September 2009

Managed to get round a few interesting buildings during Doors Open weekends in North Lanarkshire and Glasgow. First weekend was taken up visiting St Patrick’s, Scared Heart and St Bride’s Churches, all by Gillespie Kidd and Coia.  The churches were designed for the Catholic Church and are attributed to Andy MacMillan and Isi Metzstein who were responsible for the design output of the practice from 1956. I have a long personal connection with the buildings of GKC having been born in one, Bellshill Maternity, went to High School in one, Our Lady’s High School, and having been to mass several times in Sacred Heart while growing up in Cumbernauld. I also studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art while Professor Andy MacMillan was Head of Architecture at the school and had many crits from both Andy Macmillan and Isi Metzstein.

St Patrick's Kilsyth

St Patrick’s is situated on a sloping site and is set back from the road with a large forecourt. Although the style is distinctly modernist, there is influence from traditional Scottish architecture.

The huge soaring roof almost floats above the huge brick walls, supported on unfeasibly slender columns which disappear into the walls.

Natural light floods through the full height windows on the West Elevation. The priest who was very helpful and allowed us access throughout the church explained how he is blinded at certain times of the year as the sun floods in and some blinds have been placed strategically to avoid this.

St Patrick's Interior

Sacred Heart is in the New Town of Cumbernauld. I was brought up a catholic in Cumbernauld and attended mass here several times and always remember the effect of the colourful light  It’s main feature is the stunning stained glass by Sadie McLellan. It is quite an atmospheric interior and is hugely contrasting to St Patrick’s with natural light only coming from the stained glass windows and rooflights above the altar.

Sacred Heart, Cumbernauld

stained glass by Sadie McLellan

The interior is almost unexpected as the exterior is fairly understated and it is tucked away in a rather run down housing area.the sculptural rooflights let natural light flood down over the altar and the ceiling over the main body of the church is lined in timber which is set off the walls giving the impression it is floating.

Sacred Heart Altar

The third stop was probably one of GKC’s best known Churches, St Bride’s in East Kilbride. Loved and hated by many it really is an essay in architecture. There was formerly a Bell Tower or ‘Campanile’ on the site which was demolished in 1983. The story goes that there was no drawing showing the height of the tower and the bricklayers would ask daily how high they were to go. It was only when the architects turned up one day to see where they had built to and said ‘yip, thats about right there’.

St Bride's East Kilbride

There is a completely different feel to this building also. Someone said that they felt ‘like they were trapped in a brick’ and compared the building to a Rothko painting where he is trying intentionally to make the viewer feel uneasy.

St Bride's interior

For me, this is the most modernist of the three churches, with definite Corbusian influence which the architects would freely admit. I love the ceiling and the huge copper clad ‘light cannons’ that shed light over the altar.

GKC’s body of work for the Catholic Church has been plagued with problems and a number have now been lost. Heating these large spaces was difficult and expensive and water penetration has been an ongoing problem. That apart, these are some of the most important buildings in Scotland and have been listed to help protect them.  I would recommend visiting them, especially St Bride’s, in order to fully explore and appreciate the details and spaces created. There was a book published following the recent exhibition on Gillespie Kidd and Coia which is worth tracking down.

A lot more photos on my Flickr site and check out the Glasgow School of Art archive on Flickr

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• steven holl architects win first prize for glasgow school of arts (designboom.com)

June 2009

Since returning from holiday at the start of June I have been working on finishing another children’s house, preparing to start a community business centre in Aidrie and putting together 2 tenders for architects services.

The completed children’s house in Motherwell is the third we have completed for North Lanarkshire Council and are the result of over 5 years worth of work. The 4th is due for completion in Cumbernauld within the next month and I intend to write about the whole process once this is complete. The programme of work has been quite unique and there is not much written on this type of building in comparison to other types of residential ‘care’ buildings and interest has been shown by other councils looking to develop their own provision to meet the standards set by the Care Commission.

Activity Space, Chldren's House, Motherwell

The tender process for putting a design team together is quite an involved process which is ,more often than not, unsuccessful unfortunately. We do win from time to time but the number we need to enter and the time involved in doing so is disproportionate, time consuming and costly. The process is largely architect led which means there is more time involved putting the right team together, gathering and collating all information and presenting this in a professional manner. No matter how often I try to standardise information to make this process quicker, questions are asked in different ways which means tailoring to suit each individual tender questionnaire.

