Statement of Special Interest
Murchison House is an innovative and unique example of late-Modern office design with an inventive plan form, a strong prismatic composition of architectural elements, reflecting its intended use for geological research and services. The relocation and consolidation of the Institute of Geological Science in Edinburgh is of particular significance to the emerging North Sea oil industry in the 1970s.
The innovative and architecturally distinctive stepped or staggered H-plan design of Murchison House is successful in breaking down and reducing the overall mass of the building in terms of its appearance, as well as contributing to the functionality of the building. The massing of components makes effective use of a relatively constricted site, maximising the amount of daylight available to internal spaces throughout the day.
The structural design and plan form of Murchison House, including octagonal supporting columns throughout, deliberately references naturally occurring geological formations, particularly those of basalt rock and crystalline forms. The horizontal bands of bellying windows, with units jutting out at seemingly irregular angles, are suggestive of layers, or strata, of rock. Octagonal supporting columns inside the building are a further geologically-influenced design reference. The modular H-plan design is referred to by The Buildings of Scotland, Edinburgh as a 'strong composition' (p.488).
The library is the principal interior space of architectural interest, with the gallery level and central stairwell largely unaltered since it was opened in 1977. The tubular steel fittings and fixtures are period features, pointing to 'High Tech' architecture and also reflecting the scientific function of the building.
Ministry of Works architect, Allan Pendreigh is likely the principal contributor to the design of Murchison House (see below). Pendreigh worked directly for George Pearce, head of the architectural section at the Ministry of Works, with earlier projects including the tetrahedron design and structural detailing of the 1963 glasshouse additions at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh (listed in their own right at category A, LB49216). The glasshouse design was an inspired solution to support the specific functions of the building, and a similar architectural approach is at work at Murchison House. Other buildings Pendreigh worked on include the Supreme Courts, Parliament House and the National Library of Scotland.
Murchison House occupies the northwest corner of the King's Buildings science campus, adjacent to the golf course near the base of Blackford Hill. The ancient volcano of Arthur's Seat and the prominent geological sill of Salisbury Crags are visible from the library and upper floor windows to the northeast. The Royal Observatory on nearby Blackford Hill is prominently visible in views from the west side of the building.
The King's Buildings campus is a grouping of bespoke, multi-period educational buildings. The grounds directly around the building were landscaped and planted in the late 1970s by the University of Edinburgh Grounds Department, including a small pond to the west 'courtyard' and grass banked areas directly adjacent to the building.
The site for Murchison House (leased from the University of Edinburgh on their King's Buildings Campus on the south side of the city) was agreed upon in 1967. Murchison House was designed between 1971 and 1977 for the Natural Environment Research Council. The commission was undertaken by the Architects Division of the Property Services Agency, created as an autonomous government agency in 1972 after the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works had been absorbed into the Department of the Environment. Michael John Mannings was the Superintending Architect on the project. Ministry architect, Allan Pendreigh (1932-2012) was closely involved in the design of Murchison House, and was probably the lead designer. Construction began following a turf-cutting ceremony in 1971. Progress was interrupted for two years by 'foundation difficulties, labour disputes and the energy crisis of 1973-74' (Greig, p.3).
The contractors were Peter Cameron (Builders) Ltd during the initial period 1971/72, succeeded by Bardolin Scotia Ltd in the latter construction phases. Staff of the British Geological Survey, the oldest national geological survey in the world, began to occupy the building from 1975 and Murchison House was officially opened in June 1977 by the geologist Sir Frederick Henry Stewart. The exterior form of the building has changed little since that time. The bellying windows were replaced in the 1990s with powder-coated metal units with wider frames than the original units but the building otherwise largely retains the same design and profile as it was first constructed.
Public investment in science and technology was a priority of successive governments in the post-war period and this had a significant impact on the expansion of universities and related organisations, with many institutions reorganised and often centralised. Murchison House was purpose built to house the specific functions of the Institute of Geological Science that were formerly dispersed over several offices across Edinburgh and in England. Proximity to emerging scientific disciplines in marine geology and North Sea oil exploration was critical to research and related commercial services being located in Edinburgh.
While institutional buildings prior to the Second World War generally tended towards formal and monumental architectural designs, a less formal architectural approach was gradually applied to many public buildings and building programmes during the post-war period, especially seen in health, education, infrastructure and town planning. Many of these projects were the product of forward-thinking central and local government architects departments.
The modular design philosophy and unusual composition of Murchison House is indicative of some of the more innovative designs for office buildings of the period, which were exploring new ways to arrange working areas in flexible modules, using irregular and stepped plan forms and connecting buildings with their landscape. Centraal Beheer at Apeldoorn, Netherlands, by Herman Hertzberger of 1967-72 was a watershed of office design and considered the building as a larger number of equal spatial units 'like islands strung together' (Lüchinger, Herman Hertzberger: Buildings and Projects 1959-86, p. 87).
Murchison House reflects contemporary architectural theory and practice in Scotland, which, by the late 1960s and 1970s, tended toward layered or stepped elevations and were concerned with natural and historic context such as White House Visitor Centre Stirling (1971) by Edwin Johnston and Nicholas Groves-Raines or The Scottish Widows head office (1972-76) by Basil Spence, Glover and Ferguson (listed at category A, LB50213), Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh. The latter adopts a geologically inspired hexagon plan structure partly influenced by its location, with the Salisbury Crags forming a backdrop. The 1975-77 Bonar Hall at Dundee University (listed at category B, Listed Building: 52165) by Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia is a notable example of a contemporary building adopting a similar informal approach to design with a staggered, asymmetrical plan-form and contrasting yellow brick with projecting modular window units.
Murchison House is named after the eminent Scottish geologist and explorer, Sir Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), who was appointed Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain in 1855 and was also responsible for the establishment in 1871 of a chair of geology and mineralogy at the University of Edinburgh, the first in Scotland.
The relatively young field of geological science has strong historic associations with the City of Edinburgh, partly contributing to the decision to centralise the national functions of the geological science institute in Edinburgh. The Scotsman James Hutton (1726-1797), known as the 'father of geology', investigated and recorded the geology of Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh, the earliest known example of geological conservationism in the world.
Statutory address revised in 2020. Previously listed as 'Murchison House, King's Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh'.