Ravelston Garden
Ravelston Garden was designed between 1935 and 1937 by
Norman Neil and Robert Hurd. Three blocks of sixteen flats each are set in a
garden. Each block is X-shaped in plan, meaning that each flat has windows in
three sides. The aim was a ‘Scottish’ suburbia, reinterpreting the traditional
flat in a modern way, as a riposte to the bungalows and detached houses which
were then being built in suburban Edinburgh and which to these architects
lacked the density and scale of traditional Scottish urbanism. They are now
listed at Category A as being amongst the best Scottish buildings of the 1930s.
Text and video by Alistair Fair, University of Edinburgh