Media coverage 2000

Saving the Lighthouse

Millennium Memories: Egyptian Halls

Street life and Socialism on a night to remember

Architectural opportunity

Designing a new future

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Saving the Lighthouse

Vivienne Nicoll, Glasgow Evening Times, 13 December 2000

The big problem with the Lighthouse is that no-one can quite make up their minds about it.

Opened amid great fanfare as the centrepiece of Glasgow's Year of Architecture and Design in 1999, it has since received mixed reviews.

The attraction in the heart of the city has won numerous awards and has been praised by many members of the design community in Scotland and further afield.

However, others have accused the venue of being too "arty" and say it has failed to appeal to a wide enough audience.

Indeed most Glaswegians would be hard pressed to say what they would find if they ventured into the ultra-modern foyer.

Lighthouse boss Stuart MacDonald is quick to point out that more than 320,000 people have visited the centre since it opened 18 months ago - 70 percent more than the original target.

But doubts remain about how many of those are locals.

Mr MacDonald justified the decision to ask Glasgow City Council for a further £320,000 grant to keep the project open.

He said: "We are running a very sophisticated, large scale enterprise and our aim in doing that has always been to make ourselves less and less reliant on public subsidy.

"We are not seeking on-going funding and the whole basis of our business plan is to try to wrestle free from local authority subsidy."

He claimed part of the reason for the problem was the length of time it took to find tenants for the shops in the Lighthouse. These have all now been leased out.

He added: "I would justify the request for an additional grant on the basis that the Lighthouse is a great asset to the city and to Scotland.

"Many of our 320,000 visitors are new visitors to Glasgow, so they are helping the city's tourist economy.

"In the short time we have been open we've brought lots of other benefits to the city, which is now an internationally recognised centre for design excellence.

"I am very confident about the future because if the Lighthouse did not exist someone would have to invent it. It places Glasgow centre stage and is a focus for creativity."

A number of groups came together to provide the £13m it took to convert the Charles Rennie Mackintosh building in Mitchell Street, opposite the NCP car park, into the new design centre.

The European Regional Development Fund gave £4.6m; the National Heritage Lottery Fund £3.5m; the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund £2.5m; the city council £1.1m; Scottish Enterprise Glasgow £730,000 and Historic Scotland £650,000.

Julie Tait has been brought in as commercial director to turn around the fortunes of the Lighthouse and to find new ways of generating cash.

But even she admits that what the venture offers cannot be summed up in one word.

Julie said: "It is mix of different things. There is a permanent Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition, it hosts an exhibition programme, it's a venue for seminars and a place where you can learn things about yourself and the city of Glasgow. It is highly interactive and provides internet and digital communications yet has a link with Glasgow's cultural heritage.

"Visitors find it enchanting, delightful, enthralling and inspiring.

"It aims to bring the best of architecture and design to Glasgow and is a national asset which raises Glasgow's profile not only in the UK but also overseas.

"Our business plan looks at how the Lighthouse will establish itself as a stage to promote talent, we will look at the design and craft movement in the city and Scotland and provide a place where you can buy examples of the work.

"We want to widen the audience for the kind of activity we provide and at the moment we have a Santa in the City which is bringing in young families, one of whom came in to see Santa and toured round the building for four hours.

"We also want to encourage younger people to become involved and are working with further education colleges along the Forth and Clyde canal and with school pupils on a project to redesign their playground."

But one city architectural expert, who asked not to be named, supports the project but believes it needs to stage exhibitions which appeal to a wider audience.

He said: "It needs to look at its exhibitions and make them more accessible because in my view the exhibitions are far too arty."

Patricia Douglas, acting director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, said she was enthusiastic about the Lighthouse and what it had to offer.

And she welcomed the fact the project had rescued the Mackintosh building, which had been lying empty for many years.

She added: "I believe the Lighthouse is an enormous asset for Glasgow as a centre for architecture and design."

Gavin Stamp, chairman of the Greek Thomson Society, also backed the Lighthouse but called on it to stage more exhibitions about the architecture of the city.

Stuart Gulliver, former chief executive of Glasgow Development Agency (now Scottish Enterprise Glasgow), was one of the main supporters of the Lighthouse project.

He has moved on, but the organisation continues to throw its weight behind the centre.

