The winding-up of Irvine Development Corporation later this year will mark the end of Scotland's new towns, Colin White reflects on some of the successes in 30 years of development at Irvine

IN the past 25 years, Irvine Development Corporation has won 43 awards for architecture and planning. Commendations and awards from the Saltire Society and the Civic Trust hang in the Corporation's reception alongside accolades from the Royal Institute of British Architects, British Steel and a host of other bodies.

Among those the Corporation is most proud of are the seven awards it has received for Red Cross House, a Europa Nostra Award for the renovation of Glasgow Vennel and the most recent, an award from the British Urban Regeneration Association for the transformation of the Harbourside area of Irvine.

A notable example of restoration, Glasgow Vennel has architecture dating back to the eighteenth century and is now a conservation area.

Red Cross House was designed to allow people who might otherwise spend the rest of their lives in hospital to be integrated into the community. The design brief called for the site to be in a normal urban environment close to the town centre and sited among general needs housing.

The objective was to achieve an environment in which each individual, no matter how severe their disabilities, could learn to live independently. As well as living accommodation, the centre offers a range of facilities for day use.

Through the foresight, imagination and sheer hard work of Irvine Development Corporation, the Harbourside area of Irvine has been transformed from a derelict victim of heavy industry into one of the most pleasant housing and leisure sites in Scotland.

Managing director Jack Murdoch, said: "Harbourside is the Corporation's crowning glory. I see it as a symbol of the way the Corporation has so successfully developed Irvine over the past 30 years as the perfect blend of the old and the new.

"One of my earliest recollections of Irvine is of the beach like a bomb site with excavation taking place, and a crumbling harbour wharf. At that time building restrictions, in place because of transportation of explosives to the ICI factory in Ardeer, limited the scope for development."

In the earliest years of the Corporation's existence, the South of Scotland Electricity Board planned to build a power station on Irvine beach with visible intrusive pylons and had acquired the necessary land. The Corporation, however, felt this plan was totally unacceptable if its vision for the new town was to be realised.

It fought the proposal with its own imaginative plans for a Beach Park and a leisure centre. The Corporation won and Harbourside has become the jewel in Irvine's crown.

During the seventies the first part of that plan became reality when the Magnum leisure centre, one of the biggest indoor leisure centres in Europe, opened in 1976, and the Queen formally opened Beach Park, created from 150 acres of derelict industrial land, in 1979.

Throughout the eighties, while Health and Safety Executive constraints restricted the scope for large-scale development, the Corporation continued to improve Harbourside with a series of projects.

Thirteen small workshops were built in a secluded corner, the Scottish Maritime Museum was established and a small gap site facing the river was filled with eight houses. At the same time the general environment was upgraded and the harbour wharf and promenade were completely renovated through a total of 19 separate contracts amounting to #2.9m.

Harbourside was turned into an attractive leisure location. Local traders responded by upgrading their own premises and the three-day Irvine Harbour Festival, organised by a team of volunteers led by officials from the Corporation and the local council, was established as one of the most popular day-trip weekends in the West of Scotland.

The Scottish Maritime Museum's open-air floating exhibits are a major attraction of Harbourside. The museum grew continually throughout the eighties and in 1992 the corporation spent #1.6m to have the Stephens of Linthouse Engine Shop dismantled in Glasgow, transported to Irvine and re-erected in the grounds of the musuem. The building is currently being fitted out to become the museum's main indoor exhibition area.

The splendid finishing touch to Harbourside came when the development restrictions were relaxed and the Corporation could implement its plans for rental housing in the area.

In response to the history of Harbourside, the Corporation's architects designed houses and flats as modern interpretations of a range of architectural styles to reflect how the area might have developed naturally between the eighteenth to the late nineteenth century.

The result is staggering and has produced some of the most attractive rental housing in Europe. Standing in one corner among the houses, the observer can see buildings that offer elements reflecting Georgian classical, art deco, nineteenth century artisan and ultra modern design.

Jack Murdoch concluded: "If the new town movement has been about giving people a better quality of life, then Harbourside is certainly one of the finest examples in the new towns."