Scottish Architecture

Irvine Bay Regeneration Company

Irvine Bay Regeneration Company, which was set up in late 2006, is one of Scotland’s second generation of Urban Regeneration Companies. Along with Scotland's other URC's, its objectives are shaped by the Scottish Government's strategic regeneration policy statement ‘People and Place’, published in February 2006.

Irvine Bay is the largest URC in terms of its land mass. Its boundaries also enclose an area of outstanding natural beauty spanning 14 miles of sandy coastline, and encompassing the four seaside towns of Ardrossan, Saltcoats, Stevenston and Irvine and the abbey town of Kilwinning.

The area has a rich industrial and coastal heritage, but has faced major decline in recent years. Since the heyday of Victorian industrialisation and the new town developments of the 1970s, fortunes in the area have been mixed. Like Scotland as a whole, the loss of heavy industries has gradually changed the economic landscape – and more recently, the decline steepened as the area lost 35% of its manufacturing jobs between 1998 and 2003.

Working with its funding partners the Scottish Government, North Ayrshire Council, Scottish Enterprise Ayrshire, and many other partners from the public and private sectors, Irvine Bay URC has embarked on an extensive 12-year programme to transform the area. The regeneration is set to bring investment and strong economic growth to the coastal towns of north Ayrshire, creating vibrant communities, new job opportunities and a high quality of life in this attractive area of Scotland.

Focusing on the Future
The immediate challenges include:

A declining and aging population.
A shrinking employment base, particularly in traditional manufacturing.
A lack of investment in the physical built environment.
High levels of unemployment.
Low skills base with limited levels of enterprise.

In March 2007 URBED (Urbanism, Environment and Design) Ltd - a Manchester based co-operative specialising in urban design, regeneration, sustainability and community involvement - completed its first major project in Scotland: the development of a vision for the five towns of Irvine Bay. The resultant strategy produced by URBED for Irvine Bay URC was concerned with supporting the existing economic base of the area while generating new activity based on its coastal location within the catchment of Glasgow. The strategy was based on five themes:

work: creating and spreading wealth
live: a good place to live
sea: rediscovering the sea
play: a good place to spend time
bay: changing the image of the Irvine Bay area

These five themes have been embraced and elaborated upon as follows, and they now form the basis of the overall vision for the regeneration of Irvine Bay.

work: creating and spreading wealth

The priorities are to:

Consolidate industry onto the best industrial areas.
Support potential growth sectors, and areas of current strength, such as energetics, aero-engineering, back-office functions, recycling, and chemicals.
Promote tourism and the visitor economy including training and support for restaurants, hotels and other leisure uses.
Develop business centres, office pavilions and workshops, as well as marketing sites to companies looking for owner-occupied units.
Create a strategy to encourage business growth and new business start-up in partnership with existing Scottish Enterprise activities.

live: a good place to live

The aim is to establish Irvine Bay as a place where people of all ages will choose to live. Good quality housing will contribute to regeneration and each of the 9000 new homes planned over the next twenty years will play a part in revitalising the community. The new housing will be concentrated in the town centres and along the coast, revitalising existing communities and creating new ones.

One of the early action projects is the £70 million development on an 11-acre site at Irvine Harbourside to create a community of new homes and businesses on one of the most exciting waterfront locations in the UK. Other project proposals include an eco village at Tarryholme, Irvine and a waterside development in Ardrossan.

High quality and innovative designs will be important for the new homes, and these same principles must be applied to upgrading the existing homes in the area. A series of projects is also planned to improve the existing housing stock including the masterplan for the Vineburgh neighbourhood, Irvine.

sea: rediscovering the sea

Irvine Bay’s greatest asset is the Bay itself. A need has therefore been identified to turn the towns back towards the sea through the creation of a coastal park and housing at the seafront.

Some work is already under way and more is planned. At Ardrossan harbour the historic Pumphouse has been redeveloped into a restaurant to sit amidst new housing around the thriving marina and harbourside public spaces. A high quality hotel is planned for Saltcoats and a series of coastal paths and walkways will give local residents and visitors further opportunities to enjoy the coastline. The Irvine Beach Park will be re-invented and Stevenston Jetty will be redeveloped as an extreme sports centre. Residential towers on the headlands at Ardrossan and Saltcoats will become landmarks in the area, along with 10 coastal “beacons” that are planned along the shoreline.

play: a good place to spend time

Leisure provision has been identified as a vital element of the development of Irvine Bay. The coastline creates the perfect setting for a broad range of leisure activities such as sailing, golf, watersports and kite boarding. The expansion of leisure opportunities will contribute to making the Bay a good place to spend time, whether you are a visitor, existing resident or someone thinking of moving in.

Ardrossan harbour has the potential to expand into one of the biggest marina developments in the UK and at Irvine Beach Park, plans are taking shape for a new golf course and international standard hotel. The extreme sports centre planned for Stevenston Jetty will provide jet skiing, windsurfing, kite boarding and more.

Irvine Bay can become an attractive place for people to visit and enjoy. Its proximity to Glasgow and excellent transport links mean that people will come from the city to enjoy the places, the coast and the excellent activities on offer. Improvements to the built environment along with good quality shops and restaurants will attract both visitors and locals. Tourists from further afield will be attracted by top-level golf courses and the world class sailing on the Clyde estuary.

bay: changing the image of the Irvine Bay area

The need to change the way that people think about Irvine Bay is a priority. The industrial and new town legacy has left the area with a poor image. This, as much as the reality, is what is stopping new investment, and visitors. This image can and will change as a new spirit of optimism begins to pervade the area.

New standards of quality will be developed for the design and construction of housing, offices and town centre shops. A lighting plan will aim to illuminate the coastline and headlands and a series of “coastal beacons” will be commissioned by way of an architectural competition to become new landmarks around the Bay.

The 5 towns

Currently three consultants are putting together regeneration plans for: i) Irvine, ii) Kilwinning and iii) the 3 towns of Stevenston, Saltcoats and Ardrossan. Following a competitive tender process BDP was appointed to deliver the regeneration plan for Irvine; Austin Smith: Lord for Kilwinning; and The Halcrow Group for Stevenston, Saltcoats and Ardrossan. These towns’ masterplans are being prepared by these consultants on behalf of Irvine Bay Regeneration Company.

