Harvey Nichols Building, Architect, Photo, Scottish Retail Project, Architecture, Bus Station, Picture

Harvey Nichols Edinburgh

St Andrew’s Square Development, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

photo © Adrian Welch 2008

Harvey Nichols Scotland – Building

Edinburgh designers attract international style brands

Harvey Nichols Store Edinburgh

Purchasers of spiky-heeled Jimmy Choo shoes from the country’s hippest new store can walk straight out of its elegant glass doors into the first new street to be built in Edinburgh’s New Town since the late 18th century.

Behind the design of the stylish new development which is attracting some of the world’s top style brands, were Edinburgh based architects, CDA, commissioned by Coal Pension Properties Ltd and Harvey Nichols. The resulting buildings harmonise with the surrounding classical Georgian buildings and include the best new bus station in the UK.

CDA Architects’ brief was to provide an inspirational and elegant solution for the regeneration of Edinburgh’s St Andrew’s Bus Station site that would replace the 1960s and ’70s office blocks and the old bus station with a new open pedestrian street and stylish shops, linking the New Town St James Centre to St Andrew’s Square and George Street, and also provide for a high-quality airport style bus station.

Added to the architects’ challenge was the need to design and finish the new buildings to reflect the quality and ambience of Edinburgh New Town – a World Heritage Site.

The focus of the new development is the new five storey, 100,000sqft Harvey Nichols store – the largest outside London – which faces onto St Andrew Square, and The Walk – the new street (Multrees Walk). The top floor features a restaurant and bistro with an external terrace and superb views over the city and the Firth of Forth.

Letting of the 27 other shops fronting onto the new street has already begun with the aim of creating a select shopping experience of fashion/lifestyle retailers of a quality associated with the classic shopping streets of Paris, Milan, New York and London. Above these shops, which range from two to four storeys high, is a 40,000sqft suite of offices.

From discussing its initial designs with Harvey Nichols in 1997, CDA has worked closely with its clients, Harvey Nichols and City of Edinburgh Council to refine the design and obtain planning approvals in late 1999.

To achieve sympathetic proportions and rhythm, CDA analysed the surrounding Grade A buildings’ mass, materials and street width, and liaised with various bodies such as the RFAC, Historic Scotland, City of Edinburgh Planning and Conservation departments, the Cockburn Association, New Town Heritage Group. The new buildings are finished in sandstone, granite and natural slate, while the street and its mid-court are surfaced with Caithness stone.

As Frank Hinds of CDA explains: ‘As architects, our skill is to combine the often disparate aspirations of planning department, client, tenants and the general public. This project involved an unusual combination of parts but we have achieved the scheme’s aims in aesthetic, urban, commercial and technical terms. For us, the whole process has been both challenging and fulfilling.’

The architects also worked closely with Lifschutz Davidson to achieve the necessary space and configuration for the restaurant in Harvey Nichols, and with Four IV, who were responsible for internal merchandising and partial fit out of the store.

Construction cost of the new development was £32m. The other companies involved in Harvey Nichols Edinburgh were: Balfour Beatty (main contractor); Graham Mather Associates (services engineer); Goodson Associates (structural engineer); CBA (quantity surveyor); Faber Maunsell (traffic/acoustic engineer); and Jonathan Speirs Associates (lighting).