About this project..

MSc Advanced Sustainable Design is a masters programme run by the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. We are 12 students from across the world with different professional backgrounds.

We are working with the Union Canal, from Fountainbridge to the City Bypass. This waterway has often been overtaken by history which contributes to a sense of being a sometimes silent artery in the city, a spine of backland. It has a character quite different to how we think Edinburgh to be.

We want to build on the hard work and sustained effort to conserve, promote and regenerate in, along and around the Union Canal. We want students to think of the canal as an infrastructure artery not in the sense of literal flows of power, water and communication but more as frameworks for knowledge and mutual support to address social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.

We will work to understand the canal at a city scale; how it makes its presence felt in the city, its ecological potential, how it works as a traffic route and its potential for tourism, interpretation, business, community and home.

We will then understand the waterway at the scale of building; finding and understanding potential in a site, then realising that potential as a development programme and defining tangible outputs for that programme.

Projects such as these work exceptionally well when working with communities who provide on the ground knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm. In return, although these projects are by their nature speculative, it comes with a freedom to experiment and take ideas in unexpected directions. This can provide inspiration through tangible visions that can help community groups sense unforeseen possibilities and opportunities.