Sniper at 2 o'clock.
About a third of this image is what looks like meadow grass. I'd like to see some cows in there - soften things up a bit in the post- apocalyptic world.

Laurieston regurgitation: I’m afraid I don’t believe Laurieston was the height of architectural achievement. It’s fine and well-mannered and all, but actually it’s not so incredible. We can do better. There needs to be more articulation, more charging of the spaces between and a greater tectonic element to these types. Can we not also imbue them with contextual relevance that might make them feel like they’re part of a Glasgow continuum? E&C (and P/P for that matter) are churning out glib copies of good precedents that they’ve probably seen on Dezeen and that weren’t designed for Glasgow. Please try harder.

Stephen .... and your producing what exactly?
I'm not a fan of this image - I find it bland ... but the Laurieston model is good. The height of Architectural achievement is usually measured or granted beyond an architect or a practices life and viewed retrospectively ... everything till then and before is just part of the journey. PS I'm not sure anyone ever said it the height of anything?!

@D to the R said :

"Stephen .... and your producing what exactly? "

Erm, since when does someone huv tae be an architect tae comment on buildings? Do ye huv tae be a chef to comment on badly cooked food in Pizza Express or wherever it is ye eat? Hope D to the R that yer qualified tae comment here -- and no, a certificate fae Motherwell polytechnic in Plastic curtain wall cladding systems isnae good enough..........

Stephen is right fur once. Although he doesnae go far enough (to be epcected since nae doubt he's been imbued wae the concrete modernist manifesto his hale life). Laurieston should have built -- exactly-- tenements like exist elsewhere in Glesga. Big stone wans. Red, blonde sanstane. Gorgeous glazed bricks on the walls inside. Beauty personified. But then, we can't have 'pastiche' now, can we? Hence we had tae settle fur what wiz built. And aw the lefty archy types were pure jizzin' at the mooth over its "brilliance".

This Elder and Canon bricky stuff might no be as bad as the usual stained concrete/white rendered pish that ye can find everywhere in Scotland, but it's still no that great.

I suppose asking fur some ornament would be a bit much, wid it?

Many comments on UR can be fairly vicious and unnecessarily critical and yet I find BC's comments are somehow the most unsettling and distasteful.

BC - apart from your relentless sniping and whining and your shockingly narrow view of the world - are you doing anything positive about what you perceive to be so wrong?

@Big Chantelle - I thought that the main motives behind moving away from the traditional tenements that were built 100-150 years ago were the lack of readily available sandstone, has it not more or less run out? Or become incredibly expensive as a building material. I would have also thought that the skill required to create 'ornament' akin to the Victorian tenements has more or less died out, and the few remaining skilled stonemasons who could create something like their predecessors would charge a fortune. With these two factors combined surely it would render any potential project unviable financially, and maybe also in terms of delivery time of a development.

@David Graham post #7

When oor culture is hijacked by lefty politics and their various ideologies this naturally creates by-products resulting frum the way in which the left wing ideas take root.

In terms of the built environment, the rejection ae classical forms, ornament and detailing is part ae a wider phenomenon: people making profits fae cheaper buildings and also the hale idea that that ornament and stane and classical forms are sum how inherently imperialist or snobbish and no "progressive" fur all the enlightened peepz oot there. I mean, apparently putting a carved stane arch in a hoose means yer summoning the Third Reich ur such nonsense. Of course, tae most ppl wae brain cellz, it means yer actually just trying to make the hoose erm, nice to look and live in. Imagine that!

Skills have deteriorated -- but why huv they? It's becoz all the wee lefty-wing lapdogs applauded the ideas these 'enlightened' architects and social planners endorsed. And look whit we huv got: concrete council estates wae upturned burned oot Farmfood trolleys completing the landscaping. Ah, the stuff ae dreamz. Thank you Corbusier mate.

It didn't huv tae be this wae. It wuz a choice.A choice a minority ae intellectually forced ontae ppl. And mast people don't actually enjoy the visions imposed onto their society by the concrete lovin' modenrist brigade. They huv it done tae them regardless ae thur ane views. Becoz small ppl don't matter and don't huv taste apparently.

Say there is nae sandstone left. Ok. Why dus that mean we have to have these blocky, soulless forms built? Why can't the architects build something beautiful using the bricks? Why? Whit is stoppin' them? I'll tell ye whit is stopping them -- their ane ideology is. They are so used to constructing buildings that are blocky and soulless and without any aspiration tae beauty that it's became par the course. They don't know how tea dae anyhing else.

Things don't just happen either. We widnae sit around and go "well, there's nae doctors to treat the ill becoz they just died oot" wid we? The fact that oor built environments look the way they do is becoz left-wing types have been aggressively dismantling and reforming society intae their aen vision fur donkeys years. And that naturally involved eradicating the skillz we previously used -- and could again-- to make out society mare enriching.

@domeafavour post #6

A dae plenty mate. Unlike yersell, some of us still fight the good fight against left-wing tyranny. Enjoy yer asbestos ridden council estate. But I won't be silenced! Holler!

BC - Before the lefties got involved and the onset of modernism, there were no slums, no social deprivation and everybody was happy. Oh how we miss those days. LOL

BC - I've found your Utopia
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2416822/Fake-English-town-China-complete-cobbled-streets-red-telephone-boxes-remains-deserted.html

Is this what we should all be doing?

@ splat post #9

"Before the lefties got involved and the onset of modernism, there were no slums,".

There wur social problems. Yip. There wiz poverty. And thur wiz the need to utilise mankind's modern sanitation inventions te make oor life's better. Yep. Quote where I said otherwise? Oh, ye canny. Right. But ye thought ye'd pretend that I did say those things. Oops splat. Yu've just been exposed.

