12. Ramsay Gardens

Ramsay Gardens

The now iconic apartments at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal mile are another example of Geddes’ effort to bring his biological studies in reciprocal accommodation to a human environment. In this complex Geddes set up a flat for himself and flats for many other families as well as creating a Town and Gown hall of residence.

11. Castlehill School

Castlehill School

Geddes used the school to implement his innovative ideas of early learning and he often took the children out of class in the afternoon to work on his many garden projects throughout Edinburgh Old Town.

11. Mylne's Court

Mylne’s Court

In 1892 Geddes converted the two buildings to the north and south of the court in to Edinburgh’s very first self-governed student accommodation. Geddes’ vision for the accommodation was to create ‘a community of co-operative living for learning and intellectual interaction’. Anon, www.patrickgeddestrust.co.uk

10. Burn's Land

Burn’s Land

Unheard of at the time, Geddes collaborated with Henbest Capper to establish accommodation for the University of Edinburgh’s first female students.

9. James Court

James Court

Once married in 1886 Geddes took his new wife to live in a second floor flat of James Court. At the time the Old Town was widely considered a slum and a very bleak place to live. However carrying from Geddes’ early studies in reciprocal accommodation Geddes felt it was possible to create a pleasant residence in difficult situations. Geddes quickly convinced his neighbours to help improve their surroundings by painting, cleaning and planting.

8. Blackie House

Blackie House

As a part of the urban renewal program in 1894 Geddes created a new court, now called Wardrop’s court. To get air and light into the ‘slum’ like tenements Geddes had to smaller closes removed to achieve this and develop a better standard of living for the residents. Geddes converted the house to the north of the court in to morte self-governing student accommodation.

7. Riddle's Court

Riddle’s Court

Yet another example of a concerted effort to retain rather than demolish Geddes renovated two houses of the court and created a self-governing accommodation for students. Student housing was relatively uncommon at the time with only Oxford and Cambridge offering accommodation of any sort for students. Geddes’ influence is given pride of place in the court with his life motto, ‘Vivendo Discimus’ (By living we learn) inscribed on the round stione arch.

6. Lady Stair's Close

Lady Stair’s Close

In one of his earliest conservation efforts, Geddes persuaded the Fifth Earl of Rosebery to purchase the house and with the help of George S Aitken, a colleague of Geddes, they restored the dilapidated house.

5. Old Assembly Close

Old Assembly Close

As a town planner Geddes thought that vehicles shouldn’t govern the spaces within cities and towns and he decided that ‘pedestrian precincts’ should be established across cities. With the help of the City Engineer’s Department, Geddes created two squares within the tenement blocks of Old Assembly Close between the royal mile and the Cowgate. Again the two squares were intended to stimulate a sense of community. This effort to create ‘pedestrian precincts’ was later recognised by the Old Town Conservation and Renewal Trust with the creation of Hunter Square where traffic was previously a problem.

4. Chessel's Court

Chessel’s Court

Patrick Geddes improved the buildings of Chessel’s court as well as creating a series of garden spaces and children’s play areas in the communal land between the buildings.

3. Moray House

Moray House

Geddes also believed that where worthy, buildings should be preserved and Moray House is one of many examples of Geddes’ conservation work. Towards the end of the 19^th century the building was in very poor condition and Geddes rescued it, giving it a new life as a Centre for Learning and Education.

2. Huntly House

Huntly House

In 1932 before Geddes’ death he and Frank Mears transformed three 16^th century houses in the Canongate into a City Museum, a place for the public to learn about the city in which they lived and its history. The City Museum was devised to complement the Outlook Tower.

1. Dunbar's Close Garden

Dunbar’s Close Gardens

During Patrick Geddes’ time spent on Edinburgh’s Royal mile in the late 19^th century he attempted to create spaces, which would stimulate a sense of community. The Garden is located in the Canongate area, which previously would have been densely populated with tenement buildings, housing for the local factory workers. Many of the tenements were demolished due to their neglected state and Geddes without waiting for government action created the Garden in their place. Although the Garden was recreated in the 1970’s the tranquil garden remains, hidden in behind the close away from the endless throbbing of Edinburgh’s Royal mile.

A Geddesian Journey to the Outlook Tower

Map of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile marking each of Geddes known projects from bottom to top:

1. Dunbar’s Close Garden 2. Huntly House 3. Moray House4. Chessel’s Court 5. Old Assembly Close 6. Lady Stair’s Close 7. Riddles Court 8. Blackie House 9. James Court 10. Mylnes Court 11. Castle Hill School 12. The Outlook Tower 13. Ramsay Gardens

Reciprocal Accommodation

Reciprocal Accommodation

In his early studies as a biologist Geddes challenged Darwin’s theories of natural selection and made his own case for co-operative relationships and mutual living. In his examinations of algae living in flatworms Geddes discovered that the two could live more effectively simultaneously than they could separately. From this Geddes created the term ‘reciprocal accommodation’.

Patrick Geddes was at the forefront of an urban renewal program for the Old Town of Edinburgh in the late 19^th century. Using his relationship with many of the prominent thinkers of the time, Geddes was able to initiate many conservation and rehabilitation projects across the Old Town of Edinburgh. The Outlook Tower at the top of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is the most of enduring of these projects and remains one of Edinburgh’s most popular attractions.

Patrick Geddes' renewal program for Edinburgh's Royal Mile and Old town can be understood as an attempt to apply this natural example of mutual living to the social and built environment of humans.

Comparison can easily be drawn between Geddes’ projects along the Royal Mile and his studies of ‘Reciprocal Accommodation’.

The Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

Chronology of the Outlook Tower at Edinburgh

1856- Roof top terrace was open as a public observatory, complete with camera obscura. Owned at that time by Maria Short who moved the observatory from its original site on Calton Hill, Edinburgh in 1854.