Ardrossan

The vision for Ardrossan is as both the gateway to Arran and as a good place to live next to the sea. The developing harbourside and a regenerated town centre with excellent local facilities will serve both the existing and incoming community.

The regeneration of Ardrossan is already well underway with the recent housing development at the marina. The strategy now seeks to extend and improve the quality of this development, to extend the marina, make better connections with the rest of the town and to substantially increase the number of people living in the town centre. A new supermarket has recently opened, public realm work will improve the main street and new housing will follow.

A new £5 million health centre with a doctor’s and dentist’s surgery was also recently given the go-ahead from North Ayrshire’s Planning Committee.

The Ardrossan Harbour health centre, which has been designed by Reiach and Hall Architects, will replace the existing South Beach surgery. Offering a GPs practice with nine consulting rooms, and a Dental Clinic with two surgeries, the new centre is due to open in the summer of 2009.

The Reiach & Hall design is set to integrate a derelict, listed police station on the same site. Light and airy open spaces will be a feature of the new “healthy” centre and a landscaped garden will wrap around the building and succeed in re-orientating views towards trees and greenery, rather than busy streets. The new health centre will also be the first NHS building in Scotland to achieve a BREEAM “excellent” rating.

Ardrossan Harbour Health Centre will be an integral part of the continued regeneration of the town and is the third development in the area by North Ayrshire Ventures Ltd (NAV Ltd) - the joint venture company set up by North Ayrshire Council and The EDI Group.

Saltcoats

The vision for Saltcoats is as a modern, up-market seaside resort – a good place both to visit and to live. The Saltcoats masterplan concentrates on turning the town back towards the sea. In the summer large numbers of people use the beaches on either side of the town and the strategy is to draw these people into the town by reinventing its role as a 21st century resort.

A high quality landmark hotel on the headland would set high standards of quality for the redevelopment of the town. Arts and culture will play a vital role, with galleries and cafes at the waterfront and in the town, new art works commissioned and events taking place in the town. Artists will be encouraged to settle here and a new business centre with an arts theme will provide much needed facilities. The seafront will be improved with high quality planting and better links to the town centre. Public realm works will transform the environment of the town centre. Restaurants and cafes will breathe new life into a town which was once a popular resort and can be so again.

Recent developments in Saltcoats

Glasgow based Holmes Partnership recently won a national competition to design a landmark housing development for a prime site in Saltcoats. The competition, which attracted 48 submissions from as far afield as Jersey, London and Paris, was organised by the Royal Incorporation of Architects (RIAS) in Scotland, and was sponsored by Irvine Bay Regeneration Company and local building company McLaughlin Construction.

The Holmes concept was influenced by the swelling waves of the sea and the vibrant colours and shapes of beach huts and boats. The development also meets the BREEAM Ecohomes Very Good standard. This standard seeks to minimise energy consumption and reduce waste in construction including using materials supplied from renewable sources; using pre-fabrication to reduce on-site waste; specifying materials with a high recycled or re-used content; sourcing materials that are accredited from sustainable sources and which minimise the environmental impact of manufacturing; and sourcing materials locally to reduce transport emissions. In addition, the design seeks to influence the way in which the occupiers of the houses conserve energy and minimise waste.

Irvine

There are huge opportunities in Irvine partly because the ‘New Town’ was never completely finished. There are plans to develop the beach and harbourside, as well as a dynamic new vision for the town centre. Part of this vision is to overcome the ‘New Town’ legacy and to restore its historic character. The amount of housing around the town centre will be significantly increased and the shopping centre itself will be redeveloped and revitalised.

Extensive plans for Irvine include:

New residential development around Irvine Harbour.
Environmental works at the beach park to create a more traditional park.
A new high quality links golf course with a landmark hotel.
The redevelopment of the Magnum Centre, with a replacement facility provided in the town centre.
The expansion of the Maritime Museum.
A new office quarter with an initial 2000m2 pavilion.
Public realm improvements to the High Street.
The development of an eco village.

Recent developments in Irvine

Urban Splash, one of the UK’s leading developers, was recently announced as preferred partner to deliver a £70 million development which is set to lead the regeneration of Irvine.

The development is on an 11 acre site at the harbourside, and plans include a new community consisting of some 300 homes - many of which will be affordable for first time buyers - shops, leisure facilities and commercial workspaces.

Tom Bloxham, Chairman of Urban Splash said: “Urban Splash is very excited to have been selected as Irvine Bay’s development partners for the delivery of Irvine Harbourside. We think the site has amazing potential given its location on the harbourside, the views out to the island of Arran and the beaches running north and south from the tip of the site.

“We think by focusing on quality architecture, creating a strong sense of place and by working in partnership with Irvine Bay URC and North Ayrshire Council, we can deliver a mixed-use scheme that will help transform Irvine into a great place where people will want to live and work. Being our first site in Scotland, the development is very special for us and hopefully will be the start of a very long term and successful business for Urban Splash in Scotland.”

It is expected that the development will create some 100 construction jobs and on completion around 160 permanent and part time jobs.

Stevenston

With the growth of the energetics industry on the Ardeer Peninsula there is the potential to develop Stevenston as an attractive front door for the industry and an aspirational residential environment for its workers. The environment of the town will be transformed, turning its focus towards the sea and using the opportunities for residential development to create attractive neighbourhoods. The vision for Stevenston is therefore of an attractive residential coastal town set within a forest.

Developments will include a series of “coastal beacons” along the beach, including cafes and shelters. A “dune” eco village is planned for the links area running down to the sea and the extreme watersports centre at the jetty is expected to attract visitors from the surrounding area and beyond. Work will be undertaken to restore the dunes along the sea front, extensive tree planting will take place and public realm improvements to the High Street will alter the atmosphere of the town. New business accommodation will be developed including workshops and a business centre.

