ScottishArchitecture.com

Ever since the original Klondyke, money has followed commodities, men have followed money, and buildings have followed men.  Last week, Brent Crude – the measure of North Sea Oil – was trading at over $90 per barrel.  As a result, Aberdeen’s economy is enjoying an inflow of capital from the oil companies, who have started building things once again.  If you think that will be good for Aberdeen, and good for posterity, then read on …

Chevron, BP, Subsea 7, Acergy and several others each have new buildings under construction, and Aberdeen’s contractors are busier than ever.  However, oil companies are short-termists; when crude prices are high, drilling for new wells becomes a priority, and new office space is planned.  By the time the wells have struck oil, and the offices are occupied, prices will have fallen again.  The oil industry is a “crude” binary switch.  With so much at stake – hiring a drilling rig can cost $1m a day – you would think that long-term planning would be crucial.  In fact, looking around Aberdeen, it is apparent that the oil barons have no long-term plans, and the proof lies in the way they procure the buildings they occupy, and in their attitude to their legacy.



Strangely, this attitude matches the predictions for the future in Goodbye Mr Mackenzie’s contemporary rock song, where “we’re flying out to the oilrig” is really synonymous with the dismal future of North Sea oil.  In the late 1980’s, it was predicted that the oil would run out by the end of the century.  It appears that it will last a little longer, but the best is behind us.  As world oil production peaks and then declines, according to the so-called Hubbert’s Curve, the North Sea will be abandoned and energy from plants– biofuel, ethanol and then eventually hydrogen will be harnessed.  The musicians predicted that the platforms would become offshore prisons or lairs for evil plutocrats.

So what else will happen at the end of the goldrush, when the multi nationals depart?  The Seven Sisters (the global oil giants) are experiencing the last gasps of the Carbon economy, and as I write this, BP have laid off several hundred people – despite their commitment to new offices at Dyce.  Shell Expro have shelved plans for a new complex at Tullos, to complement their concrete ziggurat.  It looks like they have already begun to draw down their staffing in Scotland, but what happens next?  One of the new oil services companies took over Consolidated Pneumatic Tools’ old factory at Tullos – possibly the only link between Aberdeen’s old economy – granite quarrying – and the oil economy.  The others took spec. offices and industrial units.  Big Oil hasn’t built or subscribed to any major public realm projects, with the exception of Piper Alpha memorial at Hazlehead.  Duthie Park, Cowdrey Hall, and the Crombie Halls at the University all exist thanks to native industries like shipbuilding and woollens.

However, just as Aberdeen has singularly failed to commemorate the granite industry (the last attempt at Kemnay failed over ten years ago), it has failed to create anything on the back of the offshore energy boom.  It has been talked about, and twenty years ago, the Aberdeen Oil Experience, aka “Bravo” was conceived as a themed exposition of the offshore industry which would simulate all the experiences associated with the struggle to extract oil and gas from the North Sea.  The project was to be the first “experience centre” in Europe, with interactive and “hands-on” exhibits, simulators and mechanical/ scientific tests, all as opposed to static exhibits, in traditional museums.  Although this approach is familiar in latter-day science centres, it was avant garde in its time.



Lee Shostak, who was project director for the architects, Conran Roche, claimed the centre would be more exciting than the Smithsonian in Washington, and anticipated that the building would feature on postcards of Aberdeen, just as the Burrell Collection is linked with Glasgow.  “It will be unlike other theme parks,” claimed Conran Roche’s architect Gordon McKenzie, “It will be a learning experience based on demonstrations and hands-on exhibits.   We see it as a magnet to draw people to Aberdeen throughout the year–  students, geologists and holiday-makers.”

Bravo was intended to be a 70,000 sq. ft. building, “larger than a superstore,” as the P&J helpfully noted at the time.  Aberdeen Beyond 2000, the project’s sponsors, went through the business of choosing a preferred site, a concept design from Conran Roche, market research carried out, a business plan prepared… then they started to look for cash.  All of this happened against the background of a fall in oil prices and dropping production, in 1986.  There were heavy cutbacks and job losses–  dark augurs for the future.   The Klondyke days of the 1970’s and early 1980’s had passed, and Bravo was an attempt to diversify Aberdeen’s economy into tourism.   The Aberdeen Beyond 2000 project hoped that the oil industry would contribute.  It was launched in June 1988, and an editorial in the P&J emphasised that financing £15 million of building would not be easy.   Ian Henderson of Shell Expro–  “It is not reasonable to expect the oil industry to fund the whole thing, but it is reasonable to expect we can get some seed money from the industry to start the ball rolling”



Hundreds of miles out into the North Sea lie complete cities, suspended on steel and concrete platforms.  Just like an oilrig, Bravo would have been constructed from modular units, which would make it capable of expansion or reconfiguration:  there would be framework of structure into which the units or pods could be “plugged in”.  This may also have helped to produce an economic-to-procure building.  In truth, the image of pods stacked in a frame is an attractively technical aesthetic.  Architects like its rich, busy imagery with bright colours and shining metal surfaces– it helps to create a rugged building on an exposed site, with a helicopter pad on top.   Bravo died quietly some time in the early 1990’s.

Today, the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group is planning Son of Bravo, the “Energy Futures Centre” (EFC), and RMJM have drawn up a promising scheme.  Once more, this monument to oil is being talked up, and once more, Shell are involved.  This time around, we should find a sense of reality.  We aren’t living in a time when architects can expect to build dreams for the oil industry, when propositions like the Aberdeen Oil Experience will necessarily reach some tangible form–  or when ideas can be given shape and judged in reality.   In fact, there is a growing split between those in the oil business who commission buildings, and those who design them, and this leads to increasing numbers of these “paper” projects which don’t stand a good chance of being built, but will only exist as drawings and models.  

The days of the North Sea Goldrush are over, and just like the Klondykers, we can expect to see the oilmen leaving the North-east wi’ full boots, and dollars stapped into the pooches o’ their breeks.  They aren’t interested in legacy buildings, only in the next big thing.  West of Shetland; Newfoundland; the Caspian.  As a result, dreaming up ideas like Bravo and the EFC is akin to starting hares and allowing them to run, but without knowing how they will be caught.