A spokesman said: "We thought at the time it was a worthwhile project and still do. It is a project that deserves to be saved and one that deserves the support of the people of the city."

Glasgow City Council leader Charlie Gordon admitted he was "less than thrilled" to have to bale out the centre but added: "This is clearly a major new facility for the city which has attracted over 300,000 visitors."

The council owns the building and charges a peppercorn rent. If the Lighthouse went bust the building would return to council control.

However, finance director George Black explained that one of the conditions of the grants made available for the project is that it is used only for charitable purposes.

Despite providing a rescue package, council chiefs are demanding to see the new business plan for the project, which is due to be ready within weeks.

A move by opposition councillors to withhold cash to save the Lighthouse and instead put it to other uses was thrown out by an overwhelming majority by the controlling Labour group.

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Millennium Memories: Egyptian Halls

Stephen Terry, Glasgow Evening Times, 5 December 2000

The Egyptian Halls in Union Street, Glasgow, was the second last of Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's masterpieces of architectural design.

Although Thomson was renowned for his Greek-style buildings, many of his creations involved aspects of other cultures.

In the case of the Egyptian Halls, it isn't odd to find that Thomson chose an Egyptian line to predominate this magnificently pro-portioned terrace.

Work started in 1871, and was completed by 1873, just two years before Thomson's death. The building is on four levels, supported by cast-iron columns. Each level is different in style and shape, sculpted with beautiful stone work and extensive use of glass.

Over the years some restoration work to the building has taken place but only the shop-fronts have been altered to any degree. But the building still retains its original splendour.

And it is still the finest example of the warehouse style on Union Street, with the possible exception of the Ca d'Oro building just along from it on the junction of Gordon Street.

Today, the Egyptian Halls is the youngest of Greek Thomson's buildings to survive in Glasgow, his very last piece of architecture, in Bath Street, having been pulled down some years ago.

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Street life and Socialism on a night to remember

William McIlvanney, Scotland on Sunday, 3 December 2000

Like the pilgrim's progress, the road to good times can be a winding one and fraught with problems. For a start, it is raining, the kind of rain you feel might be leaving dents in your head. For a follow-up, the taxi driver has never heard of the venue. The invitation on the answering machine said it was the Alexander Greek Thomson Hotel.

We eventually arrive at the Greek Thomson Hotel in Elderslie Street. The Swedish receptionist knows of no event there. To judge by the silence of the place, the most exciting thing happening here is probably a sleep-in.

The receptionist is charming and she has one of those accents which do interesting things with language and can add a touch of the intriguing to just telling you you're lost. She also tells us that there is a sister hotel called the Alexander Thomson Hotel, which is in Argyle Street.

In my head I salute the amazingly inventive imagination of the hotel group. It seems they have a third hotel but I do not ask its name in case it is called Another Thomson Hotel But Not The Greek Or Alexander One.

A different taxi later, we arrive in Argyle Street outside what must be the place. Before we go in, Siobhan makes a suggestion. She has long ago decided that, in my case, the formula for turning Doctor Jekyll into Mr Hyde is very simple: alcohol on an empty stomach. I've been known to come on like Geronimo. I have to eat something, she suggests.

I explain to her that this is no problem. I know a little Italian place. I've always wanted to use that Hollywood line. We walk a couple of hundred yards and share a fish supper from the chippie at the bottom of Hope Street. Show a woman a good time? Cary Grant could have taken lessons from me.

It is a particularly good fish supper. (Egon Ronay, please note.) While we are standing on the street outside to eat it, Glasgow does it again. The city I once described as a 24-hour cabaret delivers entertainment with our meal. In Hollywood it's gypsy fiddlers. In Glasgow it isn't.

Two young men are passing in front of us, laughing raucously, when they are arrested by a voice. "Hey, you two!" The words come from a tall, rangy man in jeans and a black T-shirt. He has a pony-tail and in his fingers is fixed a burnt-out roll-up. "Just wait there!"

Ah, sweet mystery of life. I am wondering why a man is walking in the rain in a T-shirt. It transpires he has been working in a bar the two men have just left. He accuses them of deliberately placing an order and then skipping the pub, leaving the staff to account for two unpaid drinks. Judging by the phonily mystified face of one of the men, I tend to think the man in the T-shirt is right.

