what's it called: demolition

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Next week sees the begining of the "Demolition" programme on Channel 4. Starts Saturday, runs for four nights. According to the BBC Cumbernauld will top the poll for the most hated structure. However the programme on Cumbernauld will feature G.M. and our proposals for the town centre. Something positive to counter the negativity, we think. Sunday 17th pm, look out for it

The Sunday Times December 11, 2005

Scots mall 'UK's worst eyesore'
Marc Horne



IT HAS already been named Scotland’s least attractive town — twice. Now Cumbernauld can also claim the dubious distinction of housing Britain’s ugliest building.
The town’s 1960s shopping centre, a once-futuristic fusion of glass and ramps on stilts, has topped a Channel 4 poll for the structure that people would most like to see razed to the ground.



The building in the hometown of newsreader Jackie Bird and comedian Craig Ferguson will be crowned with the unenviable honour this week in a special Christmas edition of the series Demolition.

The dubious accolade has inspired Gordon Murray, a leading Scottish architect, to draw up a blueprint which, he believes, could transform the town.

The poll drew 7,000 nominations for more than 1,000 buildings, ranging from public lavatories to power stations and included 156 concrete tower blocks. Among the 12 shortlisted as the most ugly are the £431m Scottish parliament building.

The second most hated building in Britain is the Imax cinema in Bournemouth, built in the 1990s as part of town-centre “improvements”. It opened in 2002 and closed this year.

Other eyesores nominated include the Cement Works, Rugby, the only industrial building in the final 12, and the Lodges supermarket in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, the picturesque town where the BBC filmed Last of the Summer Wine. It has remained derelict for the past eight years.

Cumbernauld, whose population is 52,000, was created in 1956 to provide an overspill settlement for workers in Glasgow. In the 1960s its futuristic architecture and social housing schemes won awards and were deemed to be an example to other communities.

However its stark designs fell out of fashion — it has been described as the “Lego fantasy of an unhappy child” and its shopping centre as a “rabbit warren on stilts” — and today it is regarded as an example of bad town planning.

As a teenage student Murray, an award-winning architect, marvelled at the radical designs of the town which was the setting for the 1981 film Gregory’s Girl which launched the careers of John Gordon Sinclair and Clare Grogan.

He believes there is still a chance to bring life back to the centre, which has become beset with graffiti and boarded-up shops.
“I am sick and tired of people constantly having a go at Cumbernauld when they have no solution,” he said.




“I wanted to see if we could use the existing town centre, but be radical in our ideas as to how it could be brought back to life again. Do people want the whole town centre to be demolished because it has become a centre of the negativity surrounding Cumbernauld? “Knocking it down is not the solution. The existing town centre can be transformed into something positive.”

The architect, whose firm won an EU design award for restoring Glasgow central station, feels Cumbernauld has suffered after the original ethos behind the creation of community was abandoned.

“The original plans were for a thriving town centre with a host of facilities and we want to move back to that,” he said.

“There is enough there in the original building that you can strip out and use the framework to create something far better.”

Murray also believes the dual-carriageway that runs through the town should be restricted to a two-lane road and that a new high street should be created.

He said: “The original thesis behind Cumbernauld was that the pedestrian should be dominant over the car. It never happened, but we should move back towards that.”

Britain’s ugliest:

1, Cumbernauld shopping centre.

2, Imax cinema, Bournemouth.

3, The Bus Station, Northampton.

4, Crown House, Kidderminster, Worcestershire.

5, The Cement Works, Rugby.

6, Park Hill, Sheffield.

8, Gateshead multi-storey car park.

9, The Scottish parliament building, Edinburgh.

10, The Tower, Colliers Wood, southwest London.

11, Lodges supermarket, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.

12, No. 1 Westminster Bridge, London.

13, Westgate House, Newcastle upon Tyne.










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[Socceroo]

Anyone see the opening Programme last night (Sat 17th Dec)? A bit too fast paced at times and it did not spend too much time on any one particular building.

I suppose as it was the opening Programme it was setting the scene for the series.

Must admit i quite liked the Gateshead Multi-Storey Car Park, but it looks as if Tesco are planning to demolish it for some faceless supermarket extension.

Also thought that the Architect's proposed treatment of the Crown House in Kidderminster, was a good example of what can be done with a tired old concrete office block. He (the Architect) managed to quite quickly quieten the local who was for demolishing the Crown House building.

I thought the presenter Kevin McCloud, did not offer much apart from a pensive comparison of today's structures with those built in the 1960's, he said something along the lines of, "I can't help but think that glass is the new concrete and will be viewed the same way in 40 years time as we view concrete structures today."

Any thoughts?

