Hendersonherd
Argyle House House is a brutalist 1960s block at West Port in the shadows of Edinburgh Castle
Artist’s impressions for the redevelopment of an Edinburgh building featured in Netflix drama Dept Q have been revealed.
Argyle House, at West Port in the shadows of Edinburgh Castle, could be replaced by a “mixed-use” development featuring a hotel, residential properties, office and retail space.
The brutalist 1960s block was used for the exterior shots of the police station in the streaming giant’s series.
A document released as part of a consultation on the proposed redevelopment, by developer Hendersonherd, said the plans were being considered in advance of the lease expiring in 2033 “to ensure the site can be regenerated and continue to deliver economic benefit to the city”.
Hendersonherd
Proposed view of the proposed building looking south east along Castle Terrace
The document said: “The headlease over the building will expire in 2033 but in the meantime existing occupiers are unaffected by these proposals.
“Through ongoing monitoring work, it has been identified that the building is coming to the end of its usable lifespan and no longer meets the needs of the modern occupier.”
However, Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser said in a recent open letter to “politicians, amenity group leaders and general Edinburgh worthies”, the proposal was “madness” given the seriousness of the climate emergency and the ocean of waste we condemn to landfill, to knock down a sturdy, solid and useful building, condemning huge amounts of embodied carbon.
“Argyle House is a distinguished modernist building, in a city that continues to erase its recent heritage.”
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Proposed view of the building looking north east along Spittal Street
He added: “In its sturdy, grey monumentality it is characteristically Edinburgh, plus in placemaking it does a nice thing in stepping back from the tight junction at the head of West Port, a move that Patrick Geddes, doyen of town planning and Edinburgh hero, would have surely approved, given his adage of ‘letting some light in’.”
Argyle House, built between 1966 and 1969, has frequently been cited as one of Edinburgh’s least attractive pieces of architecture.
The block was sold to US firm PGIM Real Estate for about £38m ($47m) in 2023.
It was initially built to house local and national government offices, but is now home to a variety of different firms.
Hendersonherd
The proposed view of the new building looking east along West Port
The front of the building was also the headquarters of the fictional Lothian Police force in the ITV series Crime, written by Irvine Welsh.
The rear annexe, on Johnston Terrace, is home to tech workspace CodeBase and was used in Dept Q, which debuted on Netflix earlier this year.
It was originally set in Copenhagen in the books by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, but the location was moved to Edinburgh for the Netflix adaptation.
In August, Netflix announced that the series, starring Matthew Goode cold case department leader DCI Carl Morck, would return for a second season.
Telereal Trillium, which leases the facility for CodeBase from PGIM, has a lease on the building until 2033.