But the other of the two is seriously aggressive. Probably because he is guilty, he begins to let off oaths like fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night. They sound like the Glasgow equivalent of those martial arts sounds made before the leap into combat. In among them, a question keeps surfacing: "D'ye want tae deal?" I assume this is a neologism for 'fight'. The impromptu drama is turning dark, more Strindberg than Noel Coward. Siobhan, who has a genuine abhorrence of aggression, wants us to leave the theatre. Looking back I am relieved to see that the scene has ended without violence, if not without mutual antipathy.

In a variation of the experience of Bunyan's pilgrim, we have passed beyond the Rain of Depression, the Maze of Unknowing and the Bog of Anger and we have come to the Good Place. It is an upstairs room in the Alexander Thomson Hotel. It is already full when we arrive.

My usual fear of arriving too early for things (and sitting forlornly around like someone who doesn't get out much) is obviously irrelevant here. These people haven't drifted casually along in ones and twos. They have turned up together. They are not here just to get in out of the rain. They are here from a sense of commitment. The atmosphere in the place has a Pentecostal crackle to it. In this bright room on this dark night these people have the defiant enthusiasm of a persecuted sect.

So they should have. For these are Socialists. The form their persecution takes is more passive than active. It lies in the dismissiveness of supposedly sophisticated thinkers, in the embarrassed silence of professional politicians who have their careers to think of, in the preoccupied media which are too busy reporting which pop star is sleeping with which to give the aspirations of Socialists much space, in the amnesia of a society which can forget within a generation the movement which brought it such limited justice as the lives of its people enjoy.

These are the unfashionable believers. They are mainly young. They aren't here to celebrate the achievements of the past. They are here to celebrate the possibilities of the future. The specific focus for that celebration is the publication of a book called Imagine, written by Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCoombes. The John Lennon song from which it takes its title implies the parameters within which the book is operating, and they are wide. Politics may inevitably end in small practicalities of policy and boring committees. But it should begin in vision.

Such vision was never more necessary than it is now, when many of our aspirations seem to have a horizon of about six inches. The idea of a just society is a bit like the Kraken. We have never found it but we can imagine it out there. If we can imagine it, we should keep looking. This book is still searching. That is something to celebrate.

We celebrate it. A good night passes. There is talk and music and singing. I particularly enjoy Tommy Sheridan's mother, Alice, giving us a couple of numbers. She reminds me of one of my aunties who used to sing at weddings and who was a kind of Red Hot Momma with an Ayrshire accent.

Jim Kelman and Tom Leonard give good readings. Peter Mullan is an enjoyable presence. Alan McCoombes and Tommy Sheridan talk briefly and read extracts from Imagine. Alan McCoombes is an intelligent man of gentle kindness and iron beliefs. His company is a pleasure. Tommy Sheridan spends most of his introductory talk giving Alan McCoombes the credit for the book. Listening to him again, you realise why so many people on the streets trust him and love him. He has true generosity of spirit. He embodies Socialist values.

Being pretty sure of the correct address this time, we have no problem finding our way home. But those early hassles are somehow integral to the whole experience. For our evening has been a kind of parable of contemporary Socialism. Our belief in it may suffer depressions in certain moods we pass through like bleak weather. Socialism may not always be as easy to find these days as it used to be. Some working class people will always be too busy beating the crap out of one another to take on the system.

Nevertheless, Socialism is alive and well and living somewhere in Glasgow.

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Architectural opportunity

Leader, The Scotsman, 22 November 2000

If there is one art form in which Scotland can be said to have contributed to the greatest achievements of mankind, it is architecture. There is the sublime Classicism of the Adamses, father and brothers, which transformed 18th-century London as well as Scotland; and stimulated America to build its great public architecture. There is Greek Thomson's imaginative fusion of Victoriana and Egyptian fantasy. And Mackintosh's avant garde interiors. But somehow, in the late 20th century, the Scottish architectural muse seemed to lose her powers. Our towns became boxy, urban jumbles rather than rhythmic, human-sized precincts. And with a few honourable exceptions, our important buildings became derivative, vulgar and downright ugly.

