1-126 Seamount Court and shop at 152-158 Gallowgate, Aberdeen

Seamount Court and Porthill Court, Aberdeen

A pair of modern Brutalist multi-storey residential blocks designed by the Aberdeen City Architects Department under Chief Architect George McIntosh Keith, built between 1959 and 1966 for the Aberdeen Housing Committee. The contractor was the Aberdeen firm W J Anderson.

The complex comprises a 19-storey block (Seamount Court) and a 9-storey block (Porthill Court), oriented on north-south and east-west axes and connected by a pair of enclosed glazed linking footbridges. The blocks are also connected at ground level to a single-storey parade of shops and a modern Brutalist multi-storey car park to the east. The buildings sit in a built-up inner urban area adjacent to a ring road, with contemporary low-rise housing to the south and north and a modern college building to the east.

Seamount Court contains 126 maisonette flats arranged in a crossover section, where flats are entered at ground floor level at either the bedroom or living area and cross up and over to the opposite bedroom or living area, providing a dual aspect across two levels. Porthill Court contains 72 flats, comprising a combination of crossover maisonettes, single-storey flats, and eight rooftop single-storey flats set behind a geometrically shaped linking concrete parapet.

Both buildings are constructed with reinforced concrete frames and finished with smooth-finished precast concrete cladding panels and poured concrete tapered columns. The long slab elevations feature shallow continuous fire-escape balconies. Porthill Court is terminated by single-storey flats that also have escape balconies to the south elevation. Facing panels have large aggregate granite-faced finish at the end elevations, which have been painted over in light grey. A partially open undercroft at ground floor level contains building facilities including a laundry room, community room, and substations, set back from the building line.

The parade of shops is a single-storey flat-roofed block linked to the undercroft of Seamount Court, with three shop units facing a terraced hard-landscaped precinct to the west.

The modern Brutalist multi-storey car park is constructed of in situ and reinforced concrete across three levels. Access is via a spiral access ramp and an open cantilevered concrete stair to the north. The long elevation facing North West Street is characterised by a series of square reinforced concrete open buttresses linked to a recessed first floor. The structure is faced with tall narrow moulded concrete panels at ground level and square aggregate panels to the upper level.

The common areas of the buildings largely retain their 1960s layout with some original finishes, fixtures, fittings and signage preserved in public areas, including teak boarded ceilings to the entrance lobby. Most windows, doors, and fixtures and fittings to the exterior and interior have been replaced.

Historical Development

These buildings were designed and constructed as part of a comprehensive redevelopment programme initiated by the Aberdeen Housing Committee to rehouse residents into modern, healthy homes throughout the city centre. The Gallowgate development is the second of five inner city housing developments built between 1959 and 1978.

Post-Second World War improvements to Aberdeen city centre were inspired by the planning document "Granite City: A Plan for Aberdeen" (1952) by W Dobson Chapman and Charles F Riley, two of the UK's most highly regarded architects and town planners. Their proposals broadly followed 1950s planning thinking, recommending selective redevelopment and slum clearance to improve public health, amenity and convenience. They advocated for high-density multi-storey blocks in the immediate periphery of the city centre and neighbourhood units in outlying suburban areas such as Kincorth and Kaimhill, with a mix of low- and high-rise housing and small-scale commercial and public amenities including shops and schools. Following contemporary comprehensive redevelopment theory, they favoured flats as the most appropriate housing type, in contrast to what they viewed as 'monotonous' inadvertent urban sprawl.

Town planning was a relatively new discipline and after the upheaval of the Second World War was of primary importance in driving housing and health reform forward. Following the Town and County Planning Act 1947, large cities and county councils across the UK embarked on major reorganisation of their urban areas, committed to improving infrastructure and providing housing integrated with well-planned commercial and industrial activity.

Comprehensive housing reform was first introduced following the First World War with the Housing and Town Planning (Addison) Act 1919, providing decent housing for the working class and addressing inner city slums. This marked a turn towards state-sponsored housing characterised by planned council schemes, which would dominate housing supply in Scotland and the UK until the late 1970s. By the end of the Second World War, Scotland and other UK cities underwent unprecedented restructuring. In Scotland, debate centred on Glasgow's overcrowding and sub-standard housing, with discussion focused on whether to build within the city boundary or decamp the population to new settlements outside the city in 'new towns'. The housing type—cottages, 'four-in-a-block' flats, tenements or high-rises—was intensely debated.

While national housing policies and funding strategies were drawn up by central government, local authorities decided the direction of their housing stock improvement. Land availability and its effect on housing density were important factors. Rising costs of land and building materials made high-rise construction an attractive alternative to low-density schemes planned along earlier garden-city principles.

High-rise developments were largely aimed at rehousing people previously living in sub-standard accommodation into modern healthy homes. However, Aberdeen's main post-1945 housing problem was not primarily slums or land shortage, but rather a long waiting list for houses. Its ambitious reconstruction plans were also not principally related to war damage. Rather than pursuing an extensive slum clearance programme, Aberdeen—identified by government officials as an area of potential economic growth—embarked on a highly ambitious plan of civic enhancement and regeneration. In this context, the inner-city multi-storey slab blocks planned from the late 1950s to the late 1970s were unusual for their high-quality individual design by the city's own architects' department. They were exceptional for the period, as they were not factory-made system-built schemes like the increasingly ubiquitous developments erected in all of Scotland's major urban centres, including Aberdeen.