CGI projection

Aberdeen City Garden Trust has announced that a design team led by Diller Scofidio + Renfro has won the design competition to transform the centre of Aberdeen.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who collaborated with local Scottish architects, Keppie Design and landscape architects OLIN, was chosen as the winner after the competition was extended to include a run-off between the DS+R-led team and the Foster + Partners-led team.

The successful proposal, popularly known as the Granite Web, celebrates the three-dimensional aspects of Aberdeen, reinterpreting the topography of the Denburn Valley and the dramatic cascade of the existing Union Terrace Gardens, while creating graceful new spaces and structures. It provides additional usable garden space, a landmark cultural and arts centre, and promotes the City’s historic streets, revealing the arches, vaults and bridge on Union Street and retaining the balustrades and statues which are part of Aberdeen’s legacy.

The Jury’s decision represents a breakthrough for DS+R giving them their first major European design competition win.

DS+R Partner, Charles Renfro said the practice was very excited about ‘jumping across the pond’, he commented: "The steep competition drove us that much harder to do more research, to understand the site more thoroughly, to dig deeper into our creative reserve and our technical expertise to find a daring, thoughtful and beautiful solution.

"While the City Garden is at the heart of Aberdeen, the heart has little pulse…we feel that we can make that heart throb and bring life and energy into the centre of town. By making the park greener, more accommodating to passive and active uses, more engaged at its edges, the gardens can become a magnet for this otherwise youthful and energetic city. We feel particularly well- suited to this challenge – the project reflects an integration of landscape design, museum design and design for the performing arts, the primary focuses of our practice."

The Jury weighed information from a technical panel, face-to-face discussions with the respective teams, public and stakeholder feedback; the two finalists’ schemes being those most popular in a public exhibition held in the city in autumn, 2011.

The winning design scored higher in all key areas of the brief including, creation of more new space, cost and viability in construction and on-going maintenance, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency.

Malcolm Reading, the competition organiser, commented:‘This is such an exciting outcome and a great coup for the city. This ingenious and inspiring design for Aberdeen’s key public space gives the city a new social landscape but one rooted in its extraordinarily rich heritage and natural assets.

"The runner-up concept, by Foster and Partners was outstanding, elegant and thoughtful, but did not, in the end, persuade the Jury that it could match the promise of connectivity, excitement and spatial diversity of the winning scheme."

The City Garden Project team has been working along with Aberdeen City Council and consultants PWC to develop a solid business case for funding the project as part of the wider city centre regeneration scheme. The winning design concept will now be subject to a referendum. If the referendum reveals that the public are in support of the project, detailed designs will be produced for a planning application.