Tower block designers go back to the future for new-look city

ARCHITECTS have redrawn Glasgow’s future skyline because the first version was too reminiscent of the Sixties and the city’s obsession with high living.

A week after the announcement that the six towering Red Road flats are to be demolished, it was revealed yesterday that the design for Glasgow’s newest skyscrapers has been modified.

The second phase of the 500 million Glasgow Harbour development was too much like "1960s Glasgow", according to a report by the Royal Fine Arts Commission.

The architecture watchdog had been asked for its opinion on the draft design for five proposed tower blocks on the south bank of the Clyde.

The original proposal was to create 875 flats in towers that might have been marginally taller than the redesign.

But the commission believed that would be too reminiscent of Glasgow’s past - and the Red Road flats which were once the highest residential structures in Europe.

Soon after the Red Road flats were completed in the early Seventies, they began to fall into disrepair, becoming a high-rise ghetto.

However, the city’s newest tower blocks, which are an exercise in middle-class living, are unlikely to ever become a ghetto.

The city council accepted the commission’s criticism that they were too high and asked the architects to think again.

A council spokesman said: "The Royal Fine Arts Commission had some concern over the original plan’s resemblance to 1960s Glasgow. It was taken on board."

In the new version, the highest of the blocks will be 22 storeys - 250ft high - and four other structures will have between 14 and 16 floors.

The GH2 development will be built around a new plaza - Sawmill Square - which will be a modern version of the city’s more famous squares built in Victorian times.

It will, say the designers, be created for people, "rather than cars".

Shops and cafes will be an integral part of the ground floors of the five buildings and they will have prime views of the new plaza and the river.

An extensive walkway is planned along the banks of the Clyde and it is hoped to site a river bus stop in the vicinity.

Gordon Murray, of the city architects’ firm of Murray and Dunlop, has been working on a redesign of the original plan.

He said: "Sawmill Square will be nearly as big as Blythswood Square. Markets will be held there and there will be a river bus stop nearby."

He added: "The problem we had to address was not so much one of height, but one of ‘massing’ - the proximity of one tower block to another.

"We have resolved that to everyone’s satisfaction, including our own, and we hope to get the green light."

The development will create a whole new community to the west of another high-rise development currently under construction at the site of the old Meadowside granary.

Glasgow City Council will today examine the revised plans for the development for detailed planning approval, which is expected to be forthcoming.

It will allow work to begin on the 800-plus flats, which are expected to have a starting price of approximately 125,000 each.

The development is expected to be finished by 2008.