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January 2016
Keppie pen SECC hotel and serviced apartment scheme

Keppie pen SECC hotel and serviced apartment scheme

January 25 2016

Keppie have submitted plans for a twin hotel development constituting 393 rooms together with 35 serviced apartments at the entrance to Glasgow’s SECC complex on behalf of Chesterpeak Developments.

Intended to form an urban crossroads fronted by ground floor retail and leisure the scheme will screen an existing multi-storey car park with a ‘chamfered corner’ funnelling pedestrian traffic in from the city centre and west end.

Split into two elements the scheme will see an 11 storey four star hotel face Stobcross Road with a neighbouring three star hotel fronting Finnieston Street with surrounding pavements resurfaced and space for an SECC ‘advertising totem’ to the north.

In their design statement Keppie observed: “The building footprints have been arranged to wrap around the car park whilst creating a continuous building edge at street level.

“At ground floor, dedicated service access is provided to back-of-house hotel and commercial units by the service lanes to the south and east of the car park.”

The four star element will be faced with natural stone cladding to primary elevations, a finish which will be continued through to the podium of the three star hotel. Above this however the latter will be clad in cementitious fibre board rainscreen.

Both hotels will rise on vacant ground left over from construction of a multi-storey car park

The development will meet a prominent crossroad with a chamfered podium

23 Comments

#1 Posted by lets make more money for faceless London financiers on 25 Jan 2016 at 11:58 AM

as good as it gets...
what's the #@%$£@& point?

#2 Posted by Fancy them being allowed to Invest in Scotland on 25 Jan 2016 at 12:58 PM

Fancy “foreign” investors being allowed to invest their cash in Scotland
Shouldn’t be allowed.
Let’s just let the site sit there vacant…..much better idea

#3 Posted by Big Chantelle on 25 Jan 2016 at 13:21 PM

The concrete modernist brigade: Keppie edition strikes again.

Wit is wrang wae huvin' nice lookin' buildins? Why must everything uv this boxy, awkward, cladding-heavy aesthetic? Aw, coz that lecturer bloke ah the uni, who wore a black polo-neck, hipster specs said this is wit oor building huv tae look like.............

Why?

This isnae architecture. This is laziness. This is par the course ideology takin built form. Nae feelin. Nae style. Blank. Expressionless.It's just shape making but no actually nice shapes. It's just squeezing in az many rooms intae a plot as possible.

Look at all the stone built architecture in Glesga city centre. Look at the door ornamentation. The window design. The proportions. Look at the beauty -- see how the architects actually aspired tae create something great.

Architecture has gotten worse. And this building demonstrates that perfectly. Why do you lot accept this stuff -- whit dae ya get oot av normalising this kind a stuff in oor cities?

But tae be fair, it's as terrible as the 'luxury' Glesga harbur development doon the river so I suppose it does fit it's context in that sense.

#4 Posted by lets make more money for faceless London financiers on 25 Jan 2016 at 14:01 PM

This has all the usual hallmarks of an applicant 'investing' in a planning application to increase the value of the site, on condition of obtaining planning, buying it and then selling it on. The applicant has no interest or the means to develop the site hence the wholly anonymous and efficient architectural treatment of the proposals by the architects of a now-demolished 1970's secondary school.
And the point is?

#5 Posted by David on 25 Jan 2016 at 15:00 PM

I've seen better but it hardly merits the over-reactions above (although I have to admit giving up reading post 3 after the second line due to the poor vocabulary). Maybe a bit more variety of colour and tone might lift it a bit.

Glasgow needs hotels, and the more the better.

#6 Posted by E=mc2 on 25 Jan 2016 at 15:57 PM

Oooft. Those will be some views along the rear elevations onto the nasty looking gorgonzola cheese car park....

#7 Posted by Big Dawg on 25 Jan 2016 at 16:46 PM

The gable/elevation treatment reminds me of Rothesay Academy, 1959, an amazing site for a Brutalist gem of a school that somehow still remains largely original, what can it be used for? The new PFI school is now over the hill missing out on this most wonderful setting, progress!

Make of my comment what you will, merely drawing parallels between designs almost sixty years apart.

https://canmore.org.uk/site/232992/bute-rothesay-academy-road-rothesay-academy

#8 Posted by devilsinthedetail on 25 Jan 2016 at 18:08 PM

#3 BC
Do you have no brain. A lot of Glasgow's 'great' architecture was paid for by the questionable wealth of the empire that no longer exists. The simple answer to why buildings aren't built they way they used to be is simple (even for your narrow mind); there isn't the money to do it anymore. It's about capitalism. No architect in the land can solve that. Budgets are budgets, and Developers no longer write blank cheques (well very rarely).

