The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Some beauty tips from days of yar
In one of the finest films of all time, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant reminisce about a yacht they used to own when married. “My, she was yar”, says Hepburn, in The Philadelphia Story. The word is never explained, and I’ve never heard it anywhere else, but looking at the new Forth crossing, “Yar” – an elusive sense of beauty and purpose that sits on the water just right – comes to mind.
The three sharp sails on the new bridge, made of cable that could be rigging sheets, make it look like a gentleman’s yacht from the beginning of the 20th Century. The crispness, the economy, also bring to mind something more modern – a sleek vessel for some tech billionaire, perhaps.
The three points echo the three main blocks of the bridge’s older sister, the Forth Bridge, and stand alongside the Forth Road bridge’s deck like a new schooner next to an aircraft carrier.
The new crossing was meant to be a functional thing – officials heavily encouraged ministers to commission the work. The fear was that a failure of the Forth Road bridge would bring Scotland’s economy to its knees within days – a point illustrated by the bad winter of 2010/11 when snow and ice and jack-knifing lorries on the road bridge and M8 did indeed stop Scotland in its tracks.
Ministers committed to the £2 billion cost and were then pleasantly surprised by the price correction to just more than £1bn. At no point in any of these discussions did anyone mention beauty, but that is the real impact of the new bridge.
Three sails on the horizon as you approach from Lothian, a geometric point from Fife, and the full glory of the triangles as you cross the Forth.
The only sadness is that the £1bn saved from the project was then frittered away in various policies which have left little substantial legacy. If only that money had gone to another crucial piece of infrastructure, like a home for everybody.
When we build houses, we seem not to think of beauty. White harled boxes with small rooms and poor finishing – not the housing of previous generations, solid tenements or the fancy villas to be found in Dundee and surrounding towns.
It is a pity that beauty doesn’t come into them, as that can also mean quality – the stone houses of Newport or Broughty Ferry were not constructed for aesthetics alone, but the consideration for quality means they remain attractive homes when newer buildings are already being torn down.
Dundee has a lesson for other cities in the country – the regeneration of the waterfront was in part driven by beauty, or at least a reaction to the ugliness.
The promise of the Victoria and Albert jutting out to sea, close to the masts of the Discovery, with the new green space behind should all make for a bonnier approach to the city.
Devolution has delivered little beauty because it has commissioned on the basis of cost. Most of our new buildings are Private Finance Initiatives, and as such only required to stay upright for 25 years (the length of the contract).
This has resulted in shockingly dull buildings which fall apart – sometimes to tragic effect.
Much as the SNP hasn’t pursued nationalist economics, it has rejected any suggestion of nationalist design – Scottish architects get short shrift from government commissions. This seems a stupid move. Why not support our creative sector by sending some public money that way? As it is we have great architects designing poor and ugly buildings – the worst possible outcome.
This summer has been remarkable for the lessons it gives in beauty, buildings and the possibilities of Scotland. After 40 years of athletes foot and roller discos, the Magnum leisure centre in Irvine is being pulled down; we no longer look to preserve building stock but tear it down.
In Edinburgh the great destruction has been the removal of the fortresslike office block and shopping arcade, the St James Centre. This has been an astonishing thing to witness, as tonnes of concrete and steel slowly disappear from the city centre, with barely a noise or dust cloud to disturb the citizens.
It is as if lava were being chipped away from an ancient buried city to reveal classical faces long overshadowed.
The speed and efficiency of the operation is astonishing but, then, buildings are erected with speed too. One day there are four steel beams by the Perth bypass, like the ribs from a rusty colossus, next there is a new motorway bridge over the A9.
We dismiss the value of beauty and quality too readily. By throwing up cheap, ugly buildings, we blight communities and waste money in the long run, having to rebuild and repair too soon, too often.
Far better if everyone, politician, official and man or woman on the street, had a sense that beauty counted, and our builders responded to this.
It’s hard to put your finger on what is beauty, of course, much as it’s hard to define a word like ‘yar’ – but the pleasure of finding it is immense and rewards the souls of generations to come.