Cables Wynd House

Cables Wynd House, commonly referred to as the 'Banana Flats', was built between 1963 and 1965 to the designs of Alison & Hutchison & Partners with Robert Forbes Hutchison as the senior partner and Walter Scott as the partner in charge. Francis W Tinson was the senior assistant. The contractor for the scheme was J Smart and Co and the structural engineers were Blyth & Blyth. It is an elongated 10-storey slab block of flats with private and public access balconies and is located within the Kirkgate area of Leith, a post-war urban redevelopment scheme built in 3 phases during the 1960s. The building is a modern Brutalist design and comprises a long rectangular plan slab block, oriented on an east-west axis which is canted at an angle towards the middle of the block. It is set on splayed reinforced concrete supports at the ground floor and is characterised by undercrofts and concrete finishing, but primarily by its extensive horizontal elevation that bends in to the precinct acting as a wall which defines its boundary to the north.

In accordance with Section 1 (4A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) (Scotland) Act 1997 the following are excluded from the listing: ancillary brick walls and lower level parking block to southeast.

It is constructed with an in-situ concrete cross frame with large aggregate pre-cast concrete panel cladding. The building contains 212 flats (204 are 2-bedroom, 8 are 1-bedroom) and are accessed by lifts leading to galleried decks on the 2nd, 5th and 8th floors. The windows and glazed balcony doors have been replaced by uPVC units. Most main doors to the decks are later replacements.

The interior public circulation spaces were seen in 2014. There are 2 pairs of lifts located to the bend in the plan and two to the east. There are wide galleried decks located to the north side of the building which are enclosed by partially ventilated glazed panels. There is a refuse chute system at each access point at each deck.