This whole process is hugely flawed, dfficult for smaller practices to be succcessful, and quite often the tender process is only used through the neccesity of the client to meet funding regulations or legislation when they already know who they really want to work with, the result being, a lot of wasted time and effort from practices that can ill afford the cost in the current climate.

I managed to get up to Dundee to see Balgay Hill, a play by Simon Macallum . The play is an interweave of characters influenced by growing up in Dundee and by the life of local legend  Billy Mackenzie, singer in the Associates. A fascinating way to deal with subject like this without just presenting a biography, Mackenzie’s story is told through the experience of the characters including a Dundonian returning home after yeas in America, a younger student putting together a video for a college project and a teenager looking to make a career in the pop industry.

Labyrinth, Maggie's, Dundee

Took time to have a look at the Frank Ghery designed Maggie’c Centre in the grounds of Ninewell’s hospital. My second Ghery building in the space of a month, I much prefer this more modest building to the extravagant EMP in Seattle. The building sits at the edge of a hill overlooking Dundee and has the recent addition of a lanscaped garden by Arrabella Lennox-Boyd. There is some quite literal reference to Scottish architecture with a Broch like tower breaking through the waves of the roof, but the composition seems to work in creating a welcoming but peaceful building which is immaculately detailed.

Maggie's Dundee, by Frank Ghery

Should have the results of the tenders I submitted during the next month so will hopefully have an upbeat post for July!

March

March has been a good month. The weather is improving after what has felt like a very dark 6 months and new work is coming in and buildings are still coming out the ground. There seems to be a spirit of lets just get on with things unil the banks and the government get their act together. I spent the last recession in local government employment while still studying at Glasgow School of Art and was generally unnaffected although I wote to around 30 practices in 1996 and received 6 replies with only one offer of an interview which I was unsuccesful in due to the fact I was still studying part time. Luckily I was kept on by the council after reorganisation and was able to complete my studies. I think the effect of the current situation will  be felt by local government in the next 12 months. My practice has worked on council projects for over the past 5 years and I have concerns over the level of work that will be available practices like mine over the next few years as most may be kept in-house even with the savings that using term providers such as I can  bring in terms of fees. The other difficulty is that companies may compete against us at loss leading rates, totally unsustainable and something that local goernment should be wary of if overlooking local businesses and the benifits this brings in favor of dicounted rates from bigger players.

I have been criticised a lot for basing my company outside the city centre and dealing with more ‘provincial’ projects, however, I have over the past 20years, having lived and worked in the area, developed an understanding of the social, physical and political landscape of the area and hope this brings some added value.

Took the opportunity to view the BBC building in Glasgow. Being not overly keen on the exterior I was impressed by the internal space seen in the picture below. It is an impressive space and one that would probably be unfeasible in a purely commercial orientated building due to the loss of floor area by creating an atrium, however, you can see from the image, that a space like this can bring a huge inprovement to the working environment. It would be interesting to know how well it works on a practical level.

BBC Glasgow

I have booked a trip to Seattle in May which, although I have travelled a fair bit over the years, will be my first 2 weeks off for nearly 5 years since I went to New Zealand in 2004! Really looking forward to it.

38 in April, I never shy away from birthdays but beining to see the 40 in my sights……

Margate Football Club

Further to an earlier post regarding our work at Margate Football Club, the planning application to Thanet Council for a medical centre was refused which has put the development on hold. In the meantime I am continuing to work with the club to seek other opportunities.

Football clubs cannot survive on football alone in this day and age and, with the support of the fans, the community, the developer and the local authority the club can hopefully have a modest sized stadium they can be proud of with some long term sustainability to allow the team to develop without the background financial pressures that plague most clubs in this day and age. Everyone involved in the redevelopment has done so with the best intentions and at huge risk. I wish the club and everyone involved every success for the future and I am sure that the current setback will be overcome.

January

January has been a difficult month for the majority of the construction industry. The government has promised a lot but I have me reservations on how increasing spending on NHS, schools and capital programmes will anyone who is not already established in these areas. I have filled in many tenders over the years but never get past the pre-qualification when it comes to certain types of building. Housing Association tenders always ask for experiance of social housing carried out over the past 3 years. The answer-none, immediately knocking us out of contention. The problem is always ‘how do you get experiance when no one will give you a project to start with?’. In my now 20years working in architecture I can hardly think of a building type I haven’t worked on and really would wish architects abilities were judged more on the quality of the buildings they produce and not the size of the practice, the number of or type of jobs they have done and their ability to tick boxes on how many meaningless policy documents their office holds.