Kilwinning

Kilwinning is an attractive and historic town surrounded by ‘New Town’ estates. The vision for Kilwinning is of an historic abbey town offering an excellent quality of life, high quality services in a bustling town centre and attractive housing with easy transport links to Glasgow and the rest of Scotland.

Plans include a combination of environmental improvements, animation of street and public life in the town and the promotion of town centre businesses.

Plans include:

The improvement of the High Street and partial reopening to traffic.
Regular events including fairs and a farmers’ market.
The expansion of the College together with a green transport plan.
A new gateway to the town centre with infill housing and business space.
A new health centre on Howgate as proposed by the Health Authority.
A larger park and ride facility at the station.
The consolidation of the West Byrehill industrial estate.
A residential development on the western part of West Byrehill.
The development of Kilwinning Sports Club, including an indoor sports hall.
Improvements to the museum and interpretation for the Abbey.

Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon reinforced the Scottish Government’s commitment to the regeneration of Irvine Bay when she addressed Irvine Bay Regeneration Company’s first Annual Public Meeting on 18 March.

The meeting, the first public meeting Irvine Bay Regeneration Company has held since it was established just over one year ago, was attended by over 300 local residents, businesses, community groups and officials at the Gailes Hotel, Irvine.

Nicola Sturgeon said: “The Scottish Government is committed to the continued regeneration of Irvine Bay. We are working closely with the regeneration company as they finalise the exciting plans for the area.

“We are determined to ensure that local people can take advantage of the opportunities created by the new investment in the area and we look forward to working with the regeneration company, local partners and the community as their vision for the area is turned into reality.”

To find out more about Irvine Bay URC click on the following link: http://www.irvinebayurc.co.uk/

Red Road

In February 2008, nearly 40 years after its completion, the death-warrant for Glasgow’s infamous Red Road housing scheme seems finally to have been signed, with the Glasgow Housing Association’s announcement of a phased, seven-year demolition programme for all eight tower and slab blocks.

At first glance, this might seem to be just another phase in the city’s time-honoured tradition of radical, clean-sweep renewal of ‘bad housing’ – a ‘Hundred Years War’ pursued not by ‘enemy forces’ but by municipal reformists, which stretched back to the sweeping redevelopments of ‘slum housing’ in the late 19th century by the City Improvement Trust and their replacement by Baronial tenements, and was continued in the 1930s-60s by Glasgow Corporation’s Housing Committee. In those years, the Corporation turned the bulldozers against the now condemned 19th-century tenements, replacing them first by low-rise ‘modern tenements’ and then by serried ranks of multi-storey blocks – the spearheads of Housing Convener David Gibson’s ‘60s ‘housing crusade’ to ‘give the people homes’. (1)

This process of peacetime urban warfare left some parts of the city, such as the Gorbals, as veritable multi-layered ‘palimpsests’ of redevelopment. These became ‘memory landscapes’ uncannily similar to post-1945 German cities, raggedly scattered with the traces of successive attacks on the city’s ‘diseased’ fabric, including most recently the blowing-up of Basil Spence’s monumental Hutchesontown C slab blocks in 1993.

Is the liquidation of Glasgow’s highest blocks of multi-storey flats anything more than a continuation of this time-honoured civic culture of collective progress through mass destruction? But the mention of the 1993 Gorbals blowdown – the most spectacular and literally explosive assault on the city’s housing fabric – leads us on to an unexpected twist in the story. For since that showpiece public execution went spectacularly wrong, with a local pensioner killed by flying debris, Glasgow’s civic blood-lust has abated, with the result that today’s phase of housing policy in the city envisages only limited demolition of tower blocks – at any rate by comparison with the vast demolition sprees in some cities in England and Scotland, such as Liverpool, Sheffield or Dundee.

Maybe the strong place established by housing rehab in the 1980s, the years of ‘tenement revival’, is also partly behind this policy, but at any rate, contrary to the extremist threats of a 16,000 dwelling demolition programme made by the GHA when it was first established, redevelopment is actually likely to be cautious and gradual, with only several of the giant 20-storey Zeilenbau slab blocks, as well as a few blocks in the Gorbals, likely to join Red Road in the first phase of demolition. And the new housing programme associated with the demolitions – a mere 2,800 dwellings – is a fraction of the construction rate of the post-war housing drive. This equates to a mere 50% of the houses built by the Corporation in a single year during the mid 50s or 60s: whatever is done now is likely to have only a modest impact on the city’s skyline. Nor will even the present limited demolition targets be easily achievable or affordable, even within the extended, seven-year timetable: given the problems of potential contamination posed by Red Road’s composite steel frame and asbestos sheeting construction: dismantling 31-storey slab blocks piece by piece is a far more challenging and complex task than knocking down ‘badly built’ tenements of the 1850s or 1950s.

Assuming, though, that the Red Road blocks are eventually demolished - what then? Should a rolling, open-ended demolition programme of Glasgow towers be the next step?

At least, despite the increasing fashion for post-war Modernism in heritage circles, the GHA will be unlikely to meet any obstacle from conservationists. Glasgow’s only remaining high blocks of special architectural interest, Sir Robert Matthew’s Hutchesontown ‘B’ towers (north of Ballater Street), and the Scottish Special Housing Association’s Wyndford project (Maryhill Road), are fortunately not under any threat of demolition, whereas neither Red Road nor Sighthill, despite their gargantuan scale, are designs of particular architectural significance – the architect of Red Road, Sam Bunton, was a colourful character but no architectural giant, and even in sheer size, Red Road was far outstripped (contrary to local legend) at the time of its construction by London’s 45-storey Barbican towers for the title of ‘tallest public housing in Europe’.

What should, perhaps, give greater pause for thought, though, is the sheer wastefulness of totally wiping out such concentrations of homes, however great their letting and maintenance difficulties or their reputational blight. Generally speaking, Glasgow’s multi-storey blocks are solidly and economically built, with relatively little of the ‘large-panel’ concrete prefabrication dominant in some other cities (especially in the former USSR): blocks such as the ubiquitous George Wimpey ‘no fines concrete’ towers (as at Knightswood and Townhead ‘B’) are likely to be able to stand for centuries with only limited maintenance or alteration. To be sure, a large concentration of towers in low-status, remote locations, however designed or constructed, often becomes very difficult to let – as Dundee City Council discovered in areas such as Ardler and Whitfield. But perhaps, even in these areas, a better solution might be to retain a few, isolated towers for specialist purposes – for example at Red Road, maybe keeping the YMCA-leased point-block at the extreme west end of the site, and also perhaps the isolated ‘Block 8’ at the opposite (far eastern) end.

