Paul Stallan delivers Commonwealth Games Village TED talk
August 8 2014
Focussing on the athletes’ village, which Stallan led alongside Alistair Brand whilst with their former practice, Paul Stallan Studio @ RMJM, the architect discusses ‘living together, ‘appreciating beauty’ and ‘dreaming’ by pulling together key projects such as the African University of the Creative Arts.
Born in a traditional tenement in the Sighthill district of north Glasgow in 1967, Stallan cites its short-sighted demolition, along with the subsequent demolition of the tower blocks which replaced them, as key drivers in his own approach to regeneration.
Commenting on the village Stallan said: “On the site of the Commonwealth Games Village was a series of tower blocks. If you think about it spacially, if you came out of one of those flats you’re immediately into the city.
“What we were trying to achieve spatially with the Games village was to come out of your house into your porch, from your porch to the garden, the garden to the home zone, home zone to the street and street into the wider city. We were decompressing if you like and creating defensible space but you’re also creating layers of space where people can interact in different ways, they can choose to alter behaviours relative to what part of the village they’re in.”
4 Comments
#1 Posted by Njoy on 9 Aug 2014 at 00:51 AM
Passionate but random and disjointed. Too ambitious
#2 Posted by alan dunlop on 9 Aug 2014 at 10:37 AM
Well done Paul. Very impressive.
#3 Posted by Paul Sweeney on 10 Aug 2014 at 13:31 PM
The aspiration to create the same quality of built environment in the Athletes' Village as 'West End' tenement districts seems to be contradicted by the fact that the biggest controversy over this and associated Commonwealth Games developments was the trashing of what was left of Dalmarnock's perfectly viable sandstone tenement cross and the B-listed London Road School. In both instances these high quality buildings have been destroyed to create surface car parks. The collateral damage involved in this development was totally unnecessary and contemptible.
#4 Posted by archy on 11 Aug 2014 at 20:08 PM
Paul ... I think that Paul Stallan and you are on the same sheet. Paul opens his talk showing the tenement he was born in being demolished. I don't think he is advocating the tenements demolition quite the opposite. Paul has previously explained in Urban Realm that the City Legacy consortium who delivered the Games Village had no remit to consider the existing tenements. The council and Glasgow's elected members had already made the decision to remove them as happened in the 70's in Springburn, Gorbals and Maryhill etc.
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