Mark Chalmers

A few weeks into 2025, it seems we’re on the cusp of inexorable change. We sit uncomfortably on the threshold between how things used to be and a new way, which is forever a work in progress.

I recently went for a wander around a sprawling Brutalist building beside the Forth. I took a 35mm camera and a couple of rolls of film with me. I’d made a sketch plan of the building and approaches beforehand, so I had a rough idea where I was going, and I listened to a Hüsker Dü CD in the car on the way there. This is exploring the way I used to do it 20 years ago, quietly, low key – before internet forums and Facebook groups, then YouTube and Tiktok emerged. After that, fools on social media constantly had to weigh in on The Topic.

The M.O. employed today is to take only an iPhone with you. You can listen to Soundcloud on the way there, through your earbuds, and use Google Maps to navigate with. Once you’re inside, you just snap away with the phone camera, switching between the x1 and x0.5 lenses. If you’re more ambitious, you might pack a Mavic drone as well, to scout the site then try (fail) to recreate in a single take the epic opening sequence from The Shining. You know the one, a panorama of the Canadian Rockies shot from a helicopter using a gyroscopically-stabilised movie camera called a Steadicam.

As I was wandering through the floorplates, it struck me that not only was the building in an ephemeral state – caught for a few months between use and demolition – but the process of exploring our built environment is, too. That in-between state has been called “liminality”, or something which exists on the boundary between two conditions. It usually describes buildings which find themselves temporarily without people, imparting a sense of eeriness or the uncanny. Liminality was popularised by 4chan, which is where all internet memes originate: LOLcats, Rick-rolling, ROFLcopters and so forth.

Liminality has company. In the ultimate irony, the deserted and abandoned has become the 21st century’s most popular destination. There are countless books titled Hidden, Secret, Unknown and Undiscovered – but by definition, their subject matter is none of these things, otherwise the authors couldn't have found it in the first place. The books are accompanied by a slew of student dissertations which dress up having a mooch around an empty building as exploring liminality. I suspect they’re written by the type of booksmart show-off who likes to take a photo with their phone which captures a camera showing a preview image on the screen – then captioning it as “meta photography”.

Setting that aside, the Brutalist building was worth the journey. Each time I’d driven past in 2024, high reach excavators had been parked alongside, but the demolition plant has disappeared off site, and I discovered much remained intact. Inside the reception area is a high relief sculpture that’s four storeys tall. It appears to have been cast in bronze, but I investigated and discovered it’s actually made from brown fibreglass. It looks vaguely as if a totem pole has been re-styled by William Gear; it was actually sculpted by someone called Charles Anderson, and it will supposedly be saved from destruction.

Further inside, the building is pure 1960’s. The rosewood-veneered doors are fitted with original Modric hardware, and I paused a few times to admire the blocky Sixties typeface on the Fire Door Keep Shut discs. On the main accommodation stair, the hardwood handrails have been steamed into compound curves where they reach sweetly around the half-landings – but the first thing I noticed were the open riser flights, carried on concrete spine beams. I don’t even remember a time when you could use open risers in a public building, but the 1960’s is another country.

Beyond the 1960’s wing lie the 1970’s extensions, which stretch out like tendons from the original block. The process of soft stripping has begun, and this sequence of un-building fascinates me just as much as the construction process does. The casings have been stripped off the reinforced concrete columns and the suspended ceilings have been dropped, to reveal an in-situ slab with a coffered soffit. All the half-century-old concrete work looks like new. The raised floor panels have been pulled up – leaving the pedestals in place, and busbars exposed for the copper wombles to gather up.

As I worked my way around the complex, a strange thing happened. The space no longer felt liminal. I wasn’t projecting an internet meme onto my own experience; instead, I was dissecting the design and construction of the building. I couldn’t help myself thinking like an architect, rather than a poster on 4chan. I spent several hours wandering through the deserted building, and I was able to focus on the building and just being there, so I recaptured the feeling from 20 years. It made me very happy.

As to posting status updates for legions of dedicated followers on Insta, 2025-style? Plz add to the map thx. Access deetz plz. Time capsule building: everything left behind? Not quite. The legions will be left waiting, because the rolls of Ektar 100 have just been sent away to the lab for developing and it will be a few days before they come back, with scans burned onto a CD, 2005-style. But that’s fine, because I took the photos for me, rather than for Like, Share and Subscribe.

If you’re interested in the aesthetics of decay, with mentions of Detroit, Chernobyl and Spreepark in Berlin, this clip from Radio 4’s Sideways programme is worth listening to – https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027ctg