[get13]

I found it quite interesting but they didn't spend enough time on some of the buildings. But I suppose there are still three more programs to go. Im looking forward to the fourth and last episode which is completely about Cumbernauld Town Centre and seeing as I live just outside of Cumbernauld than I would love to see the pile of crap be blown up. I know it won't happen but I l would like the m to do something about it. There was a billboard put up a few years ago advertising a new "Antonine Mall" but it blew away in a storm and no one replaced it.

On behalf of the Cumbernauld Tourist board:

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it's a bit daft when you think of it, critisising the material. The technology has improved so much in forty years since these original buildings were built. Why not be as damning of brick or stone, it's how you detail it and how you use it and maintain it that's critical.

Hadid could'nt build what she is building without concrete.................. hey on the other hand maybe he's right.

Glass is also at the early stages of it's technological development, seems a simplistic thing to be so suspicious of it.

You may not believe this but the sections through the town centre in cumbernauld and the layering of form and plan is very interesting, you can just see evidence of what the section is like in the top left hand image get13. Other things have happened to damn this structure, like new fire regulations. It's not all bad design at inception.

[maccoinnich]

Top left hand image is the technical college though...

Yeah - concrete is one my favourite materials actually. There are a lot of bad concrete buildings from the 1960s, but when it's done well it can be so beautiful.

As for the Cumbernauld - sure, it's interesting in section - we have a section drawing blown up to 1:50 (which makes it about 2 A0s) on the wall of our studio. It was fascinating to look at. When you went there though, you get a sense of it at all. Sure, things like lowering the ceilings and other modifications made in the 1980s (?) don't help, but a lot of it is bad design from the outset.

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ha ha ha ha, technical college, eh? Brilliant!

right............... put my specs on, ah that's better

[Socceroo]

Anyone got any photo's of what Cumbernauld Town Centre looked like when it first opened? I recall seeing some photo's of it years ago when i was working in Cumbernauld.

Anyone know who the original Architect was?

It certainly looked a lot better than it does now with bits of it demolished, other bits added on, bits of it painted etc. The Town Centre certainly has not been well maintained.

Anyway the biggest aberration in Cumbrnauld is not the Town Centre but the the big Chocolate Brown Office Block - Fleming House, that sits on Tryst Road. I worked on it in the mid 1980's as Site Engineer. Even back then when we were building it we thought it was out of place. Apparently the Architect had pinched the design from another location.

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"The first Chief Architect Hugh Wilson assembled a team of planners and designers from all corners of the world. They considered themselves to be part of a pioneering experiment in urban planning, and for years their fellow architects and planners travelled to Cumbernauld to study this bold utopia on a windy hilltop in central Scotland" from Here to Modernity

what's the alternative by the way, Tesco's.....would'nt it be better to try and salvage it rather than demolish, strip it back, it's a pretty unique structure?

[M_Riaz]

hmmmm depressing.

http://www.buildingconnections.co.uk...history/20.htm

[maccoinnich]

Originally Posted by ad at home

what's the alternative by the way, Tesco's.....would'nt it be better to try and salvage it rather than demolish, strip it back, it's a pretty unique structure?

Yes - absolutely. I think they need to perform some fairly radical surgery on it, but demolition certainly isn't the answer.

[M_Riaz]

What was the Architect trying to signify... rail carriages held up by a single stilt?

[bloo_toon_red]

I guess the Cumbernauld centre is really part of the town's whole raison d'etre - the brave new world and all that, and to lose it completely would perhaps not be the ideal solution. I'm not totally familiar with the internal layout, but surely some re-layering and re-modelling is achievable. Although it appears in a poor state of repair, the form of it is quite powerful and a strong remider of the ideas prevalent at the time of it's construction.

Not all buildings of the Modern era are all bad - just a couple of minutes drive brings you to Gillespie Kidd & Coia's (?) Our Lady's High School. Many laypersons probably despise it, but in my opinion it is one of the most important tectonic statements in the area.

[space_invader]

demolition show: surprisingly good.

ferguson's attempts to change the parly detractor's minds: terrible. guy's an inarticulate fool. a poor professional standard bearer for the profession - he will reinforce the public's already poor and misconstrued opinion of architects.

(also, during the intro, he said: these buildings are mistakes from another era - misplacing the argument from the beginning. Firstly, it assumes everything we do today is good; secondly, it reduces the debate over buildings down to aesthetics. linking poor quality design exclusively to Britain's post-war audit is a big mistake)

kevin mccloud: he surprises me every time by saying things I whole heartedly agree with.

Even tho I want to hate him.

he managed to open up the X-list debate satisfactorily - unlike co-presenter Janet Street Porter - her input was entirely unnecessary and ear splittingly unwelcome.

her (appropriately directed) hatred towards david adjaye does not give her a 'get out of jail' cards in my opinion.

points about 'taste' differences between the profession and the public were explored, albeit tentatively but its a first for telly nonetheless.

problem: running the programmes so closely together. they did this a while ago with alsop's shows on cities and with a show on housing by charlie luxton. it means fewer people see them and it means that the schedulers don't really think this stuff is important.

