Vastint unveil ‘town square’ Merchant City hotel
November 13 2018
Vastint Hospitality, the property arm of IKEA, have completed work on a 181-bed hotel on Glasgow’s High Street, the latest element of the Collegelands masterplan to be completed.
The Moxy Hotel has been under construction since 2016 by Robertson and includes its own bar, meeting rooms and gym.
A front entrance is set back from the street across a ‘town square’ with new paving, corten steel planters and seating. The main body of the hotel is finished in fibre cement panels.
David Cairns, managing director, Robertson Central East, said: “Working with Vastint, we have been able to create a modern hotel that will prove popular with guests, and the use of modularisation has allowed for quicker construction with no compromise on quality.”
The modular build was built off-site before assembly in-situ and stands next to a student accommodation block delivered by the same team.
25 Comments
The associated student block shames it.
Low rent 70's Scandi tripe -- the design was phoned in.
Hopefully the planned southern "ghost" block hides it well.
Negatives: Given the history associated with High Street, this is a shameful effort. Modular off-site construction phoned in with some tacky plant boxes as a token attempt at landscaping. Where are the trees? Where's the respect for the surrounding sandstone architecture? Where's the integration with pedestrian traffic? How have they managed to make this look cheaper than the neighbouring Collegelands student buildings? Why have you forsaken us, Robertson?
Schoolboy howlers left, right and centre.
Why so little red in the colour scheme -- sore thumb in amongst all that red sandstone.
Complete dog -- Crufts is missing a champion.
Quicker construction.........lord only knows how long they would have taken if it was traditional! A wee hotel like that should not have a 2 year build programme!
As for the design, its so unremarkable I shall refrain from remarking.
Looking at the windows of the building- why are the windows so surrealistically small? One would assume if a guest put his eye close enough to the window he may be able to see something, as you might spying through a key-hole- but would you want to see the abomination that defaced High Street in the early noughties across the way?
I see also the 'sign' is broken already- what pray does this signify- what omen can we scry from its splintered surface? Are we indeed in the last days of Late Capitalism as Jameson insists- is this what the Moxy Hotel signifies?
Clearly the barbarians of neo-liberal capital have won the culture war & the inscrutable neon nihilism of this carbuncle reveals the stillborn moment when transient Global finance is parturitioned as liveable form from the sterile fellupian tube of the city's council planning department.
What is the difference between an engineer & an architect/ between a draughtsman & an artist- why not just call architecture engineering?
I enjoyed your contribution, Wonky. Spot on.
Yes, indeed, among all this short-termism, what will be the cultural reckoning? I'd even go further than your hypothesis, though - why even bother with any attempt to make architecture at all? - I'd argue that in a digital age, where all the sense data that people need is in the form of a few square inches on their phone, that architecture is in fact, redundant.
But there is still a basic question that needs answering - How can a planning system permit such a bleak 1930's Stalinesque development on the High Street, given the 86 page planning guff of http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=43009&p=0
Still, what would you expect if, 'The vision for the High Street Area Strategy was guided by the existing national and local strategic framework.' - where I counted no less than 25 planning strategy documents that were referred to. That's NOT a vision, that's a death sentence.
I am left with no option but to conclude that the answer is simple: all is dead here, save stupidity, Tammany Hall and low-flying vested interests.
HOWEVER, on the plus side, and given the context of the nearby Necropolis, at least the structure will be ideal in years to come (when the last customer has checked out) to be converted to one of those Italian-style cemeteries such as the San Cataldo cemetery in Modena.
it will leave a lovley brown stain
might be worth thinking about
I suspect a big part factor is under-resourced planning departments under great pressure to approve and move on. Desperate stuff.
Between the moxy and the white rendered student res to the south - these are the worst buildings I have ever seen in a city. Ever. Anywhere.
This hotel is bad but it is not that bad.
Do you get a discount if you live in one of those monstrosities?
Paper bags available to anyone leaving?
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