Is there any other way around the problems of such blocks? Interestingly, although two of Scotland’s three other largest cities, Edinburgh and Dundee, have matched and even outstripped Glasgow in tower demolitions, a very different pattern has been systematically pursued in the city of Aberdeen, bastion of civic pride and municipal prudence, and careful owner of a large multi-storey housing stock, ranging from inner city slab blocks to clusters of towers in peripheral communities such as Seaton and Cornhill-Stockethill. Aberdeen’s approach is a very simple one: not mass demolition but minimum demolition - preferably none at all - coupled with careful management.

In thrifty Aberdeen, where the prime mover in the post-war housing drive was, significantly, the City Treasurer, Robert Lennox, multi-storey blocks, with all their huge in-built investment in materials and labour, have never been seen as redundant liabilities to be run down and discarded on a whim (whether political, managerial or media-led), but as enduring assets to be husbanded with care, by managers and inhabitants, for the permanent benefit and social enhancement of the ‘Granite City’ and its future generations of citizens. Perhaps the new Scottish Government, in looking for fresh and more economical and ‘sustainable’ ways of tackling entrenched and apparently intractable housing problems, could do worse than ‘look north-east’??

© Miles Glendinning

Footnote:
(1) See M Glendinning and S Muthesius, Tower Block, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1994, Chapter 25.

Main Image: Evocative dusk view of the Red Road flats – still taken from the 2006 film ‘Red Road’, directed by Andrea Arnold.
© 2008 Verve Pictures Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Aerial View of the Red Road flats kindly provided by Glasgow Housing Association.

In parallel with the demolition of the Red Road flats, the GHA has announced that work is also currently underway on a £125 million programme of investment in 100 multi-storey properties.

More than 7,000 multi-storey tenants are set to benefit from the programme which will last for five years and includes £83 million investment on overcladding and a further £42 million on new kitchens, bathrooms and re-wiring. Overcladding work is already complete or nearing completion on 30 of the multi-storey blocks – comprising nearly 4000 tenants’ homes. Overcladding projects are still ongoing at a further 30 blocks and work will commence on 40 more during the financial year 2008/09

In addition to the £125 million improvement programme, GHA has already invested over £4 million to maintain lifts, pumps and tanks in multi-storeys and has committed to an £8 million rolling programme of lift renewal. Phased environmental work has also been undertaken at many of the blocks to improve the safety, security and appearance of properties through better lighting and access.

For further information click on the following link
http://www.gha.org.uk/content/default.asp?page=s4_1&newsid=964&newsType

ScottishArchitecture.com highlights 2007

Six Cities Design Festival
May 07

The six cities of Scotland - Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling - hosted the country’s first nationwide international design festival, promoting and celebrating Scottish design. The Six Cities Design Festival, described as “UK’s first comprehensive creative Biennale”, delivered a vibrant three week programme of public events over May and June. In addition to a series of major exhibitions, including a contemporary Scottish Design showcase at The Lighthouse, the three week festival of design also featured public events, walks, talks and tours.

Central to the aims of the Six Cities Design Festival, which received a £3 million (gross) investment from the Scottish Executive, was the desire to raise awareness of the vital role of design and creativity in enabling Scottish businesses to compete at the highest level internationally; to create a public platform for Scottish design and designers; to inspire new generations of designers; to engage the public and raise awareness of the benefits of good design from products to systems, to the built environment.

With its high public profile and over 300,000 participants, the Six Cities Design Festival clearly demonstrated that design has a key role to play in everyday life and everyday business. Plans are currently afoot for another national design festival in 2010.

http://www.sixcities.com

Launch of ‘Building our Legacy’, a new architecture policy for Scotland
February 07

Six years after the Scottish Executive launched its first ‘Policy on Architecture for Scotland’, a new architecture policy document, ‘Building Our Legacy: Statement on Scotland’s Architecture Policy 2007’ was unveiled at The Lighthouse in February. Arriving in the wake of ‘Scotland’s Culture’, the Executive's response to the Cultural Commission's review of Culture in Scotland, which stated a commitment to a renewed and strengthened architecture policy statement, the new policy document is essentially the culmination of an extensive public consultation process.

Ian Gilzean, Chief Architect at the Scottish Government’s Architecture Policy Unit spoke exclusively to scottisharchitecture.com about why Scotland needs another architecture policy: Read the interview.

SHIFTS
August 07

During the course of a three day workshop four international project teams, led by the Scottish architecture practices Cadell2, Collective Architecture, GRAS and vD&B, developed a series of scenarios speculating on shifts and transformations relating to Scotland’s Central Belt in the years up to 2057. The visions that emerged form the basis of SHIFTS a major touring exhibition which opened at The Lighthouse in August.

The four propositions involve ideas such as: the transformation of the M8 into a major tourist attraction running through Scotland's Central Forest; the creation of a new canal, connecting the west and the east coast, wide enough to carry a floating opera house or a football stadium; a decentralisation of political and economic power, producing local decision-making structures that support local identity, culture and production; and an image of Scotland relying only on hydro and wind power, and being Europe's main exporter of green energy.

An associated publication featuring specially commissioned pieces from leading architectural commentators and Scottish writers including Louise Welsh, Alan Bisset, and Pat Kane was published in September.

http://www.scottisharchitecture.com/shifts

Gillespie Kidd & Coia Exhibition
November 07

Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein made a very particular contribution to post-war British architecture, and remain Scotland’s greatest living architects. The Lighthouse, in partnership with The Glasgow School of Art, brought together a team of leading architects, artists, writers and film makers to create ‘Gillespie Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-87’, a major survey of their work looking at the buildings they designed during their years at the helm of the Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, and their legacy both in Scotland and beyond.