Fortunately, there is now a renewed determination to return Scottish contemporary architecture and urban design to a world-class level. What better place to start than the competition to build a modern headquarters for the BBC at Glasgow's Pacific Quay? Yesterday, the BBC revealed the list of 73 architectural practices that are bidding for the 30 million pounds project. When completed it will be the centrepiece of a new cultural quarter for Glasgow which will also include facilities for other creative industries. Little wonder then that the competition has attracted a large number of entrants, including doyens of British architecture such as Sir Richard Rogers, who designed Channel 4's HQ and the ill-fated Millennium Dome in London.

There are, however, a number of lessons the BBC should ponder in order to make this competition the success it deserves to be. Unlike the rushed and secretive management of the new Scottish parliament, building, the Pacific Quay project needs to be transparent, open to public debate and centred on quality rather than expediency.

The judging panel, which is perhaps too BBC-dominated, should remember this is a building for all of Scotland and a central part of Glasgow's new urban fabric. And while Scottish architects should be prepared to battle it out with the best in the rest of the world, it would be a terrible indictment if the forthcoming short list of six did not contain the names of some of Scotland's hungry new design talents.

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Designing a new future

Peter Wilson, Building Design, 17 November 2000

At the beginning of the 21st century Scottish architecture is on an all-time high, as new projects and national strategies get under way in the wake of post-devolution euphoria. Where do we go from here? asks Peter Wilson

Entering a new millennium, Scottish architecture finds itself in unusually good health. The 20th century ended on a series of highs - the completion of the Museum of Scotland; a wave of lottery-funded projects; Glasgow's year as UK City of Architecture & Design (and with it the opening of the Lighthouse); and the initial euphoria over the commissioning of a new parliament building in the wake of the "yes-yes" vote for devolution. The Scottish Executive announced plans for a policy on architecture, and since then has also produced a national cultural strategy which loosely defines the role of architecture (both historical and contemporary) in a wider context.

Separately, Scottish Enterprise has included the discipline within its "Creative Industries" cluster strategy, while the Scottish Arts Council has allocated funding from its New Opportunities Lottery Fund for a Contemporary Architecture Scheme. It would be fair to say that never before has the welfare and potential of the profession in Scotland been given so much attention by government and public alike.

Looking ahead, there are several important benchmarks on the horizon. The architecture policy should appear early in 2001; new competitions have recently been announced for office buildings at Edinburgh Park and for BBC Scotland's headquarters at Glasgow's Pacific Quay - soon to become the epicentre of the nation's digital media industry. Nearby, Scotland's first Imax cinema recently opened and its attraction will soon be complemented by the completion of its sister project, the National Science Centre. A Science Centre has also opened in Dundee, and Edinburgh's long-cherished plans for a new home for its annual International Science Festival seem finally to be underway.

In housing, the potential development of phase two of Homes for the Future beside Glasgow Green has been advertised, although it might be argued that some serious analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the first stage should first take place to inform the briefing process and avoid a repeat of the construction problems brought on by an overambitious desire to complete during the city's 1999 programme. A more sustainable model is the tripartite project by McKeown Alexander, Richard Murphy and Page & Park at nearby Graham Square.

While all the architectural attention was on Glasgow last year, Edinburgh - as a revitalised capital city - quietly got on with things. Contentious propositions such as Princes St Galleries and the Parliament seemed to attract all the publicity, but a wide range of good new projects by upcoming as well as established practices saw the light of day for the first time. A recent exhibition by Adrian Welch at the RIAS headquarters displayed nearly 160 projects produced over the past 10 years in Edinburgh, and erased once and for all the notion that the city is still preserved in aspic.

The steamroller associated with devolved government and the capital's general economic health shows no sign of halting, with over two dozen major projects already underway: John Miller & Partners' Playfair Project will create a new underground link unifying the National Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy and provide additional exhibition space; when complete, Malcolm Fraser's Dance Base will deliver a much-needed national centre for dance; and Richard Murphy is converting a former church into a library for the National Museums of Scotland.

The National Museums' enthusiasm for building doesn't seem to stop there, however, and Page & Park's design for the new Museum of Scottish Country Life is nearing completion at Kittochside near East Kilbride. Building in the landscape takes on a different dimension for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, where Charles Jencks is working with Terry Farrell to construct chaos-theory-inspired "landforms" in the grounds.