Anyhoo, how duz that mean we hud tae build concrete tower blocks wae asbestos? Why did that mean perfectly fine tenements hud tae bee ripped down instead of repaired and modernised? The irony of course is that all the new rubbish being thrown up nooadays always references how it "interprets Glesga's tenements architecture". Yip, u wouldnae huv tae interpret anyhing if ye didnae rip it doon in the first place or if ye rebuilt it sympatheticall instead ae half-heartedly. We get silly hoosing schemes wae low rise concrete nonsense punctuated wae over scaled tower blocks. What monkeys designed this anti-human stuff? Oh right, 'modernists', who by the way, widnae live in the stuff they designed if ye paid them.

As fur yer second post and link, I don't click on that stuff. But thank u for caring aboot ma posts so much that u went and linked to a newspaper article.I'm glad I have affected you so much.

I'd prefer if u cared mare aboot accurately surmising my views hower. Ye can start wae quoting thum in the future.

Holler.

#9 and there's no social deprivation after?

@Big Chantelle said

'A dae plenty mate'

Do ye aye?

Then, thank God. Thank God you are here to sort everything out ;-)

BC - I would genuinely be interested in hearing your views on Thames Town... could you not have a look? Its kind of like Poundbury but on a much bigger scale.....

Dear BC,

Can you please drop that irritating faux patois as it grates awfully. A bit like your architectural taste. Phoney.
In fact, you wouldn't exist at all, if everyone just stopped feeding you.

BC you have to be at the wind-up? "fight the good fight against left-wing tyranny"- have you been in a coma since the Wilson-Callaghan era? There has been a near total domination by extreme right-wing neo-liberal ideologies for 40 years. Where do you get your information?
You remind me of Hiroo Onoda who fought on for 30 years after the war in the Philippines- unable to accept it was over- yet he was on the losing side. You do realise that you're imperial masters won the class war- where & why the gripe?
As for the reinstatement of sandstone tenements- as others have said the expense would be unrealistically sustainable- but don't we already have enough? Can't we have something 'new'- is the new so bad, even when it is good?
Must things always stay the same & be forbidden to change- would that not be a perverse violation of the basic laws of the universe?
We need a reinstatement of the traditional streetplans- but with modern materials and new imaginative ideas for the concept of the tenement- by re-aligning and suturing the gaps in the urban fabric with quality design.

I find I can't get past the first line of BC's comments. Too hard to read the pretend accent. Why bother?

@D to the R
Since when did any of us need to provide a CV to comment here? I can’t see yours. Your mum give you that name?
You think "the Laurieston model is good", which is fine. I think it’s ok (much better than the average) but not good enough. I gave my reasoning and you’re free to respond to the contrary if you disagree, but you haven’t done. Anyway, I didn’t mean to get your back up, only to make what I thought was a worthwhile point.

@Urban Realm
Could a better comments method be implemented, something more accountable where proper email registration and moderation is implemented? There is potential for valuable architectural discourse on this website as it is open to a wider audience than SSC. However with the current accounts system it seems the trolls can run wild, making it difficult to see the wood from the trees. I would like to make comment on the work above however discussion has been rendered useless by the inane commentary of certain posts.

@wonky

Apologies Wonky. I meant te say "fight the good fight against left-wing tyranny an denounce cheap aviator specs fae the Barras".

As fur yer proclamations "can't we have something new". Erm, what if this something new isnae actually good? Did that evur cross yer mind? Change should only ever come about if it improves upon the precedent -- I mean, why wid ye make something worse on purpose?

But that's exactly whit has happened. How did those Red road flats work out fur ye Wonky? Social utopia? They merely segregated an already maligned subsect ae society, cut them off fae the rest ae the city and stigmatised them wae substandard concrete monoliths which became junkie havens.This created poverty. An this poverty became a culture ae its ane.

Wonky, ye might j'adore the ol' stained rendered waws ae Glesga and beyond. But I dinnae. I actually hink it is degrading tae the people living thur that architects designed a building so cheaply which ages so badly. It's pure an utter contempt fur the little people.

As fur yer "modernist won the war" diatribe nonsense. Actually, naw. They didnae. In ur concrete modernist mind they did. But take aff those 'designer' aviators Wonky and actually look at the buildings being put up. Compare them to whit people did oor a hunner years before. Actually look. This progress u speak off actually isnae materialising. It's cheap, quick-fix archi-fascism being spewed by left wing educated practices out tae make a quick buck fae whoever has the misfortune ae having tae actually live in the stuff they create.

I find I can't get past the first line of BC's comments. Too hard to read the pretend accent. Why bother?

David don't you get the man of the people colloquialism that so many Tory voters speak in Scotland? BC is a salt-of-the-earth call-a spade-a-spade no-nonsense representative of the 'little people' telling it like it is- & what is more he is doing it in 'their own language'.
BC are there no good modern designs? Nothing in the New Gorbals, from the likes of Hypostyle, is of value? Or Page/Park & Elder-Cannon's New Laurieston- this is crap? What of the numerous modernist residential builds in Merchant City? The Mondriaan Housing up at the Canal? The Richard Murphy architecture at Moore Street? The Matrix adjacent to the Piping Centre? Do Architecture's multi-coloured confection at Golspie Street design in Govan- or other new tenements in Govan?
Why not take a walk around Homes for the Future down at Glasgow Green? These are only a few residential modern designs- there are literally hundreds of examples of great non-dom architectural design in Glasgow as well.
Open yer napper!