Scottish – SpecNews

Tributes after leading architect Gareth Hoskins dies aged 48

TRIBUTES have been paid to the Scottish architect Gareth Hoskins, who died at the weekend aged 48.
Scottish architecture is much the lesser with his parting.”
Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs, said: “Gareth Hoskins was an outstanding architect.
She tweeted: “Very sad to hear of the death of Gareth Hoskins, one of Scotland’s finest architects.
Hoskins trained as an architect at the Glasgow School of Art and at Florence University.
Hoskins Architects issued a statement confirming his death, adding: “It is with great sadness that we confirm that Gareth Hoskins OBE, the founder and Managing Director of Hoskins Architects, has died.
“Gareth, who was 48, took ill at an event in Edinburgh on Sunday 3rd January and, despite receiving the best care possible in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, he passed away on Saturday.

“Everyone at Hoskins Architects is deeply shocked and saddened by this untimely loss.

2016: A year of grand designs

The branding of 2016 as the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design, follows this 2015’s Year of Food and Drink status, and 2014’s Year of Homecoming.
VisitScotland’s involvement signals the belief that there’s a tourism buck to be made out of selling Scotland’s architecture – both historic and new – as an attraction.
WHEN fire tore through Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building on 23 May, 2014, the shockwaves spread far beyond the confines of the creative community.
Turning the festival – and the entire Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design – into a financial success is the responsibility, ultimately, of the quango.
Contemporary structures add a new layer to our built environment, taking inspiration from and sometimes reacting against past achievements in design.

Looking back on a lamentable lack of future-proofing in construction of Forth Road Bridge (From Herald Scotland)

It would appear the 1964 Forth Road Bridge was not, if its whole integrity depends on such individual small components.
THE Forth Bridge, opened in 1890, was deliberately over-engineered after the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879.
THERE are two clear and important messages to emerge from the current Forth Road Bridge fiasco (“Share your car or work from home, bridge drivers urged”, The Herald, December 7, and Letters, December 7, 8 & 9).
Perhaps the hard-hats currently poking at the underside of the Forth Road Bridge might learn a lot by way of similar investigations underneath Stevens’s efforts at Hyndford, and others like it.
This was the case in free university tuition (paid for by scrapping more than 140,000 further education college places) and is now the case in scrapping bridge tolls at a time when all budgets were under pressure.

‘Amber warning light’ on economy (From Herald Scotland)

SCOTTISH Chambers of Commerce has declared that its latest economic survey, which shows much weaker manufacturing growth and declining confidence among services firms, is an “amber warning light” for the UK and Scottish Governments.
The survey shows the first fall in optimism in the Scottish financial and business services sector for a year.
Scottish Chambers’ survey, conducted by Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute, flags a sharp slowdown in investment growth in the manufacturing sector north of the Border.
The survey signals that year-on-year growth in sales revenue in the Scottish tourism sector accelerated between the second and third quarters.
And it signals a fall in capital investment in the financial and business services sector.

New East Lothian hospital offers contracts worth £100m

MORE than £100 million in contracts is set to be awarded for a new hospital in East Lothian.
The new £72m community hospital for East Lothian will be built and serviced by Galliford Try, it was announced yesterday.
In a further boost for the company, Galliford Try’s facilities management business has been appointed preferred bidder to provide ongoing hard facilities maintenance and lifecycle management to the East Lothian Community Hospital.
Some services will return to East Lothian as part of the new development and it will bring an increase of almost 60 per cent in the number of inpatient beds to the county.
The FTSE-250 housebuilding and construction group confirmed that its Morrison Construction division has been named preferred bidder for the hospital, one of the flagship projects for the Hub South East Scotland on behalf of NHS Lothian.

Chinese cash could fund Scottish construction

CHINESE investors could be attracted to plough hundreds of millions of pounds into key Scottish infrastructure projects – such as road upgrading and connecting offshore wind farms to the grid – on the back of moves to encourage foreign involvement in the HS2 high speed rail project.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Scotland is becoming a hotspot for Chinese property investors looking for an alternative to London with Edinburgh in particular attracting interest.
Michael Watson, an infrastructure and projects lawyer at Pinsent Masons, said the visit could also have a knock-on impact north of the Border but only if Scotland is able to present an attractive investment proposition for the Chinese.
Chancellor George Osborne this week travelled to China to try and attract investors there to bid for seven contracts worth £11.8 billion in total covering the first phase of HS2, between London and Birmingham.
The key is to have projects which are visible, well developed and ready to be invested in, because we are competing in an extremely competitive global market and the Chinese and other overseas investors have a wealth of options on where to put their money.”
Watson said projects of sufficient scale which could interest Chinese investors include the A9 Perth to Inverness dualling project and rail electrification programmes.

Building giant says plenty of public sector work available in Scotland (From Herald Scotland)

THE chief operating officer of building giant Galliford Try has highlighted the strength of the construction market in Scotland where public spending is providing a spur for the sector.
Galliford Try runs a big housebuilding operation under the Linden Homes brand.
Mr Gillespie said the market had picked up south of the border.
Ken Gillespie said Galliford Try’s construction arm enjoyed dramatic growth in Scotland over the last 12 months as it felt the benefit of winning a string of public sector contracts.
However, it does not build homes in Scotland preferring to focus effort south of the border, where Mr Gillespie has said it can make more money with less effort.