Simply..the old and the new....

I was curious to see 'The Walnut Whip', a new hotel in Edinburgh's St James's Quarter.

I like the juxstaposition of old and new in architecture - a real design challenge which when it does come off can be very exciting.

To my eye this nearly works...

I liked this view - the bold strong curve against the geometry of the old buiildings makes an intersting contrast.

The deep steps for sitting on, the normal size ones to walk up and down on - this works well. Very user friendly.

This strange shape interested me. I wondered if it was a staircase? (At the time I did not know that one of the names for the buidling is the golden ribbon.) I went for  a closser look and grasped the concept.

..where the 'golden ribbon' shoots up from the ground to wrap around the building, though a quite beaurifully executed bit of sculpture, it looks as if it is considered such a hazard that safety barriers have had to be put around it, totally spoiling the effect! If I was the designer I would be weeping into my drink if I saw this!

I thought about the building over a cup of coffee in the adjacent Black Sheep Coffee Shop at an outdoor table and concluded that it would take a builder of consumate skill, a genious of a builder to create this design almost completly made of curves, with the confident panache it needed..Instead it is a bit wibbly wobbly and ponderous and sadly, in my view, doesn't quite come off.

Better to have tried and failed? Better to have given it to Frank Gehry...