[bloo_toon_red]

What about the Aylesbury monolith?
I couldn't believe the reverence the so-called experts attached to it!
Domestic-scaled bay windows on a 20-storey concrete tower!
Hideous!

[gweilo]

Can Cumbernauld town centre be made to work? I'm not sure. I'm not doubting that it is a fascinating diagram and idea but it in basic urban terms it doesn't currently work as it is too disconnected from the surrounding new town. The idea of separating and prioritising pedestrian and car movements sounds like a great humanist move but unfortunately the reality of piss stinking underpasses is something else entirely. Perhaps you do still need a mix of the two?

The town centre's current state reminds me of cyberpunk author William Gibson's use of the Oakland Bay Bridge, in his Virtual Light series, as a metaphor for the failure of the modernist project, the rise of post modern condition and the increasing fragmentation of American society. For those not aware of Gibson's work the Bridge, having been rendered useless as a result of an earthquake, is taken over by a disenfranchised squatter community and a new shanty town structure is grafted onto this seminal image of modernity. Unfortunately this fantastic image was squandered in the dire 'Johnny Mnemonic' vehicle for Keanu Reeves in a pre Matrix career slump! Cumbernauld Town Centre's current condition, with an increasing skirt of accreted junk / buildings, is similar to this.

Anyway it might be possible to get it to work but I imagine you'd have rethink the town's density. I've come across Cumbernauld town centre analogs in both Singapore and Hong Kong. They both worked there because of density. In Hong Kong's case it was because there was an enormous public housing complex overlaid on top of the centre and with no other public space outlet the centre was effectively made to work through community self policing and the density of functions and uses crammed into it. In Singapore's case it was located adjacent to two densely populated districts and like Cumbernauld was surrounded by an accreted skirt, though in this instance it was a delightful selection of market vendors, food stalls, taxi ranks etc etc.

So could Cumbernauld be re-engineered along these lines? Not if North Lanarkshire's planners future vision of the place is more Tescos, tacked on Shopping centres, car parking, and a sea of executive housing. I'll be very interested to see what the recommendations of the architects involved in Demolition are.

Agree with your comments about George Ferguson and the parliament SI. He was hardly eloquent and just keeled over in the face of opposition. Didn't they try to take the doubters inside? Usually that does the trick as people can see beyond the difficult to appreciate / absorb exterior to the quality of the spaces and the detailing. Palace of the people as Janet Street Porter refered to about another building entirely last night?! I speak from exeprience having been trapped in the place for most of Thursday afternoon and evening...

[Socceroo]

I kind of liked the Aylesbury building, just a wee bit. Totally out of place granted but brutal enough to grow on you. But whether you would want to try and refurbish a building of that size when it starts to go is a different matter.

It'll all be down to cash at the end of the day.

The so called experts crack me up, last month on TV, Janice Street - Porter was doing a character assasination on Michael Moore and now this month she is the Demolition "trouble shooter".

Well, i suppose if Kirsty Wark is an expert on Architecture, so might be Janice Street Porter.

[gweilo]

Socceroo, Janet Street Porter trained as an architect for three years at the AA in London before embarking on her media career. She's comissioned houses from the likes of Piers Gough and David Adjaye (though as SI refers to below I gather things didn't go smoothly) so she is a bit of a lovey in that department!

[crusty_bint]

Interesting points guys. I must admit to not knowing much of Cumbernauld having only ever driven past it but i must say i feel entirely underwhlemed and uninspired by the thought of doing anything with it. I find it difficult to care either way. However the debate is interesting. Has anyone complied a list or completed a survey of the place's failings? Looking at the original plans and perspectives it reems there were to be two large rows of penthouses atop the town centre structure... did these ever transpire? if not, could this be the missing link that binds the centre to the town? The way I see it, Cumbernauld is such a disperate and ram-shackle collection of houses it will take a lot more than the replacement of this structure to regenrate the toon and give it some cohesion. Perhaps the tabula rasa approach adopted in Glasgow should be used here and start over afresh? Better still, ditch te place entirely along with most of the out-lying schemes and redensify Glasgow?

Anywho... could have been worse for Cumbernauld, they could have got that bus station from last nights episode!!!!

[crusty_bint]

i frikkin hate Janet St Porter... she's a gibbon in a pair of dungarees with Sharon Osbornes old wig on.

[bloo_toon_red]

Janice the matri-arch-itect seriously bugs my happiness.

I'm guessing the main reason she liked Aylesbury was because she met someone inside the building who had teeth worse than hers!