An edited version of this article originally appeared in ‘Prospect’, Scottish architectural journal, June 2005
My favourite building has seen better days. In fact, I doubt that it looked good even when it first opened in 1970. It is an ugly, dirty, monstrosity that is frequently referred to as Scotland’s most derided and disliked building. My favourite building is the St James Centre on Leith Street, Edinburgh. I have chosen it, not because it is a building that I like to visit (as a general rule, I can’t stand shopping centres) but because it is a building that I love to draw.
Throughout my career as an artist I have always been influenced by architecture and the city. As far back as five years old I was drawing the buildings I could see from my bedroom window. For some reason, I have always been attracted to ugly buildings – structures that most people don’t even notice as they walk by. My eyes are always examining the forms of these buildings, breaking them down into geometric shapes, perspective lines, tones and colours.
In 2002 I decided to try and do something constructive with my obsession with architecture and embarked upon my ambitious SURVEY:UK project. My intention is to survey the most densely populated areas of the UK through my drawing; examining the state of our cities and towns, paying particular attention to unusual architectural details and the way that the car has shaped our environment.
I grew up ten minutes down the road from the St James Centre and still live close by, so I regularly pass the building on trips into town. Over the last four years I have taken hundreds of photographs of the building. There are so many different ways to see it. It has numerous levels and angles, straight lines and curves. The dirty, discoloured ridges on its’ façade offer countless subtle differences in shade and colour making it a very complicated subject to draw. There are hundreds of greys, greens, browns and blacks occasionally punctuated by fluorescent safety markings and neon lights. The centre is built around a car park and therefore there are various intriguing tunnels and entrances offering glimpses into the orange-lit domain of the car inside.
Last year I was commissioned to draw a poster for Analogue, a design bookshop in Edinburgh. While the new pedestrian bridge which links the shopping centre to Greenside car park was being constructed the builders erected a temporary fire escape down the side of the building. This structure fascinated me. I was compelled to draw the bright silver of the steel stairs against the deep brown of the walls. I find it pretty funny that this drawing of Scotland’s ‘most hated building’ now adorns hundreds of walls across the country.
While writing my dissertation in my final year at art school I shot several black and white spools of the shopping centre to use as illustrations. When looking back at my pictures several of my colleagues and one of my tutors all asked me the same question: ‘Is that the New York Guggenheim?’ . . . ‘Uh, no . . . it’s the St James Centre car park!’
