March 13 2025

LandSec, the developer behind plans to rebuild Glasgow's Buchanan Galleries, has shifted gears on the mammoth project with the appointment of new architects to oversee the reuse of the existing structure as opposed to wholesale redevelopment.

Foster & Partners have been dropped from the project in light of these changes with local practice ThreeSixty Architecture picking up the reins to a much less invasive scheme, working with the existing fabric of the shopping centre to better engage with its surroundings rather than carving out new streets.

The switch caps a marked change in direction by the commercial property giant, which revealed back in October that it favoured a process of incremental change rather than the shock and awe approach. LandSec has previously defended the demolition of the 25-year-old structure, designed by Jenkins & Marr in 1999, pointing to the fact that its depth limited daylight to central areas and arguing that an inefficient layout made conversion difficult if not impossible.

At the time the real estate giant stated: "Since the existing building has been designed and constructed as a shopping centre, it is not suitable for conversion into new homes, offices or hotel space."

More recent market appraisals suggest retail may be more viable than first thought, guiding ThreeSixty's approach which favours activation of 'barrier' and dead spaces around the perimeter by adapting store frontages.

The initial team assembled by LandSec to redevelop the Galleries included Michael Laird Architects, LDA Design, Arup, Atelier Ten, LUC, Turley, New Practice, Savills and Turner & Townend. 

4 Comments

#1 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 14 Mar 2025 at 09:28 AM

Never a good look / never a good watch -- limited management bandwidth flip flopping their way across a changing landscape.

Who is running the show -- some long lost offspring from the Duncan Sandys clan?

First retail was dead -- it was manned fighter aircraft in 1957 -- and now there is some life left.

The whole exercise reeks of the trendy vicar vibe so redolent in tick box management types.

Not good.

#2 Posted by Roddy_ on 14 Mar 2025 at 12:42 PM

The BG is a building, which, one hopes, would never have received consent today (though one can't quite be certain). It is a throwback to 60's planning (Leslie Martin's civic precinct) clad in stone and brick with vast swaths of non-active ground floors, pedestrian/vehicle conflicts and a monolithic functional mix. Not to mention the severence and disruption created by the overall form. Foster's masterplan conveyed a corporate sterility but was radical in the sense that it at least tried to address these failings by disaggregating the mass and introducing the potential for places to live. These opportunities appear to have gone with Landsec's reappraisal. Quite what we are going to get remains to be seen - for example how will Dundas Street / Bath St become re-engaged when they are the main service zones (the Foster masterplan even had difficulties with this) and how to deal with the inactive edges of Killermont and North Hanover Streets. I suspect the architects will be hamstrung by the lack of flexibility in the plan (as did Foster's) but find it irresistible to add/clad/ to the already Frankensteinian facades. I wish them luck with a difficult brief but I'm afraid we're not going to get a particularly urban (and therefore resilient) solution out of a diminished program like this.

#3 Posted by BG on 14 Mar 2025 at 12:57 PM

Ah the obligatory 3-yearly whole new scheme, with a whole new team, for the Buchanan Galleries. That will end up in the same bin as the rest of them done over the last 20 years. That site has seen more schemes, visuals and options than George Square!

#4 Posted by The Observer on 17 Mar 2025 at 11:41 AM

Get the lipstick out for the booby prize 360.

Post your comments