#9 Posted by Fraser on 25 Jan 2016 at 23:59 PM

I am not quite sure where all of the negativity on this post, and others from UR, derives from. I do not see the harsh incessant sarcastic criticism beneficial or, indeed, constructive. What happened to civil conversation about architecture.

#10 Posted by faceless London financier on 26 Jan 2016 at 09:35 AM

Fraser,
In answer to your question, I'd say what happened to architecture? Yes, many examples of architecture are featured on UR and commented on positively, but my best guess regarding the reason for the phenomena of negativity you describe would be that what we are being asked to believe at times with some posts on UR is nonsense, untrue and a cynical lie and those of us who feel strongly enough about this feel compelled at times to say so. We only recognise that it is not possible to polish a turd, whichever way you look at it and as such, we are all a bit better off for calling it for what it is.
The Play for Today, 'Comedians' by Trevor Griffith in 1975 puts this point far better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEB4PAZMRk, though you do have to watch it till its very bitter end. After all, its only fair that you should work a bit to get the point.
All the best.

#11 Posted by Big Dawg on 26 Jan 2016 at 09:48 AM

#9 Re; civil conversation about architecture.
I tried!

#12 Posted by Dear Urban Realm on 26 Jan 2016 at 10:27 AM

I think it is time to retire the "comments" section.

#13 Posted by E=mc2 on 26 Jan 2016 at 12:58 PM

In fairness, my comments related more to the turd that is the car park, rather then the Keppie scheme which is what it is.

I bet Foster's were kicking themselves that someone beat them to car park design before the Hydro took shape...

#14 Posted by Fraser on 26 Jan 2016 at 13:04 PM

I am not discussing the architecture itself, but rather the process of reasoned and rational conversation regarding it.

#15 Posted by Pete Pedant on 26 Jan 2016 at 15:01 PM

#6 - I'm quite a fan of gorgonzola cheese, and to now have it encased in Ryvita crispbreads, all the better.

I wonder if aimie's will purvey such delicacies.

#16 Posted by David on 26 Jan 2016 at 16:51 PM

@E=mc2, point of note...the cheese grater facade is only on the north and west sides of the car park. The two sides facing these proposals are left open. Presumably as it was always the intention to put hotels there.

#17 Posted by Partick Bateman on 27 Jan 2016 at 09:00 AM

Glasgow - the only city to ruin its riverside twice.

#18 Posted by DM on 27 Jan 2016 at 12:06 PM

The revived SECC area has revitalised Glasgow and has turned the once depressing Kelvingrove area into a very successful district. The area is buzzing and the biggest bands/entertainers in the world now choose to play at the Hydro. The SECC is also doing better as it can attract a wide range of fairs/conferences/exhibitions as all of its halls have been freed up from hosting concerts. This whole improvement should make everyone happy, as should the addition of further hotel/serviced apartment facilities (whether or not the readers approve of the style details). The bile expressed in some of the comments above is beyond belief to be honest. Lets stop sniping from the sidelines and be happy that Glasgow is on the up. Let us also be happy that the city is attracting considerable inward investment from international markets. Not sure where 'Big Chantelle' is going with the Scots language post but it is an affectation (what's the betting we have a reader of 'The National' here?

#19 Posted by Don Diamante on 27 Jan 2016 at 12:43 PM

Looks awfully like the bland skyscrapers that were being thrown up in the 60s and torn down in the 90s and 00s, except that here the windows are 'playfully' out of line, and the walls 'jauntily' skew in and out a wee bit.

Is this really how far Scottish architecture has come in 50 years?

#20 Posted by Auntie Nairn on 27 Jan 2016 at 13:48 PM

#18 DM - you do realise that Urban Realm is a website about just that? And, that discussion of Architecture and the quality (or lack of) it is the whole point of these news items?
While I'm sure we are all delighted that Glasgow is "on the up", surely the Architecture commissioned as a result of prosperity should be aspirational, otherwise we could really do it on the cheap and everything could be a pile of portacabins?

#21 Posted by E=mc2 on 27 Jan 2016 at 15:05 PM

#16 David, fair enough but the proximity of the developments to the car are such that any semblance of privacy will be gone in what become canyon like spaces, especially on the south facing block. 18m between residential properties overlooking each other, how far from the car park are the windows of the two blocks? And if those developments were always proposed, why were all parts they not considered at the outset rather than simply as infill of gap sites as they appear to be now, severely compromised by the parking edifice?

#22 Posted by Life's ironic, int it? on 28 Jan 2016 at 21:58 PM

One last thought.
http://www.urbanrealm.com/news/5332/Keppie_call_for_greater_collaboration_between_architects_and_schools.html
Frightening.