Words fail me....

Initially I wasn't sure if it was the renders that were the worst part. Turns out its all of it.

There's something inherently naff about recon stone on a bog standard 4P house too. Awful!

For "Cottage flats around a central square" read "tiny flats around a brick pavior chicane". Also the reporting of "on-site parking has been 'maximised' " as a positive...WTF...good luck to the landscaping (a dozen trees) mitigating the 80+ parking spaces.
Even on a slow news day I'd rather see a blank page than this...not saying regeneration isn't positive, but there's no need to showcase this drivel.

Indeed, the combination of bog standard housing scheme plus sub-standard architectural reporting really is a but of a depressant isn't it?

AJ100 has HM partnership in the top 20 uk practices - surely with the resources at their disposal they could at least spend some effort on polishing the images of this turd? Instead we get free-to-download Sketchup visuals with more effort put in to getting the right cars on maximised parking than anything that may raise the actual housing standard.....

I don't see what's so bad with it.

Lucky you. You could read the above comments above as a guide to where the scheme, if not poor, certainly doesnt rise above the most base of design ambition.

Or you could look at the images and deduce it for yourself!

Or, you could read

#5
A large part of the problem is just that so little care and effort looks to have gone into the presentation work - it's all so basic and bargain-basement looking, 'will-this-do?' standard which I'm afraid looks applicable to the architecture too. Doesn't bode at all well for the finished product.

eh? this is Holmes Miller we are talking about and for them this is a high standard

I'm very happy this is meeting with widespread condemnation. Housing and urban design of this standard is unacceptable in this day and age.

The presentation is pathetic and doesn't exactly show holmes miller in a positive light, but really the fact the basic design principles are so bad really shows them up. It doesn't say much for a practice when they cant even produce a respectable design for housing.

My criticism was not so much at the design - OK I did have a pop and granted it is poor - but at the fact that this proposals has been reported - and approved - for publication on UR.
We all have some pretty mundane stuff in our back catalogue I'm sure - we all have to eat, but you don't make a bug deal out of it.
What was the submission process for this to appear on the UR website?
Surely HM didn't propose this to be showcased themselves - or is there no such thing as bad publicity?

Hi Sandals. It’s a judgement call. Irrespective of the design choices Oatlands is an important chunk of Glasgow’s inner city fabric. As the next phase of development following on from New Gorbals and presaging Laurieston I think its inclusion is valid.

Of course you do, or I'm sure you wouldn't have published it - but you didn't answer the question. Did HM propose this inclusion on the website or did you find the news/planning application etc, rehash and include under your own steam? Just want to understand the process better...maybe nominate some projects for inclusion.

I don't believe it matters if Holmes Miller intended the world to see this design or not. They should be named and shamed for producing such tripe.

Surely someone senior within the company should at least have the backbone to stand up and say "thats *insert expletive*!!!" Surely they could hire someone out their with housing experience rather than relying on stadium and prison drones!

Hi Sandals - yes, it's sourced from GCC Planning (linked to above). It's not a press release.

Any nominations would be warmly received.

mr architectural assistant. your last comment is uncalled for. attacking people personally while sitting behind a keyboard is juvenile and pathetic. Why don't you grow some balls and go to the Holmes Miller office and take up your problems face to face and meet these so called "drones" you talk about and tell them what you think..... you should be ashamed!!!

The sad fact is that only a base attempt at design of houses/urban-community layout/visualisations are attempted in order to scrape through planning with the minimum of man-time spent on it, as these house-builders know that the potential buyers are oblivious to such benefits.

@Davey - Yes, personal attacks aren't too clever. But I didn't see any there, and incidentally, he's completely correct.

I suppose the more venomous comments about the proposal are to be expected from certain quarters but they are ill-founded and it's about time that the knee-jerk detractors took a reality check! Consider the context: the proposed 32 houses form part of an overall masterplan providing a strong urban design framework, a hierarchy of frontages and building heights - this is a two-storey section behind some of the main frontages, intended to provide inner-city houses with gardens for people who might otherwise move to the suburbs. The materials must also be seen against the context of a palette which will give a distinct character to the Oatlands area, rather than the usual facing brick which could be anywhere. Finally, I believe that the detractors should complain more, and do something positive about, the 95% of suburban housing nowadays that is 'bog-standard' and has never seen an architect in its design.