But what of the international? With the burgeoning range of work now taking place in Scotland, it would be unusually provincial if architects from abroad were not also to find opportunity here. Aside from the tragic death of Enric Miralles before his ideas for the new parliament had been fully formed, other major figures such as Frank Gehry and Moshe Safdie are engaged on projects due for completion in the near future. Gehry has contributed the design of a new cancer care centre in Dundee in memory of his friend Maggie Keswick, after whom the Maggie's Centre has been named. The success of Richard Murphy's original centre at Edinburgh's Western General Hospital has encouraged Maggie's husband, Charles Jencks, to initiate a series of similar facilities around the country.

Safdie's task has been rather different - to design a modern "lodge" at the east end of Loch Ossian on the edge of Rannoch Moor for one of the heiresses to the £5,000 million Tetrapak empire. Not quite the traditional Highland bothy, the £3 million five-storey country house is being built on the site of a Victorian hunting lodge which burned down in the forties.

Still in the landscape, several projects have provided opportunities for some of Scotland's best expatriate architects to display their talents. Admittedly, John McAslan's elegant bridge is located in the heart of Glasgow's West End, but is set in the almost-rural Kelvingrove Park. The curving structure spans the River Kelvin and the landscape on either bank, offering a treetop-level walk between Glasgow University and the city's main art gallery.

On the island of Bute, Munkenbeck & Marshall is designing a new visitor centre at Mount Stuart, the magnificent late 19th century gothic revival structure by Robert Rowand Anderson. And, north of Glasgow, a crisply designed sustainable pavilion by Bennetts Associates will become the clumsily-named Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Gateway & Orientation Centre. The building sits close to Page & Park's new Imax cinema, which forms the third element in an inter-connected series of buildings (the other provides 10,000sq m of questionable retail space). Together these form the eponymous "Lomond Shores", a new development intended to stimulate tourism in the area.

On a more arts-oriented note, and reinforcing the Scottish Executive's national cultural strategy, new gallery spaces are emerging around the country. In Dingwall, Pawson Williams' Mercat Centre brings a much needed arts facility to the Highlands, and, unusually for the region, an uncompromisingly modern building. In Glasgow, the Centre for Contemporary Art, also a lottery-funded project, is an Alexander "Greek" Thomson building radically reworked by Page & Park to produce enhanced gallery, retail and cafe space for this well-known avant-garde venue.

A rather different source of finance is involved for Benjamin Tindall's £3 million Queen's Gallery at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, intended as an outpost of the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace, and an interesting democratic juxtaposition to the entrance of the new parliament building across the street.

The parade of new architecture around Holyrood, which includes Sir Michael Hopkins' Dynamic Earth Centre, and Complete Design's Barclay House, headquarters of the Scotsman newspaper group, will be completed by a media centre to service the parliament, also by Comprehensive Design.

Indeed, the whole business of commercial architecture seems to have livened up, with a massive expansion of Edinburgh Park planned which will transform the project from "buildings in the landscape" into a dense urban development on the western edge of the capital.

Whether a commensurate level of new transport infrastructure will appear to service the area remains to be seen. The same question should also be applied to Pacific Quay in Glasgow, where the various public agencies responsible for the city are proposing to build a new road bridge across the Clyde to the planned location for BBC Scotland's headquarters in advance of any masterplan for the former Garden Festival site.

Much the same could be said for Edinburgh's Waterfront, probably the largest remaining undeveloped tract of land in the city, and the subject of various conflicting masterplan proposals from different land-owning bodies. In the rush for economic advancement, genuine civic and urban quality do not appear to rank high enough on the list of assessment criteria.

The other remaining area of major investment also raises questions for the future and for the architectural profession itself. The Scottish Executive has announced plans for several billion pounds of new projects - all to be built by public-private partnerships.

Given the low proportion of practices involved in the consortiums bidding for these contracts, there is a serious problem of an over-concentrated proportion of public work being financially rather than design driven, and carried out in only a few offices. It must also be seen as a fundamental test of the new architecture policy. Whether, in these circumstances, it can deliver the aspirations set out in the framework document for exemplary government procurement is a moot point. But it will need to have credible resources attached if it is to gain a serious place in the vanguard of architectural change in Scotland.

On the evidence of the many good new projects already underway, the policy will have to be big and bold if it is to become the fulcrum around which Scotland's best architecture is developed and promoted to a wider public.

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