The comprehensive GKC archive, gifted to The Glasgow School of Art in 2005, forms not only the basis of the major exhibition ‘Gillespie Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-87’, currently featuring at The Lighthouse until 10 February 2008; but also a book, edited by architectural writer, Johnny Rodger; and two films by Isi Metzstein’s son Saul. Work has also been undertaken to catalogue the archive and digitise aspects of it opening it up as a resource to academics, the profession and the public. www.gillespiekiddandcoia.com will go live in spring 2008.

In June, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia's St Peter's College, Cardross, widely considered as a masterpiece of post-war Modern architecture - and now in a ruined state - was included on the World Monuments Fund's watch list for 2008. The iconic Scottish building joins treasures such as the cultural sites of Iraq; the St Petersburg skyline in Russia; and Machu Picchu, Peru amongst the world's most endangered cultural heritage sites.

Two iconic Scots buildings added to World Monuments Fund Watch List.

2014 Commonwealth Games, Glasgow
November 07

The announcement in November that Glasgow will host the 2014 Commonwealth Games signalled a significant step in the city’s regeneration.

The biggest new-build element planned is the £245m Athletes’ Village, which has been masterplanned by RMJM’s team in Glasgow. The masterplan site covers approximately 40 hectares and is located in Dalmarnock in the East End of the City. The scheme aims to tackle the regeneration of one of the City's most deprived and socially problematic areas, to create a successful and exciting Games Village accommodating over 7,000 athletes in more than 1,000 new permanent housing units. Facilities such as landscaped areas, an international zone, a transport hub and a hotel also form part of the Village masterplan.

2014 Commonwealth Games Athletes Village masterplan

The Games is also set to see the creation of a new £76m National Indoor Sports Arena and Velodrome designed by 3DReid and a £112m Entertainments Arena by Foster and Partners. A £12.5m second swimming pool and auditorium at Tollcross Park Aquatics Centre, and the £3m redevelopment of Glasgow Green are also planned. According to the bid document, £228m of the village’s cost is to be met by the private sector. It is understood that a PPP is likely.

National Indoor Sports Arena and Velodrome

Highland Housing Fair
June 07

The Highland Housing Fair competition, which aims to raise standards in innovative and sustainable housing design, announced its winners in June. (http://www.highlandhousingfair.com/design-competition.html)

The housing design competition, which is Scotland’s first housing fair, was run under the auspices of the Royal Incorporation of Architects of Scotland (RIAS).
The winning designs will be developed into a 55 home (27 plot) community at Balvonie on the southern fringe of Inverness. A diverse range of housing types will be on offer on the 5.5 hectare (13.5 acre) site, with more than a third of the units designated for affordable housing.

The Fair will culminate in the summer of 2009 with the completed homes forming the centrepiece of a month-long exhibition. At the end of the Fair, the homes will be sold or rented at market value by their respective plot developers.

The Highland Housing Fair will become a biennial event in a different Highland location each time, with the next fair taking place in 2011.

The Lighthouse Achievement Award 2007
Nov 07

Glasgow-based practice Elder and Cannon Architects were this year’s winners of The Lighthouse Achievement Award. Presented annually to an individual or organisation that has made an outstanding contribution to the promotion of architecture and the built environment, the Achievement Award was this year presented to a practice that has shown ‘a consistent and persistent commitment to quality, irrespective of scale or status of project.’

“Over the years Elder and Cannon have shown a continuing ability to produce new ideas and new takes on the brief,” said Nick Barley, Director of The Lighthouse. “The Achievement Award recognises this alongside their commitment to nurturing new talent both within the practice and through their teaching.”

Following a keynote lecture by Bob Allies of Allies and Morrison, the Award was presented, at Glasgow's Oran Mor, by Andy McMillan, Emeritus Professor at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. Previous winners of the Achievement Award include architect collective GLAS and film-maker Murray Grigor.

The Achievement Award is part of ACCESS to Architecture, a programme of events and initiatives aligned to the Scottish Government’s Policy on Architecture.

Read a profile of Elder and Cannon Architects

Read an interview with Bob Allies

Scotland International

A number of Scottish practices were conspicuous in the international architectural arena this year. Edinburgh based Sutherland Hussey Architects were awarded first prize in the international competition for the design of the new City Museum for Chengdu, Sichuan, China.

Glasgow based NORD, who opened their new Dublin office in September, won an open international competition to design the new headquarters building for Wexford County Council. The project is due to go on site in February 2008. NORD also featured (alongside Carmody Groarke, Surface, Project Orange and Brisac Gonzalez and John McAslan + Partners) in the shortlist to design the £10m British Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Edinburgh based draw architects (and team members Graven Images, Arup, dcmstudios and the Botanical Society of Scotland) also featured on the shortlist of six (narrowed down from 47 entrants) to develop conceptual ideas for a 6000m2 site which will promote the best of British talent and creativity during the Expo.

Draw architects and NORD exhibited at V&A

International architects were also conspicuous in the Scottish arena. Work began in November on the new Riverside Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects on the banks of the Clyde. The new £74 million structure, which is due to open in 2009, will replace the hugely popular but outdated Transport Museum behind Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall. Hadid’s 2006 Maggie’s Centre in Kirkcaldy, the architect’s first UK building, was also shortlisted for this year’s Andrew Doolan Building of the Year Award.

Fife Maggie's Cancer Care Centre

The new BBC HQ at Glasgow’s Pacific Quay by 2007 Stirling Prize winner David Chipperfield was completed in the summer. The 34,000 sq m digital centre incorporates three key elements - digital broadcasting studios, offices and substantial public areas – and boasts the UK's most advanced broadcast studios and production facilities. The Guardian described the new building as “one of the most remarkable, and hopefully influential, new workplaces in Britain.”

