Red Road’s replacement must look to Glasgow’s past
If the city is going to escape its cycle of endless reinvention it needs to recognise the relevance of its historic urban structure
Glasgow has always had a habit of reinventing itself. The Georgians ripped up the city’s medieval fabric just as the Victorians wiped out the Georgian city. The gridded city established in the 19th century ranks as one of the most robust and sophis-ticated pieces of urban fabric to be found anywhere in the country. But in the aftermath of the second world war a new order, with scant relationship to the old, was imposed again.
Built between 1964 and 1969 to designs by architect Sam Bunton, the Red Road estate was one of the defining contributions of the decade. Until the first phase of demolition work was undertaken last weekend, it comprised eight towers thatranked among the tallest in the city — a little piece of Manhattan, providing Glasgow with the skyline that it had never known it wanted.
The question of what will replace Red Road is not yet determined but it has to offer a more sympathetic response to the scale and order of the historic city than Bunton was able to muster. Development in the city’s periphery over the past 30 years has tended to be of a noddy house sub-urban character that has proved every bit as damaging to Glasgow’s urban identity as the legacy of the sixties.
If it is going to escape its cycle of endless reinvention the city needs to recognise the continued relevance of its historic urban structure and to look at ways that that structure might inform its future growth.
Does the demolition of Red Road offer cause for celebration? At present it seems too early to say. The fear must be that in another 50 years, Glaswegians will be faced with the prospect of the site being cleared once again.
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Readers' comments (5)
With a reducing population, Glasgow should concentrate all of its developments around a number of the strongest urban nodes, which would be connected with a highly developed public transport system, and create well designed green areas in between for its citizens - a truly 21st garden city and reclaiming the title 'Dear Green Place'.
I’ve touched upon the theme of high-rise recently on a personal Gallery, in about nine dedicated images, from this point on:
http://photos.kevinscotttoner.co.uk/#53.47
They’re part of an album exercise titled ‘Redevelopment Vs Conservation’, which will hopefully be an in progress venture.
There’s possibly a lot of arbitrariness in the decision making of what goes or stays. What professional help is given doesn’t necessarily steer any schemes in the right direction.
Here’s Drygate I,II,&III as over-clad and working well with the adjacent red City Improvement Trust tenements at High Street, alias the ‘Bell O'The Brae’ Tenements. I deliberately took this photo before the view is altered, as explained later!
http://photos.kevinscotttoner.co.uk/#48.79
Tenant demand for Drygate has always been extremely high. Its former state can be seen here, although Google Street-view provides a good view showing the onset of the overcladding work:
http://ukhousing.wikia.com/wiki/Drygate
Fine and dandy: or perhaps not!
As on the site at the moment is a modern day flatted block (at ground works stage) that will slot in-between the tower 1 (aka the Gibson Heights) and the notable tenements. There’s plenty of space on the site for a very viable block of flats on what is practically spare ground.
This particular example won’t be about “reinvention” per se, but rather a reinvention between reinventions as no clearance or redevelopment is anticipated, i.e. excepting the small pub that you’ll see teetering on the brink on the Google Street-view, but not in my photo.
The development will certainly signify what occurs when quality era work is nestled so closely together.
As a novice at the time on the design review panel, for this, I should have (formally) mentioned that the site already has the greatest of bookends: as the argument for bringing the flats onto the building line was “bookending”. The architect was in fact asked to raise its height above the tenement to associate it more with the massiveness of the Collegelands development across the road [now built].
Good as it may sound; it will bring the 3 eras closely together. I fear that the post-war Drygate has shown great respect to the nearby tenements rather in vain.
This is perhaps a little evidence on the lack of appreciation or concern for any existing relationship/s between old and new urban grains. The over-cladding of Drygate was probably done by the same housing association, I can’t remember, but as Europe’s largest landlord it ought to have a task force behind it that can steer it through any sophistications that exist, might exist and otherwise!
Thanks for raising the article Ellis!
The new gorbals is a fantastic example of Glasgow scale architectural re-development. Ellis' article is positive...let's hope the ciy fathers follow suit...
I can't disagree with Mark David more. Wasn't it talk of "urban nodes" and garden cities that caused the problem of modernist blight in Glasgow (and countless other cities) in the first place?
Ellis Woodman is right. Glasgow should return to its original urban scale, some good quality vernacular housing and the street.
Let's leave lofty urban ideals on the page, where they belong.
True robert, build desity where there is geniuine need. London