influenced by the ideas of the architect, Le Corbusier and his utopian concept
of the ‘Ville Radieuse’ or the Vertical City.
This being a city of high density housing in skyscrapers, located in a
parkland area with shops, leisure, and cultural amenities as part of the
development.
Constructed
of concrete, Cables Wynd House has a distinctive curve, that has resulted in
its nickname of the ‘Banana Flats’. At
the time of its construction, it was the largest block of flats in Edinburgh
being ten storeys high with 212 flats, the majority of these having two
bedrooms. Cables Wynd House was regarded as being innovative in its design with
features such as heated floors, lifts, refuse chutes, and a concierge. It was also built with external access decks
to recreate the sense of community that had existed in the neighbourhood it
replaced, and has a North-South orientation to give as much natural light into
the flats as possible.
Originally
seen as a desirable place to live, things changed in the 1980s when the
building, and surrounding area, gained a reputation for drugs and violence. Things have improved, but Cables Wynd House,
though seen as iconic by many, is still plagued by problems, and is regarded as
the most deprived part of Edinburgh.
The
building gained fame as being the home of the character Simon ‘Sick Boy’
Williamson in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, and was featured in the
film. It has also been used in the BBC television dramas Wedding Belles
and Guilt.
In
2017 Cables Wynd House became a Category A Listed Building, for demonstrating ‘a
culmination of contemporary architectural theories, bearing a close resemblance
to Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation model housing and other notable
near-contemporary English schemes’, as well as being ‘both a positive and
negative architectural icon, representing a period of great social
reconstruction in Scotland’s cities.’
After
taking a walk around Cables Wynd House, on a typical Scottish day of rain,
sunshine and then rain again, I left the Skulferatu that had accompanied me on
a cobwebby ledge by the Dry Mains Riser.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are -
what3words:
wells.reap.over
I
used the following sources for information on the Banana Flats –
