February 14 2025

A Brutalist shopping centre on Glasgow's Bath Street has been reimagined as a £6m hospital serving the beating heart of the city.

Dating from 1986 the Sauchiehall Centre has been hit hard by waning retail demand, putting it on the radar of the Elanic Clinic which has repurposed a vacant bank unit into a hospital as part of an expansion of its existing clinic.

Working with rather than against the existing building NVDC Architects have transformed the former bank into a private healthcare suite including surgical theatres, public areas and office space on a newly created mezzanine level within the old banking hall.

Last refurbished in 2011 the unit stands directly above the existing clinic and now rises over three floors, introducing floor-to-ceiling double glazing, colour and bespoke lighting to establish a non-institutional feel.

NVDC founder Farahbod Nakhaie commented: "Re-use of existing buildings is an environmentally responsible thing to do, regardless of the building’s architectural qualities. This 1980s building is a noteworthy example of modernist Brutalist architecture, and so part of Glasgow’s built heritage and history.

 "With the demise of retail and the impact this is having on city centres everywhere, it is important that new uses are introduced so that our cities remain the heart of community activities.

"The new hospital will therefore not only re-use a large commercial unit which otherwise would have lain empty for years and reinforced the feeling of a deteriorating city, but instead creates jobs, attracts activity into city centre and bring with it forces of regeneration."

The Elanic Hospital is now open. 

Photography courtesy David Barbour

8 Comments

#1 Posted by Chris on 14 Feb 2025 at 11:27 AM

It's a horrendous blight on the area that will continue to stifle any regeneration efforts for Sauchiehall St.

A mockery on the grand department stores it replaced.

#2 Posted by Individual on 14 Feb 2025 at 12:34 PM

Looks nice enough to me

#3 Posted by "El" on 14 Feb 2025 at 13:21 PM

Nae bother Chris. ???????
I think you are missing the hole story where it talks about an empty unit being used for another use. Is that not regeneration? It's definitely more sustainable than knocking down another existing building, to build a new hospital for example.
I think the only thing that can help you with your personal incredulity, is a time machine.

#4 Posted by Sean McLaughlin on 14 Feb 2025 at 16:10 PM

Just bomb it off the face of the earth. It always distresses me to walk by it and remember the Copland & Lye building that once stood there. At least the clock survived the destruction and now resides in Milngavie.

#5 Posted by Banister Fletcher on 14 Feb 2025 at 17:23 PM

It would seem that the fashionable tag of 'Brutalist' is being applied to anything these days. However, I would definitely be of the opinion that this car park is not a brutalist building whereas other adjectives may well apply.

Also, I did see in the Grauniad that they even had Fielden Clegg's Strathclyde Architecture Dept. building listed as 'brutalist'. Again I would contest that it is not (despite wikipedia's say so).

Some may think this pedantic, but i just don't like the re-writing of history.

#6 Posted by Roddy_ on 16 Feb 2025 at 12:29 PM

I'm all for the continued sequestration of embodied carbon , however there is a threshold (admittedly difficult to convey efficiently) whereby a building is so unresponsive to context, so underdeveloped (no one lives there), so mono-use that its continuing existence is a blight and contributes to the blight adjacent shops and public spaces.
By all means retro-fit the whole thing to make it responsive, able to be lived in, make it multi-use etc- and that way real benefits will accrue not just the blanket 'environmentally friendly' moniker that gets hitched to projects like this.

#7 Posted by Chris on 17 Feb 2025 at 09:24 AM

#3 Nothing says sustainability like an ugly multi-storey carpark with some units tacked on.

#8 Posted by Outsider looking in on 17 Feb 2025 at 10:25 AM

What is the essential difference between this structure and that of the timber-clad concrete structure of the Waterloo St car park? Which, it could be argued in planning terms is completely sterile, rather than having activation at ground level like the Sauchiehall St one does. Is it perhaps just that the Waterloo St car park looks nicer? If so, then surely this is fixable and clad the damn thing in roofing battens, or whatever is the fad of the day and be done with it! But down with medieval castles! Yeh! down with that sort of thing.

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