Scottish Architectural Awards 2007
Nov 07

The RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award 2007 was presented to Reiach and Hall Architects’ Pier Arts Centre in Orkney. One of seven buildings short-listed for the UK’s largest architecture prize, and one of two projects submitted by the Edinburgh architectural practice, The Pier Arts Centre, situated in the Orkney town of Stromness, was commended by the judges for its “seemingly effortless way in which the new gallery has been settled in beside its neighbours as an integral part of the townscape.”
(Building and Places - Pier Arts Centre)

Elsewhere at key architectural award events, the Glasgow Institute of Architects Supreme Award 2007 was awarded to Castlemilk Stables Block, Glasgow, designed by Elder & Cannon Architects (Buildings and Places - Castlemilk House Stables Block)

Building of the Year at the 2007 Edinburgh Architectural Association (EAA) Award was presented to the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh by Malcolm Fraser Architects. The Scottish Storytelling Centre was also awarded a RIBA Award as was the Knox House, Edinburgh by Richard Murphy Architects. Gareth Hoskins Architects ‘The Bridge’ arts centre and community library in Easterhouse received a RIBA National as well as a regional Award (Buildings and Places - The Bridge)

The Saltire Awards housing panel announced the winners of this year’s housing design awards as: St Vincent Place, Edinburgh by Reiach and Hall and Oberlanders Architects; Upper Strand, Granton Waterfront, Edinburgh by Reiach and Hall and Elder and Cannon; The Cottages, Silverhills, Rosneath by Anderson Bell Christie http://www.scottisharchitecture.com/article/view/Silverhills

Sir Basil Spence Centenary

Sir Basil Spence (1907-76) was arguably the most publicly celebrated British architect of the 20th century, as well as one of the most prolific. 2007 marked the centenary of Sir Basil Spence's birth and to celebrate this, The Lighthouse, RCAHMS, and the National Galleries of Scotland worked together to create a range of exhibitions, events and web resources which celebrate Spence's life and work.

A major exhibition 'Back to the Future: Sir Basil Spence 1907-1976 opened at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh to huge critical acclaim in October. The exhibition considers Spence's extraordinary career which spanned a time of great social change within Britain and features original archive material, much of which has never been exhibited before. This can be seen until 10th February 2008.

Meanwhile, the current touring exhibition ‘Sir Basil Spence: Celebration of a Modern Architect’ combines content from the Sir Basil Spence Archive with recollections from some people who have lived and worked in his buildings to provide a glimpse into Spence’s career and its place in twentieth century British architecture.

To draw together the work of the Sir Basil Spence Archive Project as a whole, a website was designed and is currently live at www.basilspence.org.uk

The Life and Work of Basil Spence - Dr Miles Glendinning looks at the career of the prolific and publicly celebrated British architect.

ENDS

The Life and Work of Basil Spence

Sir Basil Spence (1907-76) was arguably the most publicly celebrated British architect of the 20th century, as well as one of the most prolific. Although his active years as an architect corresponded almost exactly with the heyday of modern architecture, he was actually a hybrid character.

Spence’s buildings were representative of several key currents in post-war British architecture: from the 1960s he was running three major offices – two in London, one in Edinburgh – and was involved in almost every major area of post-war building, including government and office buildings, schools, universities, civic centres and airports; these collective, social building complexes exemplified the Welfare State years and the ascendancy of Modernism within architecture. But, as a renowned church architect, and a lover of traditional artistic beauty, Spence also kept one very substantial foot in the pre-Modern architectural world of hierarchical stateliness. Indeed, it was his design of the new Coventry Cathedral, which he won in a very prominent competition in 1951 and finally completed in 1962, that brought him his greatest international fame.

Spence was born in Bombay in 1907 to Indian colonial parents of Scottish descent. At 12 years old, he was sent to live with an aunt in Edinburgh and attended George Watson’s College, before studying architecture at Edinburgh College of Art between 1925 and 1931; in 1930-1 he was on a placement at Edwin Lutyens’s office in London. His architectural education was firmly rooted in the late 19th century tradition which combined Beaux-Arts stately rationalism with the artistic ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement; already he was famed for his seductive drawing skills.

During the 1930s, after graduating, Spence worked as a part-time lecturer at ECA and entered into partnership with his colleague William Kininmonth; the two designed a number of Edinburgh private houses. During the war, while many socialistic architects in public offices secured reserved status, Spence was in active service in the British Army Camouflage Unit between 1939 and 1944 as a Major (promoted to Staff Captain during the final year of the war). Subsequently Spence founded his own practice, Basil Spence and Partners, in Edinburgh. In 1951, he also set up office in London and his Scottish office became known as Spence Glover & Ferguson. Early projects from the late 1930s to the early 1950s included pavilions and stands for both English and Scottish industry exhibitions.

During the earliest post-war reconstruction era Spence was hugely successful, his design verve adding a more flamboyant touch to national programmes otherwise dominated by others’ anonymously collective and repetitive work. In school design, for example, while the modest Herts primary Schools of the late 40s won wide public recognition, Spence designed more lavish solutions in schools like Duncanrig Secondary School in East Kilbride, Kilsyth Secondary, and Thurso High School. He also specialised in university buildings (helped in many cases by his partner Jack Bonnington), as at the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh (masterplanned in 1955), Nottingham, Liverpool, Durham and, of course, Sussex (from 1959), the first of the post-war New Universities programme.

The social housing that had been a feature of his pre-war career also featured in his later work and includes small projects for the fishing communities of Dunbar and Newhaven, as well as the monumental 20-storey concrete slabs of Glasgow’s Hutchesontown-Gorbals C (1960-6). But Spence himself valued most highly the grand ‘national’ projects that came in the wake of Coventry. His design for the British Embassy chancery in Rome (1959-63; built 1968-71) responded to a sensitive and prestigious site through a mix of traditional imagery and modern lightness: the ‘modern palazzo’, faced in Roman travertine in reflection of the late 1950s’ movement away from functionalist austerity towards ‘enriched forms’, was raised above flowing parkland landscaping on slender stilts.

By contrast, Spence’s almost exactly contemporary Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks in Central London was really a chunk of city, embedded in the wider urban fabric. It adapted the dense, avant-garde ‘megastructure’ formula of the 60s to house one of the most traditional, elite units of the British Army on a highly constrained site, including a tower block of soldiers’ family flats.

