September 14 2023

Unite Students has declared its intent to purchase an 800-bed student housing project off Glasgow's High Street for delivery in the 2026/7 academic year.

Revised plans for the £95m Stallan-Brand build are expected to be approved in the first half of next year, clearing the way for the project to be delivered in partnership with an unnamed university.

First submitted in January 2022 a design revision in September of that year saw several improvements made, reducing the number of rooms by six to introduce setback corners and articulate the upper floor.

In an addendum, the architects wrote: "An enhancement to the student Residential building façades was achieved by increasing widow sizes throughout, articulating the top storey (or crown) of the building and breaking down the massing on the north facing corners to create terraces. These design moves give the student residential building a character distinct from the build to rent buildings."

The changes were designed to reduce the apparent mass of the longer elevation, part of a broader masterplan by build to rent developer Get Living. 

8 Comments

#1 Posted by Pedro on 14 Sep 2023 at 11:50 AM

I wonder what this means for the wider Get Living plan.. didn’t they shelve this in March due to rent controls?

#2 Posted by PettyP on 14 Sep 2023 at 18:22 PM

Are you sure that’s the correct site…?

#3 Posted by Bob ra Builder on 14 Sep 2023 at 20:02 PM

Is the whisperer around?

If there was demand and money in it, it would have been built years ago. Just saying.....

#4 Posted by Lovely on 15 Sep 2023 at 11:26 AM

Is this actually in Glasgow?

#5 Posted by Billy on 15 Sep 2023 at 18:55 PM

If this is High st, what is the name of the flowing water and where is it located?

#6 Posted by UR on 15 Sep 2023 at 22:03 PM

The waterway depicted is a 'canal feature' south of the Havannah Street student blocks.

#7 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 16 Sep 2023 at 10:02 AM

Hopefully they get things moving soon.

Shows a bit of promise especially when compared to the Meat Market dross now in build.

The rental stuff is up against it -- other developments are coming on stream.

Plus the posh rental market / aka BTR is nowhere near as mature or developed as the stack-a-student vibe which is currently under provisioned.

So hopefully the gap site gets moving soon.

The Nats and their student politics -- oh the irony of this site -- rent regime will get found out soon enough.

Simple solutions to complex problems never work.

#8 Posted by Roddy_ on 16 Sep 2023 at 20:10 PM

Something of a busted flush this site.

It started with public realm by fancy American landscape architects Martha Schwatz, green roofs and lots of commercial activity at ground floor- in anticipation of a new mixed-use city quarter. And now ends as a sort of student enclave with stuck-on roofs (the planners insisted that the designers address the roofscape since they hadn't really bothered originally) and a value-engineered series of plazas encircled by non-active frontage and single point of entry to institutional blocks. How very now. Has all the hallmarks of the kind of placemaking deployed at Buchanan Wharf.

We get what we deserve with this, but surely has to be one of THE most disappointing projects to date in the city. Such potential.

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