Glasgow: Embedded Modernism
Presented at the 2014 Venice Biennale and subsequently included in the Architecture and Design Scotland touring exhibition Scotland + Venice, the research, co-authored with David Page(Page/Park Architects), challenged the general perception that Glasgow's post-war modernist interventions were insensitive to the 19th C urban grid. Referring to six case studies the research argues that the selected buildings, whilst offering radical challenges to the orthodoxy of Glasgow's grid-iron plan, demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the urban conditions, primarily the need to address the street. The requirement to address the block structure, to 'embed' the new buildings within the dense urban grid had a positive impact on the quality of the built proposals. Indeed while Glasgow undertakes a wholesale demolition of peripheral modernist post-war housing schemes the modernist interventions located within the urban core remain in continued occupation. The upward development of the city during the mid-19th C was identified as the vertical equivalent of the urban diaspora to the peripheral new towns built during the period. The high-rise buildings of the period represent a physical manifestation of the European desire to leave the ills of the 19th C city in the pursuit of the Modernist ideal the healthy city bathed in sunlight and filled with fresh air. The project sought the testimony of the key protagonists of the period through a series of interviews including the last published interview with the Mackintosh School of Architecture's late Professor Andy MacMillan.