It’s important to maintain diversity of architectural styles because Scotland’s social history is caught up in these buildings.

Miles Glendinning described Arygle House as a monument to the Welfare State. That matters.

Hear hear!

It’s fine to not love Argyle House.

I cannot stand the Balmoral Hotel, it's a cursed kitsch wedding cake of a building. It doesn’t mean we should knock it down.

Epistemolygge?

I guess if you dropped it on your opponents' heads from height it would be very effective.

Yes, roughly in the vicinity of those trees off that wee bit of car turning space at the West Port entrance.

Well done you, I'd have given them a binbag 😄

In my defence I don't have a car and don't drive 🤫

I tried the 0800 232323 number the other day to report a temporary crossing showing green to pedestrians and vehicles at dame time. Hold message said "Welcome to East Dunbartonshire Council" and caller ID showed this! 🤦‍♂️

I suppose if you buy it for £38m with 10 years of tenancies guaranteed, get planning permission, you can sell it for a lot more without actually having to do the hard demolition and construction work

Structurally, from an engineering point of view, it's probably well built. However it suffers like all mass concrete and poorly insulated structures in damp climates. For its day the internal specification was said to be good

Coincidentally I notice next year would be end of the Government's original lease and I wonder if that's why nothing had been "done about it" until now. Certainly the demolition and replacement of Post Office and Coal Board office towers on opposite block just resulted in more and bigger buildings

Ah thanks. Yeah I seem to recall thinking of that bit as a court building back in the day.. it's disjointed enough from the main blocks to feel like a totally different building entirely

After ‘the brew’ moved out, the Castle Terrace section, the not so ugly bit, was used as Edinburgh Sheriff Court annex in the 1980’s for jury trials. I was on court duties and saw the first use of cctv evidence in Scotland. The senior PF made a meal of it and bored the jury into submission. /

Thanks Jodi. I've tried to be impartial about it, it's a personal choice if people like its appearance or not. But certainly shouldn't just be knocked down on account of perceived ugliness to throw up some other mess a la mode

It will certainly be better than what follows, not to mention destruction of yet another relatively modern building in the city because it's cheaper and easier than exploring redevelopment

Personally I think what it has going for it is it hasn't really been "tinkered" with to try and hide the starkness of the concrete and quartz chips. No amount of fancy glass canopies and cladding panels ever makes these buildings look better, and they haven't tried.