Kepplestone!

On our way to seek out a prominent example of an Aberdeen Ice House (watch this space) we were struck by the cognitive dissonance provoked by the après-post-modern skyline at new Kepplestone.

Is it an Aztec ziggurat? We wouldn't mind if it were.

We had heard that taxi-drivers in the city have taken to referring to the new Kepplestone as 'the west-end Tillydrone', so we thought we'd better take a closer look. (We can, of course, read well the implication in that loaded phrase, and we don't like it. Tilly is much done-down; residents of other areas self-importantly assuming their own neighborhood to be "better", and populated by a "better kind of folk". It is not, and they are not.)

So, ready for anything, we approached via Viewfield Road. The developer has laid some engraved (if a bit breathless and ungrammatical) granite plaques giving an interpretation of the histobunk of the site.

So far, so good.

Interesting.

Didn't know that.

OK

That's what we were familiar with, before the new development:

Hubris?

So we continued wandering about, firstly on the lower level of the site, where we remember that there used to be rugby pitches. Now there are detatched houses. Not really to our taste, but nice enough and well mannered, if you like that sort of thing.

But why do the feel they must park on the pavements?

The bizarre sense of anti-place only really started when we turned round and looked north up the hill where a orotund yet oddly asymmetrical staircase hints at a touch of unhinged, slurring megalomania in the conception of the scheme.

All Grecian Sir! Modernist detail on a Classical body!

Climbing the steps, we arrive in a neo-Grecian courtyard. If you find yourself a little tired out by the climb, you'll be glad to see that the developer has thoughtfully provided some Granitette chairs where you may sit and admire the details.

Moving on, we are ushered under a pointless arch for a view of the 'exclusive' parking. A significant and important aspect of any housing development for the sort of people who want to live like this, we understand.

And so to the tower-blocks. Note the astroturf on the un-balcony. Honestly. Why?

Thrilling juxtaposition of old and new.

Turning round to re-orientate ourselves, we notice the remains of Kepplestone House. And we begin to lose hope.

We remember the College of Domestic Science - 'The Dough School'. Slab and plinth modernism, not to everyone's taste - fair enough - but it sat back from Queen's Road and down an embankment. Today's residential towers loom boastfully and alarmingly over what remains Aberdeen's premier residential area.

They rejected plans to build a supermarket into the profile of the slope, so they got this residential development instead. We'll wager that the longer-established residents of Queen's Road, Royfold Crescent and Anderson Drive would much sooner have the Dough School back.

Turning our eyes skyward (in search of hope), we looked up in the darkening gloom and we could see that the residents of three of the apartments, each flat atop the other, were watching television. The television screens shone out over Queens Road in the gloaming. Identical large screen LCD's mounted in identical positions on their respective identical and otherwise unadorned walls, all identically tuned to the same channel. There was an ad-break being transmitted.

From the 22,000 mile high 'Clarke-orbit' geostationary Sky satellite to the dishes of Kepplestone, via the walls of the over-mortgaged residents, the tired eyes of the rush-hour motorists - furiously becalmed in the tea-time gridlock at the Earls Court roundabout - were invited to consider whether or not they were paying too much for their car insurance.

We note that the entire complex is guarded by a tank. The gun points towards the development and its residents. We approve of that, and wonder if any of them have noticed...

By Gad! A tank!