Cultural Void

One of my colleagues at work is heavily involved in a valiant campaign to save the development of the new Peacock Visual Arts centre in Aberdeen. Peacock Visual Arts, which is currently situated in the Castlegate area of Aberdeen, recently developed a proposal to move to the beautiful and beloved location of Union Terrace Gardens in the centre of Aberdeen. The proposal, which is an innovative and sensitive integration into the site, currently faces an uncertain future due to a competing proposal by oil baron Sir Ian Wood to cover the same site with a gigantic Plaza. View the most recent exposé about these plans here.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit the Expo Plaza in Hanover which is a very similar large expanse of grey nothingness interspersed by stunted trees and meaningless serried steps and lumps of "landscape architecture" to the one envisaged by the uninspired Mr Wood and his team. Even in the sunshine this was a barren and intimidating void with unfortunate echoes to Speer's Arena at Nuremburg: yet another monument to a megalomaniacal and dangerously powerful oligarch bent on leaving a legacy and couching it in the rhetoric that it’s in the interests of the people.

You'd hope that an understanding of culture and history would teach people some lessons but clearly Mr Wood is so lacking in anything approaching culture that history’s lessons are lost on him.

Absolutely deplorable.