Rising from the Ashes of High Rise

Yesterday I visited the Laurieston Living Development on a site visit with my Macintosh School urban design students on a fieldtrip very kindly hosted by Stallan Brand Architecture. As a compliment to my article on the potential end of high-rise living in Scotland of a few months ago, I would offer some reflection on what can rise up from the ashes of such schemes.


As my research in Glasgow in recent months has evidenced, there is a real sense of having been 'done to' by planners, on behalf of some of the communities that bore the brunt of the City's comprehensive redevelopment in the postwar years. This finds one of its strongest spatial expressions in Laurieston, where the 23 storey Norfolk Court blocks, demolished in 2010 and 2016, were a concrete example of the loss of the area's dense morphology of modest spaces defined by buildings in favour of a landscape of monumental buildings in space.


As a planner today, I am often torn between my respect for the zeal of practitioners of the postwar years, in attempting to create what they saw as a new form of space and society, and the failings of these visons in the hard, real world. Carmona et al. in their 'Public Places, Urban Spaces' book, a core text of my course define an ‘artistic’ tradition of planning and urban design. While it is not hard to see this in the concern for form, geometry and truth to materials particularly characteristic of professional attitudes at this time, I believe the analogy runs deeper.


Postwar planners and designers, backed up by the government drive for housing and rebuilding were very much therefore, assuming the role of the Old Master. The buildings and spaces resulting were certainly highly provocative, expressive and innovative: certainly worthy of appreciation in a gallery or architect’s journal. As such, we have the likes of Sir Basil Spence’s 'great ship' of the Gorbals and Geoffrey Copcutt’s “machine for living” in Cumbernauld as key exhibits. But what of the voice for those who then had to live their lives within these bold statements?


The ‘social’ tradition and those of ‘place making’ and ‘sustainable urbanism’ that followed I feel, challenge the practitioner to assume more of the role of a performance artist: reacting to both the environment in which their work takes place and the ever-changing demands of their ‘public’. In Laurieston, from the ashes of one tradition and its attendant morphology, comes fresh development and designs aimed at reintegrating this part of the City with its neighbouring locales. My liberal use of inverted commas above hints that the path to implementation of these ideals is not an easy one. However, it is always one that as professionals, whether student or in-practice, we should approach from a firm appreciation of context: both on site and in the hearts and minds of local people.





Image © Copyright Thomas Nugent and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.