New images show a courtyard events space fronting the GSA
June 12 2025
Fresh perspectives illustrating the impact of a planned 356-bed student housing development on the Glasgow School of Art have been published, depicting a new courtyard events space at the foot of the burnt-out shell.
Vita Group is working with Haus Collective to transform the site of the former ABC venue on Sauchiehall Street, by erecting a £70m student block above a flexible space housing a food hall by day and an events space by nightfall.
James Rooke, planning director for Vita Group, said: “We believe our proposals offer a unique approach to student living and the benefits the development will bring extend far beyond the student community. It will generate significant economic benefits, will help to re-energise Sauchiehall Street and contribute to the city’s Golden Z ambitions.
“This is an incredibly challenging site to redevelop and we’ve worked hard to create proposals that are deliverable and appropriate.”
Reacting to the proposals architect and GSA alumnus Alan Dunlop told Urban Realm: "Ridiculous images of sunlight flooding into this space. Only if you remove four or five storeys from the front onto Sauchiehall street then you may get some sunlight into there - in June. The proposal is vastly over-scaled with ubiquitous student accommodation and lacking refinement.
"Damn right it’s an incredibly challenging site to develop but the developer and their architects clearly need to try much, much harder. If this gets approved then Glasgow has lost all credibility as a City of Architecture and Design."
ABC owners OBARCS were instructed to partially demolish the fire-damaged building by Glasgow City Council earlier this year on health & safety grounds.
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24 Comments
Given the critical nature of the GSA rebuild, this gives the naysayers another reason not press on . HES says that this will wreck any hopes of the school becoming a didactic tool (which Mackintosh fully intended in the design) once more. I tend to agree.
I have a strong inkling that this will get consent this time around.
'phoned in the southern elevations'... knowledgable, nuanced and not crass in any way shape or form. See below and get signed up immediately.
https://www.crmsociety.com/
Maybe the shortage of affordable housing (across the West in general, this isn't a Glasgow specific issue) has more to do with deep systemic failures rather than some greedy local councillor?
To not have cleared the debris from the second fire and consolidated the remaining facade immediately is incomprehensible to me, and for the city to have allowed it to be so beggars belief. There are still lingering questions about whether the facade really needed to be demolished too - and the lack of a conservation accredited engineer to assess the viablity and make propositions for its retention. Latterly, to have tried it on with earlier iterations of the scheme above - which were even more bloated and over-scaled.
To have left the site half demolished is a stroke of evil genius. A clear and tidy site, with clean and tidy hoardings would reveal more of the remnants of the school as well as be much less of a physical and visual blight on the street. We must get a consent in order to build something and clear away the mess that we have already created.The current blight would be far worse than any other consideration - like perhaps a building with architectural merit or scaled properly. Evil genius.
The School will, in time, be re-built and in the long term the current and former directorship will be forgotton but will the school be the lesser for the presence of the above? The answer is a clear yes.
Had the architecture been in any way half-decent and scaled sympathetically, they might have already had a consent, but the planning gymnastics that this scheme has been through, clearly points to designers that are out of their depth with little or no real comprehension of the city ; how to modulate a facade or introduce any form of art or decorative expression - even of the most minimal kind. We get this ham-fisted radiator.
It will be interesting to see who is on the committee and if the vote goes along party lines. The Greens will object and probably one or two Labour. The rest ? Well who knows? If you tune in regularly to the planning committee webcasts, you'll understand the shambolic nature of these conferences and the facile interpretations of material consideration that is often on display. The more I think about this, the more I think I might change my mind. It might not be just as cut and dried a decision as I intimated in #3. But if this passes muster, the city will be the laughing stock of Europe. A decision to go hand in glove with the decision to build a multi-storey carpark next to Scotland Street school.
Authority.
They allowed
It to be BURNED DOWN TWICE!!!!!
I have no doubt that the benches, umbrellas and faux grass will, if consented, be replaced by the kind of heated wendy houses that you see in Royal Exchange Square. The 'traditional Glasgow lane'* (*from the D&A Statement) that is conveyed, is anything but traditional in that it is gated. Understandable for out of hours security and all that - just please don't call it 'traditional'.. I suspect that the first chance the operators get to close off the lane and direct folk to their front door and food offering will be taken. It will not be a route of conveyance between Scott St and Dalhousie St - this is the way 'traditional' lanes often work.
The more you look at this - the D&A statement gives away a lot of clues - page 8 has what looks like the architect's initial sketch (or at least the initial sketch of this particular iteration); a 3d doodle of mute, blank facades with randomly placed stringer courses and an arcade topped by arched window panels. When you begin to dig into it- like the more detailed visualisations, they reveal more and more to be troubling.That broad arched window panel at the corners followed by the narrow arched panel (which arrays across the width) is as visually jarring as I've seen in many a year and the turning of the the corners at Scott and Dalhousie Streets is as coarse and facile as I've seen in a long time. The fact of the matter is that it is planners, not designers that have the ultimate sanction, and this will count in favour of the design. There is what used to be called City Design - now subsumed into the Neighbourhoods, Regeneration and Sustainability dept but I'm yet to see where and how their influence has been brought to bear positively on any (and I mean ANY) development in Glasgow. The technocrats have deemed that the building has ticked all the boxes and so it shall be. I'm reminded of the quote from the great Ian McHarg - I'm paraphrasing -' Never underestimate man's abilty to create ugliness.' Whether the Planning Committee see it the same way remains to be seen.
On the face of it, this should be an obvious refusal for the committee, but with Glasgow City Council, who knows!
Perhaps not.. :)
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Have to say that CRM phoned in the southern elevations of the GSA.
OK Sauchiehall Street has covered it up for decades but it is still pretty poor fare.