No matter what the building type is, architects should (and most do) have the ability to tackle any brief presented to them.

Glenbank Road and Meadowside House submited for Scottish Design Awards this week, so fingers crossed.

Managed a trip to Culloden. Unfortunately the visitors centre (designed by Gareth Hoskins)was shut for the winter, however, the great weather conditions and the lack of tourists made it perfect to take some pics. Well worth a visit.

Cullden Visitors Centre

Trying to get a decent holiday this year has become a priority for sorting out in February!

Motherwell Children’s House

Progress meeting at motherwell project today, completion estimated in May

interior

view from garden

2009

The first weeks of 2009 have been taken up finishing off Meadowside House and planning workload for 2009. Although the economy is in a bad state, my workload seems to be ok and it should be a good year for actually completing some projects.

Meadowside House’s new residents have moved in and are delighted with their new home. I will be posting a feature on it soon on my work blog, www.gcaarchitects.wordpress.com, . It is great to see it finished and although I could pick up on lots of things I would do different now, I am proud of the building we have created. The next houses in Cumbernauld and Motherwell will be finished in the next few months also and are shaping up well also.

The extension in Strathaven is now out the ground and the frame is up. The finishing detail in this project will be very important to the end product. It is the first time we have used zinc cladding although we have it specified for a larger project for a community business centre in Airdrie due to start this March.

Garden View

View from House

Our largest project this year will be Wellwynd Community Centre in Airdrie which involves the refurbishment and extension of the oldest church in the town. It will be a challenge and is a very high profile project for a town which holds a carbuncle award for the worst town in Scotland. The council’s support and asprations for the project have been tremendous along with their partner Clyde Valley Housing Association who are now driving the project forward.

I am hopeful that a few housing development projects will be progressed, however, I feel they may drag on a while due to the current climate.

I plan to enter more architectural or othe design competitions this year and have targetted a couple already. I will also develop proposals for an area of land I have to the rear of my house, possibly for a home office and gym.

Meadowside House 1

Meadowside House 1

Originally uploaded by scarpadog

Completed handover today, marks 3 years of hard work, I hope they like it!

Margate

I have been working on a project for Margate Football Club for around 5 years now and I have lost count of the number of schemes or designs produced. Tomorrow will be an important day as there is a planning commitee meeting where our proposals for a medical centre on he site will be put forward. Unfortunately, the planning report is recommending refusal, not on design issues, but other issues to do with the need for a centre on this site.

Hartsdown Medical Centre

The contractor on our Children’s House at Meadowside is pulling out the stops to have a handover by the end of the week, a few issues to deal with on Building Control and it may be ready. It is looking good and the initial comments from the client have been great, I won’t be happy until it is finished and the kids have moved in.

Strathaven extension is coming out the ground, first progress photo below:

Foundations in at Strathaven

Progress is going well and I reckon it will be finished around March although the contractor thinks he will be out of there in February.

Planning

This week has been predominately taken up with trying to complete Meadowside Children’s house and dealing with planners on 2 fairly large projects. Without going into specifics, one project has been deferred for a site visit, wasting even more time. On a project which was submitted in March and only being presented to committee in December is farcical. The development potential has probably lost £0.5m in the meantime and may actually be unfeasible now. On another project, the inability of the planning department to actually enter into a dialogue with us on the submission is disgraceful. Hiding behind legislation has beome part of the problem of the current crisis being faced in this country. Public bodies do not, no matter what they think,  work under the same financial constraints of private businesses. I am constantly under pressure to ensure that projects are delivered on time and to budget, otherwise its quite simple, I don’t get paid. The inability of some organisations to respond to letters, phone-calls, faxes or e-mails would be inexcusable in private enterprise and would probably constitute disciplinary procedures. Blaming pressures and procedures has become s standard answer, however, some authorities and departments seem to deal with the same problems quickly, efficiently and most importantly with some degree of co-operation and professionalism.

I have great admiration of anyone that manages to build anything of real quality in this country knowing the journey they will have to have gone through to actually get there.

I will cheer up for christmas hopefully!