The Rules of Engagement

18 May 2005

Speculative office buildings in Glasgow are usually composed of a pretty standard kit of parts; an overstated top or projecting roof above a chunk of horizontal cladding with a stone clad-base.Gordon Murray and Alan Dunlop have always tried to do things differently.

There are two ways to read the title of GM+AD’s practice monograph Challenging Contextualism: either that their work represents an overt challenge to the idea of contextual architecture, or that their work is contextual but edgy.

Either way the practice has been working with and against the grain in the west side of Glasgow’s city centre for several years now. Their latest contribution to the urban fabric is a speculative office called Sentinel for Kenmore Property, just around the corner from the Spectrum building and along the road from the Radisson SAS Hotel. Sentinel, a ten-storey block on the corner of Waterloo Street, sits in an area where the traditional grid of the city begins to break down, on the south-facing slope of the city where the grid drops down towards the Clyde. In the daytime this is the city’s financial core; at night-time it becomes the red light district.

It could be described as their most restrained intervention to date, but Gordon Murray doesn’t agree with the description here. “I like to think that all of our buildings are restrained. To argue that something is not restrained implies that you don’t have control. Anyway, restrained is not quite right because for a speculative office building it has an immense amount of attitude and a cladding system night time colour cycle that is an attraction in its own right,” he retorted. “Our buildings are provocative, I like people to have an opinion about our buildings. We want them to engage with city,” added Alan Dunlop.

GM+AD looked at many different treatments for the curtain-walling, fritting, coloured glass, solid coloured panels and others, but in the end opted for transparent glazing and a lighting system that could be used to wash the glass with colour designed by KJ Tait.
“On the upper levels we had a limited palette and the issue was how to modulate the lighting. The agent was keen on the idea of corporate colour for each tenant; we were concerned it might look like a vegetable stall and preferred an option where the entire building changed colour on block. However, when we tested it we used different colours at the same time and it looked fantastic, so that is an option in the future. It could even be changed to be pink when the Glasgow City of Love festival is on,” said Dunlop.

Controlled engagement is a good description of GM+AD’s work. The building was designed to act as a hinge, to provide a strong corner on the edge of the financial district. Rather than stepping up on the front elevation, the architects chose to create a giant hinge at the back of the site and step down to the main body of office accommodation. Architect Sophie Logan’s early sketches for the block proposed three simple components: a suspended glass box, a solid L-shaped bookend or hinge and tall core. Now that the building has been delivered the basic diagram and intention is still readable.
The client for the £26million office was looking for a column-free building, so one of the driving forces behind the design was to provide an open floor-plate. The distinctive feature of the office is a cantilevered box. It looks as if it is hung from the back wall clad in riven and flamed Cumbrian slate, it appears to spring unsupported from the core.

A simple frameless glass screen, similar to that at the Radisson creates an almost seamless link between street and lobby. The lobby is relatively low and the glass box appears to hang above it creating a sense of tension around the entrance. Structurally it proved impossible within the budget to build a cantilever to support the entire box, so at ground level there is actually a single column supporting the structure.It has been incorporated into the reception area furniture so that it doesn’t read as a piece of structure. The curtain walling is slick and seamless, so you can read the glass box as a single form, GM+AD has developed its curtain walling skills, they draw all of the details themselves leaving no space in which the subcontractor is left to use their own initiative.

The context for this building is the 60s Anderston Centre mega-structure by Richard Seifert, with its ground and first-floor level parking deck, decorative poured concrete and visually powerful housing towers. The response is an equally direct building, a building in which the clarity of form and the limited palette of materials allow it to sit very comfortably besides Seifert’s work. The building provokes associations with the robust and slightly glamorous offices of the 60s such as Scottish Provident, on St. Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh. “The building is pared down. We were keen to take the building back to the minimal expression, to focus on the corner,” explained Murray.

When the ten-storey building was submitted for planning it was considered too tall by the RFACS. Since then the planning environment has changed – Elphinstone are currently working on a 30-storey tower just around the corner at Charing Cross. “It could have been taller,” said Dunlop. “The RFAC said that it was too tall, that it was inappropriate and that it set a dangerous precedent, but the AHSS and the community liaison group at the council commended it and said it could be higher.”Like all good Glasgow offices the Sentinel building takes inspiration from a range of international sources. GM+AD have learnt from the best of American modernism how to deal with a commercial building when it meets the ground. A good lobby needs to smell of success and have a degree of gravitas to it. It can’t be like a bar, with a here today, gone-tomorrow dynamism, but it still needs a bit of drama. The office is also influenced by European, Dutch and German developments. “The reception is red-hot and full blooded, that might be a European thing,” said Dunlop, keen to give credit to the young architects that ran the project – Reiner Novak, the project architect, and Isabel Garriga.

The client, Kenmore is a Scottish-based investment company, that usually invest in other people’s buildings but wanted, on this occasion, to build its own commercial project. The head of the company, John Kennedy, is very interested in architecture. The practice has developed a reputation for producing provocative buildings and as a result they tend to attract clients that are looking for a building that will demand a response rather than blend into the background. “Usually with a speculative office development the agents argue that you don’t want a distinctive building because it is likely to turn off some potential tenants,” said Dunlop. “The agent wants a building that can be all things to all men, to ensure that he has the biggest possible marketplace. But many of our clients are not driven by the agents, they also want to make an imprint on the city,” he added. The building has only just been completed and already has three floors let in a highly competitive market.

Until recently the vast majority of commercial buildings in Glasgow could be put together as a result of a kit of parts, with a distinctive base, middle and top formula and predictable components such as over-sailing roofs, bands of horizontal glazing and a stone-clad podium. GM+AD’s work represents an important departure from this formula.