Honoured by the state and his profession, Spence became a household name, with prominent positions in bodies like the Royal Academy, the RFAC and the RIBA. But contemporary avant-garde critics as well as historians of Modernism were, and still are, uncertain how to treat him. His exuberant public persona, including a voracious skill in exploiting the mass media, and the forceful, sometimes even scenographic forms of his buildings are rather at variance with the ethos of anonymous collectivity and public service that dominated early post-war architecture up to the mid 50s; the same qualities began, from the late 50s, to attract increasingly vociferous criticism from a younger architectural generation, who communicated using bold and much more individualistic utopian and metaphoric language.

Arguably, though, the way in which Spence bridged the gap between the sometimes inaccessible world of Modern architecture and more popular or commercial approaches, as well as reaching back to a more traditional era of craft skills and private pupillage, makes him of greater importance than this always artificially restricted elite of poetic hero-figures, in illustrating the way post-war modern architecture worked.

Coventry Cathedral - Interior view of baptistery, font and window.

British Embassy, Rome - North west elevation showing pool and fountain.

British Pavillion, Expo 1967

Coventry Cathedral - Sketch perspective of cathedral from south east 1951.

The Gorbals, Glasgow - View from ground level of hanging balconies in Area C with child in foreground, 1965

Images: Crown Copyright RCAHMS 2007

© Dr Miles Glendinning

A series of free talks and lectures accompanies the exhibition 'Back to the Future; Sir Basil Spence 1907-1976' currently showing at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh until Feb 10th 2008.

Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks: Sir Basil Spence and the Architecture of Modern Military Ceremony
Mon 21st Jan, 2008.
Gymnasium - Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Art Galleries), Edinburgh
Miles Glendinning, Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, explores Spence's ingenious and controversial design for the Knightsbridge barracks for the Household Cavalry (1959-70).

The Architect and the Artists
Mon 4th Feb 2008 12.45-1.30pm
Dean Gallery
Basil Spence considered art to be an essential component of architecture. Philip Long, co-curator of the exhibition Back to the Future, traces the architect's extensive involvement with figures such as Graham Sutherland, Jacob Epstein and John Piper.

Basil Spence and adventures in exhibition architecture
Tue 5th Feb 2008 12.45-1.30pm
Hawthorden Lecture Theatre, National Gallery complex, Edinburgh
Brian Edwards, Professor of Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art, explores the methods used by Spence to develop new ideas through the medium of temporary exhibition architecture including the controversial British Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal.

For further information about the Basil Spence exhibitions, special events and the archive, visit www.basilspence.org.uk

The Life and Times of Robert Matthew

The three turbulent decades after World War II saw a fundamental reorientation of British and Scottish national life. Externally, decolonisation and loss of great-power status was compensated for by the attempt to construct a new network of cultural influence based on the Commonwealth. Internally, a new focus was provided by the crusade of social reconstruction and welfare state-building.

Architecture was a key accessory in this transformation. That was only to be expected, as, unlike the other ‘arts’, it has always been closely bound up with power and the ‘establishment’. The particular form that connection took after 1945 was Modern Architecture. Closely bound up with socialism, this was a 20th-century internationalist movement which developed strong interconnections with disciplined nationalism.

In 1940s and early 50s Britain, Modern architecture was applied to the new national crusade of social reconstruction in the form of ‘coordinated planning’ by the State, modelled on the war-effort philosophy: here, the iconic figure was the ‘public’ architect-planner controlling a vast integrated State design organisation, and working as much through committees and plans as by direct personal design. In the late 50s, the focus of their activity within Britain increasingly shifted to the general consolidation of Modernist ‘public architecture’, through overarching establishment posts or hybrid private-public consultancy work; and they also began propagating its ideas abroad, especially as part of a new formula of post-imperial cultural and economic development within the Commonwealth.

The career of Sir Robert Matthew (1906-1975) – the most prominent Scottish architect of the 20th century - occupied the heart of this reformist quarter-century: his CV reads like a roll-call of the top jobs in the Modernist architectural establishment. It was always especially through the careers of ambitious Scots that the evolution of ‘Britishness’ could be most precisely gauged, and indeed the tenacious and forceful Matthew would doubtless have become a colonial governor or a field-marshal had he lived a century earlier.

Born in a family steeped in arts-and-crafts architectural traditionalism (his father having been partner to Sir Robert Lorimer), the young Robert Matthew responded to the 1930s crises by turning to socialism and international modernism. After a meteoric rise within Scottish government architecture, in 1946 he vaulted into the single most influential post in the shaping of ‘social architecture’ - that of chief architect of the London County Council, where he had charge of projects such as the Royal Festival Hall, the Lansbury Festival of Britain housing project, and the pioneering high-rise flats at Roehampton. Matthew was at the centre of all these revolutionary LCC innovations, including even the design of the Festival Hall, where new documentary evidence has suggested that he (rather than his deputy Leslie Martin) played a decisive role in the devising of the innovative ‘egg in a box’ auditorium section. When he left the LCC in 1953 for private practice and a university chair back home in Scotland, the London authority had become a world-renowned hotbed of collective social architecture, fostered by Matthew through the innovative system of decentralised architectural ‘group’ working.

From the mid 50s, Matthew led the move to disseminate these doctrines of social mass building across private practice, shaping such programmes as the new universities through private-public consultancies, and promoting Modernism through the reorganisation of architectural education. This shift in his work was epitomised by his controversial New Zealand House project (1954-62) - the first prominent tower block in central London, containing a new High Commission for New Zealand – but soon both the Edinburgh and London branches of his practice RMJM had begun to mushroom, with talented younger partners coming to the fore. This was the context for the 1965/6 commission to build Stirling University – the only ‘new university’ in Scotland – whose design was devolved by Matthew in its entirety to a team led by partner John Richards.

