June 14 2019

Thenue housing association and Assist Design have come forward with revised plans for 10 infill flats on Dalmarnock Road, within the Bridgeton Conservation Area of Glasgow.

Succeeding an earlier proposal for 12 homes the revised bid adopts a symmetrical brick frontage in step with the roofline of neighbouring tenements. Centred on a slim glass curtain wall denoting the stairwell and framed by two banks of oriel windows.

The rear elevation will breach the building line in order to accommodate the required footprint for Housing for Varying Needs standards.

In a planning statement detailing their approach, Assist wrote: “The proposed front elevation is of masonry construction and aims to re-connect the neighbouring properties of different styles, acting to stitch the city block elevation together. The proposed elevation also references surrounding buildings and respects key heights within the streetscape.”

Currently occupied by a sandstone tenement the constrained site is presently in process of demolition.

6 Comments

#1 Posted by Mick on 14 Jun 2019 at 11:50 AM

Wow. Such banality

#2 Posted by The Flâneur on 14 Jun 2019 at 12:12 PM

I realise that Bridgeton Cross is in need of place healing and the loss of the existing tenement has been a bad thing but seriously, has any thought been put into this perfunctory replacement? And has this really been put through a design review?

The restraint shown on the existing, currently being demolished, facade is no bad thing in its Dalmarnock Road context but at least the original builder played around with classical architraves and a tympanum to give it some dignity even if the tenement was always going to be a background building.

So… did no-one think there was something to learn from what was already there? And did I miss the 1980s when we somehow managed to do this sort of infill with a lot more imagination?

#3 Posted by IndyNoo on 14 Jun 2019 at 13:51 PM

The state of new build Architecture in Glasgow is shocking - what on earth are they teaching at the schools?!

#4 Posted by Walt Disney on 14 Jun 2019 at 14:57 PM

Did we just go through a worm hole and end up back in 1983? Seriously though, I suspect the design is more driven by Thenue's purse strings rather than the vision and ability of their architects....and anyone who says 'good design doesn't need to cost money' should away and boil yer heid.

#5 Posted by Billy on 15 Jun 2019 at 09:13 AM

Why not rebuild the tenement with new sandstone if it’s to blend in with the conservation area?

#6 Posted by Jonathan on 17 Jun 2019 at 10:26 AM

I'll reserve comment on the design (phew) but i often think that the graphic tools we use don't help. It is good to highlight which bit we are 'building' but by placing this against white adjacent buildings (and i've done this lots before), but it is then always going to stand out like a sore thumb no matter what we are designing.

Maybe some more images dropped into photos, or applying the adjacent materials will help the readers and critics alike understand how it fits into its context.

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