There is a zone of Glasgow so studded with culture and architecture, so richly fertilised with public investment, while also blessed by nature with the noble breadth of the Clyde, that it ought to be a wonder of the world. This zone, once full of shipyards, now contains the work of two Pritzker prize winners – Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid – and a probable Pritzker-winner-in-waiting, David Chipperfield.
Over the last 12 years, it has acquired a convention centre, two museums and the headquarters of BBC Scotland, a swoopy new bridge and a jaunty observation mast by the not-half-bad architect Richard Horden. But no one standing here could be exhilarated, moved or transformed by what they see. No one would say: "This is a nice place."
It is like an underplanned business estate, a landscape of things set in car parks, no matter what the architectural merit of each thing might be. In the gaps between the monuments and the car parks are inserted expedient slabs of commerce or the perfunctory ingratiation of exploitative blocks of flats. There is no coherence, no positive quality to the sum of the parts or to the combinations of one with another.
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Over the last 12 years, it has acquired a convention centre, two museums and the headquarters of BBC Scotland, a swoopy new bridge and a jaunty observation mast by the not-half-bad architect Richard Horden. But no one standing here could be exhilarated, moved or transformed by what they see. No one would say: "This is a nice place."
It is like an underplanned business estate, a landscape of things set in car parks, no matter what the architectural merit of each thing might be. In the gaps between the monuments and the car parks are inserted expedient slabs of commerce or the perfunctory ingratiation of exploitative blocks of flats. There is no coherence, no positive quality to the sum of the parts or to the combinations of one with another.
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