In parallel to the Stirling work, Matthew himself was engaged personally in a very different, less well-known new university project, as part of his longstanding work to introduce a modern regional planning system to the rapidly modernising statelet of Northern Ireland. From 1966, Matthew took a lead role in the planning of Ulster’s only new university, at Coleraine – the last significant project he himself designed personally - at the same time as Richards’s team was working on the first phase of the Stirling University project. The two initial, multi-purpose projects were both system-built for the sake of urgency, but otherwise they could not have been more different: the restrained, highly-regular horizontality of Richards’s Pathfoot Building, conceived on the basis of strongly held architectural principles of rational design, contrasted starkly with the loosely-planned, rambling, almost picturesque character of Matthew’s Phase 1 building at Coleraine; the almost traditional monumentality of the complete Stirling complex, in its lavish parkland setting, was also very different from Coleraine ‘Phase 2’, planned by Matthew in a nervously irregular megastructural form, with integrated ‘library spine’.

At the same time as all this welfare-state design work, Matthew increasingly turned to the old Scottish speciality of overseas ‘imperium’. He became a key architectural diplomat, propagating the ideals of modernist design and planning in international organisations often charged with the tensions of the Cold War and decolonisation: in this context, he attempted to reconcile Modernist concepts such as low-cost mass housing or regional planning with the cultural traditions, and quest for national identity, of Third-World countries.

From the late 1960s, he was also faced with the need to respond to the growing crises of Modernist architecture and the planned economy. Where some ‘great men’ of his generation, such as Holford or Spence, sank into relatively quiescent retirement, Matthew blazed up into a final burst of frenzied self-renewal, refocusing his efforts back home in Scotland, where he returned to his family architectural ‘roots’ in conservation by leading the drive to ‘save’ the classical Edinburgh New Town, and at the same time launching into a final ‘crusade’ of global environmentalism.

Matthew’s career, in addition to being of major significance in its own right within postwar Scottish and British architecture, as an exemplar of the Modern architect as organiser and reformist, rather than as ‘iconic designer’, also personifies the socialist and modernist attempt to reformulate and revitalise ‘British destiny’, and to create a ‘modern Scotland’.

Main image: Robert Matthew's Turnhouse Airport, seen after its completion in 1956.

Concept drawings by Matthew showing one of several alternative arrangements for the Edinburgh University Arts Redevelopment (implemented 1960-66).

Cashlie Power Station, Glen Lyon (one of three in his 1950's 'stone vernacular' style).

Concept drawing by Matthew for his Queens's College Dundee project (built from 1956).

Publication
Matthew’s career, in all its vast diversity, is now to be the subject of one of the most comprehensive biographical monographs on any British 20-century architect. Miles Glendinning’s Modern Architect: the Life and Times of Robert Matthew, will be published in spring 2008 by RIBA Publishing. (Advance enquiries: contact enquiries@ribapublishing.com)

Image Copyright: Miles Glendinning

A String of Pearls

Harbours take a long time to die, but dying they are, in many cases. In Oslo this process started in earnest around thirty years ago. As slowly and surely as the ships moved out; the developers moved in.

Yet despite all the changes, Oslo’s harbour is still very much alive. Sitting at the end of the Oslo Fjord, a huge water basin dotted with islands, the harbour itself is surrounded by two bays. Small ferries frequently scuttle across. Large ferries to Kiel and Copenhagen and enormous cruise ships are also regular visitors. In the summer there is a swarm of leisure and sailing boats. It is all very picturesque and beautiful. A much needed overall strategy for the harbour areas was adopted by the City of Oslo Council in 2000. ‘The Fjord City’, as it is known, identified “urban renewal of a string of waterfront properties in the heart of the city.” Most of the properties earmarked for renewal were used for harbour activities - some still are - and others are former industrial sites. In addition there are lots of used and disused railway tracks, roads and bits and pieces of a four lane motorway. All in all there are some 225 hectacres of development area stretched along 12 kilometres facing south and west with the city centre right behind. In other words, it is a prime site.

The Oslo Waterfront Planning Office mission is as follows: “we want to open up the waterfront areas for recreational, residential and commercial use, with emphasis on public access, public and private transport and sustainable development.” With everyone going Gung-ho to get their bit in, this isn’t proving easy. Fjord City as a whole is worth a visit (http://www.oslo.technopole.no/fjordcity/), however there is one most surprising proposal amongst all the profit-led developer projects that is worth a closer look. It is called ‘Noa´s Park’, and is essentially a park on water. It is linked to the development of an area which is still used as a container harbour and consists of a series of floating islands held together by a 15 to 20 metre ‘spine’ that hooks on to the quayside in two places.

The technology involved in Noa’s Park is well-known and well-tested, durable and cheap. This involves concrete floaters, which are closed rectangular concrete boxes (5 meters wide, 10 to 20 meters long, 3 to 5 meters deep) that can be linked together into larger units and given more or less any shape or form. They are anchored with ‘North Sea Chains’, which are used in the offshore industry. These floaters can be produced elsewhere and towed into place. They weigh around 2 tonnes per square metre and can carry another ton and a half of extra load per square metre. And they float!
It’s when you let the Norwegian architects Arne Henriksen AS and Jensen & Skodvin AS loose on the idea that it really takes off. In their hands the ‘spine’ becomes a linear park. From this linear park spine you can get on to the islands by bridges and ramps - and this is where the fun begins.

The islands are joyfully given different characteristics and activities. There is the ‘Children´s Bath Island’; the ‘Kayak Hotel’; the ‘Diving Island’; the ‘Park Island’; the ‘Wilderness Island’; floating islands for art installations, fireworks and bonfires; and much more. And of course you can jump in for a swim too. Visit the architects’ websites (http://www.jsa.no/projects.html and http://www.ah-arkitekter.no), look for ‘Filipstad Sjopark’, and you will be taken for a wonderful dip into this sea park of delights. You will also encounter a model report, which is great, but in Norwegian.

There is an exuberance and tongue-in-cheek sense of humour in this scheme that is very refreshing. Norwegian architecture, although generally of a very high quality, runs on a very narrow track. This gleefully breaks the mould. What remains to be seen is if the politicians and developers have the imagination and courage to go ahead. If not, this string of pearls can easily be cut loose from the quayside, lift anchor and sail away.

Fancy a private island? Then get in touch!