1892- Geddes visit to Short's observatory with James Mavor. Geddes offers to purchase the tower and is accepted. (it is noted that he did not have a specific project or plan or the building, it must have been his fascination with the camera obscura that preempted the purchase).

The tower became the centre point for Geddes's socio-cultural scheme for the regeneration of the Old Town in Edinburgh.

Circa 1896- Financial difficulties slow progresss on Geddes's efforts and the Town and Gown Association is set up to manage funds.

1899- The observatory became known as the Outlook Tower

1904- Geddes submits a project for the Carnegie Foundation in Dunfermline, its principle building was to have been a Tower of Outlook.

1905- Geddes abandons work on the Outlook Tower at Shorts Observatory. The Outlook Tower Committee is set up to undertake some essential works and to complete the project.

To Current Date, the Outlook Tower is still open to the public, the lower floors of the tower house the 'world of illusion'

Valley Section

Patrick Geddes, Valley Section

Patrick Geddes; Chronology

1854: Born at Ballater, West Aberdeenshire, Scotland on 2nd October

1857: Family moves to Perth, Scotland.

1874-1878: Studies Biology under Thomas Huxley at the Royal School of Mines, London

1879: During a scientific expedition to Mexico, Geddes suffers temporary blindness and develops the graphic method using folded squares of paper.

1880-1888: Demonstrator and lecturer at Edinburgh University.

1886: Marries Anna Morton. Begins urban improvement projects and establishes University Hall as a student residence.

1888: Unsuccessfully applies for the Chair of Botany at Edinburgh University.

1888-1919: Holds the Chair of botany at University of Dundee.

1890: Acquires Outlook Tower in Edinburgh to develop as regional museum and ‘sociological laboratory’.

1899-1900: Visits America and meets intellectual luminaries and education leaders in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.

1904: Publishes ‘City Development: A Study of Parks, Gardens, and Culture- Institutes: A Report to the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust’.

1910: Cities and Town Planning Exhibition first displayed.

1912: Declines the offer of a Knighthood

1914: Travels to India at the invitation of Lord Pentland, Governor of Madras, to show the Cities Exhibition and to assist as a town planning consultant.

1915: Publishes ‘Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the study of Civics’.

1917: Geddes’ son is killed in action on the Western Front. Wife Anna dies in Calcutta. Geddes receives the first correspondence from Lewis Mumford.

1919: Commissioned by the Zionist Federation to plan the New Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Geddes is also appointed to the chair of Sociology at the University of Bombay.

1923: Geddes travels to New York and meets Lewis Mumford.

1924: Geddes is taken seriously ill; he travels to Montpellier, France to recuperate. In September of that year he begins work on the college des Ecossais.

1925: Geddes travels to Jerusalem for the inauguration ceremony of the Hebrew University. Lewis Mumford visits Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh.

1932: Awarded Knighthood.

1932: Dies at Montpellier on 17th April.­

Melville Street, Perth

The proposal for Melville Street, Perth is another collaboration between Fergus Purdie and Arthur Watson. The building is the new residence for the artist Arthur Watson, a place where he can work and live. The proposal is located on a tight site which forced the verticality of the design. The external circulation for the building adds a new dimension to the threshold of the buildings private courtyard.

Camera Obscura - Cairngorms

The camera obscura at the Cairngorms, collaboration of architect Fergus Purdie and artist Arthur Watson, is an inspirational piece of architecture that has a significant relationship with it's immediate context. A building too bespoke would be a scar on the scenic mountainside, it is the rustic nature of the building that creates a relationship with the very harsh environment of the site.

The Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

Patrick Geddes, Camera Obscura, Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

"From the high garden, or from one of your tree-top castles, you look out upon everything, you see for miles and miles; but in your dark little caves in the ivy-bank you can sit and dream. Up in your tree-castle you often sit dreaming, of course; and from your hidden cave, through it's ivy curtain, you love to peep; still, in the main, one is the Out-world's Watch-tower, the other the In-world's Gate."

Geddes P., The World Without And The World Within, Sunday Talks With My Children, 1905

Patrick Geddes explains that what he calls the "Out-world" is the world we see around us, every day. He explains to his children that the light from the roof of the outlook tower is a way into the "In-world", our thoughts and memories. The "In-world" is where we begin actively thinking and planning; and then in carrying out our plans we come back into the "Out-world" once again.

As well as being what Geddes calls a "Civic Observatory", the outlook tower is a physical embodiment of this philosophy.

The Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

Spatial sequence diagrams of Edinburgh Outlook Tower.
From the bustle of the Royal Mile to the darkness and introversion of the Camera Obscura.

"From the hard World of Facts to the no less real World of Acts, you can only travel by this "In-World way."

Geddes P., Cities In Evolution, 1915, pg 208

The spatial introversion of the camera obscura represented a threshold into Geddes' "In-world". From this height one can survey the city of Edinburgh from the "Out-world" and immediately afterwards, by entering the dark space, see it from the introverted perspective of the Obscura, i.e. the "In-world".

Geddes used the tower as an educational tool, as a way of showing new perspectives on the city, its hinterland and how these sat in the wider contexts of the Commonwealth and the World.

The Outlook Tower, Edinburgh

"The development of the Outlook Tower was in many ways inseparable from parallel activities that stemmed from Geddes during the 1890's in Edinburgh"
A Most Unsettling Person, Kitchen P. 1975, pg 130

Camera Obscura, Cairngorm Mountains-Scotland

The camera obscura has been designed and built by Architect Fergus Purdie and Artist Arthur Watson. The Dark Chamber sits at the foot of the Cairngorm mountain in the Scottish Highlands. The collaboration between the artist and architect sees a conglomeration of ideas sat within the harsh ever changing elements of the landscape.