Building of the Fortnight

Northpark House (formerly BBC Scotland, formerly Queen Margaret College)

JT Rochead 1871

A renaissance palace worthy of its architect's reputation in Glasgow's West End (Rochead having been responsible for some of the most imposing terraces that line the grand boulevard of Great Western Road), Northpark House represents a grand yet well-known sight to anyone familiar with Queen Margaret Drive and has survived a Doctor Who-like quantity of impressive incarnations.

From its original role as private house (to the lavishness of which its galleried-double height entrance hall still testifies) the house progressed to become the home of Queen Margaret College, a groundbreaking venture with the then-novel aim of providing education for women. A Medical Building (by John Keppie) was subsequently added to the building's rear, and the involvement of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the design of that structure has - predictably - become the primary focus of popular attention on the entire site in latter years.

In the 1920s the house narrowly escaped being demolished to make way for Queen Margaret Drive to access the new Queen Margaret Bridge; a toss-up between this loss or the removal of the Kibble Palace was avoided by plotting the road along a kink between both structures.

The most renowned phase of the building's life was as BBC Scotland's Broadcasting House. A series of developments in the 1930s and 1970s involved the building-over of the remaining gardens, the enclosure of the Medical Building and (in 1970) the closure of access to the nearby - and generally forgotten - bridge spanning the Kelvin. The long occupancy of the BBC, which saw the coming and going of strings of celebs and the notorious seizure of videotape by Strathclyde Police, finally ended in 2007 with a move to the award-winning Pacific Quay building.

Northpark House now stands unused and isolated with the Queen Margaret College Medical Building in the vast, cleared former BBC site. An attempt to present the building's potential as a 'boutique hotel' was set in train just on the cusp of the financial crisis, and the company intending to develop the remaining part of the site is now in administration. The view from Hamilton Drive is dismal, and no positive future for this building or the vast, fenced-off, yet previously quasi-publicly-owned prime West End site that surrounds it seems likely.

Former Robinson & Dunn Temple Sawmills Office, Anniesland

John Laird 1938

Designed as a fashionable frontage to a large timber-processing site, this local landmark proudly presents a bunch of characteristic art deco features at motorists whizzing up towards Switchback Road. A rare example of how brick can actually look good in Glasgow (the Cosmo Cinema/GFT being another), the most recent attempt to find a proper role for this building - as a restaurant and micro-brewery - foundered. It's now on the Buildings at Risk register, and chiefly known for the disappearance of one of the letters on the sign facing Bearsden Road (leading to its appearance on various 'funny sign' features on and off-line).

A smashing little survivor from an area that used to be occupied by industrial complexes right down to the massive Barr and Stroud site now taken up by the Morrisons retail park.

Image copyright Scottish Civic Trust

Anderston Centre

Graphic: Anderston Centre

Richard Seifert & Partners, 1972

The term 'megastructure' is out of fashion these days, but: destination shopping mall? combination retail/housing/office development? For many in the West of Scotland, the Anderston Centre was the first taste - a glimpse of the crazy, shiny new consumerist paradise to come, when Silverburn and St Enoch were a long time off.

Intended as a component of a grand plan along with the area around Charing Cross station and what is now the Premier Inn hotel, and designed by then-hot Richard Seifert of Natwest Tower and Centrepoint, the centre is now shorn of its weird octagonal snooker hall, its open-air escalators and has even lost the overgrown post-apocalyptic charm it sported a decade ago. Still worth a visit to stroll through what's left of the elevated shopping street and spot surviving original signage and stylish brutalist sculptural embellishments. Do so while you can; the axe has been hanging over this one for years...

Queen Mother's Hospital

JL Gleave and Partners, 1964
This maternity hospital has formed a real landmark towering over the Clydeside Expressway for nearly fifty years, and closed in mid-January with its services being transferred to more modern facilities. Several generations of Glaswegians have therefore acquired touching associations with a building that would have otherwise generally been regarded as a thing of no great beauty.

However, closer inspection repays in spades where the QM Hospital is concerned... slabs and tower arranged like a baby's building blocks (and adhering to a principle of legibility that allows the function of each part of the structure to be 'read' from the outside), exciting voids approaching the roof of the main tower, sunny day rooms evocative of the finest hours of Diana Dors and Kenneth Williams, a funky conservatory rising up out of the secretive Yorkhill Park and (for fans of such things) lots of original signage. The QM Hospital always looks considerably bolder and more interesting than the Royal Hospital for Sick Children with which it shares its hilltop site.

Not many buildings can boast that 160,000 more individuals have passed out of its doors than came in. NHS Glasgow even managed to arrange a clever photo-opportunity which brought together the first and last human beings to have been born there...

Botanic Gardens Garage

D V Wyllie, circa 1906-12

Botanic Gardens Garage, possibly the oldest surviving multi-storey car park in Europe, has been a familiar West End feature for a hundred years; its chirpy yet functional tiled frontage concealing an interestingly engineered, and substantial structure. It's also become a cause célèbre in the wake of several attempts by its owners, Arnold Clark, to demolish it.

A vigorous campaign by characteristically well-organised WestEndies resulted in a cunning relisting by Historic Scotland which foiled this initial scheme (the building was to have been replaced by a 'leisure complex', yards from the Creswell Lane/Ashton Lane axis - already a hugely busy entertainment focus, and not always harmonious with its residential context).

However, revised plans which involve the demolition of virtually the whole structure barring its facade seem (9 Feb 2010) to have been given the green light. Glasgow has a patchy history of compromising on the future of historic buildings by 'preserving the frontage', a horrid example and precedent being the Art Deco Ascot Cinema; it remains to be seen how much lip-service to a charming and unusual building will be paid.

Savoy Centre

Savoy Centre Mural

Gavin Paterson & Sons, 1971-9

Difficult to resist mentioning another brutalist Glasgow shopping-centre, but since this one's earmarked for complete demolition it's another case of see-it-while-you-can. Forget the tawdry (but real and unique and local) shopping environment inside - consider Charles Anderson's irreplaceable concrete murals, now mainly concealed, that once decorated the complex inside and out. The pedestrian bridge heading out to the RSAMD is a classic polarising case: considered pure, simple period sci-fi modernism by some folks, it generally makes an appearance in press coverage of the towering forthcoming redevelopment as either 'ugly' or 'unsightly'.