johnglas

asmodeus: don’t tempt me – I’m Glasgow bred if not born and as for my being a defender of ‘brutalist modernism’, just read my rants. Can I just say that you’ve defeated your own arguments on the detached-house front; there are many purposely-built detached houses in the city (though not perhaps as many as you would think) which are now flatted. But they are – and read as – detached houses in the townscape. Cities are all about higher density and smaller plots; detached houses in the city are for the fabulously wealthy, the small townee or the incurable suburbanite.
gunter: interesting point; a friend of mine fell in love with the York St houses when visiting Dublin, although I thought they were a bit dull (but ‘pastiche’ has never fazed me). But they were very appropriate in scale and character for that location (before they were muscled out by the aggrandizing tendencies of the RCSI). Your usual skills at a ‘before and after’ would be much appreciated.

asmodeus: just a few points.
1. Yes, there were (and are) many middle-class tenements, but there are many working-class tenements left. Most were, as you say, purpose-built, although there were some instances historically of large, middle-class houses sub-divided as tenements, as in Dublin (e.g. grand late-Georgian, early-Victorian houses in South Portland St in the Gorbals, alas long gone).
2. The Tenement Flat (sic) is more accurately intended for the ‘skilled working-class’, and I think it’s a two-room and kitchen flat, so a cut above the basic (but it still has a built-in ‘box bed’ (for the skivvy?) in the 3rd pic).
3. Your figure of ‘two hundred’ detached houses is spurious; there were and are many historic detached houses in the city. In some relatively small areas there is a range of house types from basic to better-class tenement, to terraces and semi-ds, to detached villas (some of which are very grand indeed). This would reflect economic status (and doesn’t it always!).
4. The word ‘tenement’ originally referred to a parcel of land ‘held’ by someone (i.e. ‘a holding’), and later this was applied, without any pejorative meaning, to the building on the land (from the Latin ‘tenementum’). Here, in popular parlance, you lived in a ‘close’ or a ‘building’ (never a tenement) and any blocks of flats built after c. 1914 (usually by the Corporation) were never referred to as tenements (although that is technically what they were).
5. Your third pic actually shows Glasgow Sheriff Court (‘the busiest court in Europe’), equivalent to your District Court, so nobody lives in it (not literally anyway).
I can get some pics to illustrate this, but I’ve rambled on enough. Any pics of the York St development?

Lovely series of pics on the last few threads; those of the apsidal chapels are quite striking and demonstrate the quality and serenity of what we might have regarded a few years ago as quite ‘ordinary’ (because familiar). It’s only now because we have lost so much of it that we now realise their worth – that and the fact that anything ‘Victorian’ is now at least 100 years old and time adds its own patina. It’s interesting also that when excess furniture is removed (such as benches in every available space), the spatial dignity of these intimate spaces is revealed. Remove the inconsequential pot plants and fairy lights and you have them as designed.
Guidebooks in the 1960s and 70s would have dismissed this as ‘modern’ (!) – i.e. not 18th C or earlier – and I think some of that attitude persists in the non-committee you mention, except that in their case it equals ‘can be modified/removed/neglected at will’.

Of course it does and I agree with your general point, but language is important and badmouthing any group in society just dehumanises them (and excuses ‘drastic’ solutions). Of course no-one is comfortable with some of the street denizens you mention, but I thought there was a view about ‘designing out’ what is thought to be undesirable. My point is we all should be careful about language (without being afraid to say what we think) and in imagining that social problems are always ‘somewhere else’ or belong to some ‘other’ group in society.

Does no-one have a clue what to do about wires on the exterior of buildings? These restorations are very restrained, but it looks as if the wirescape is going to stay. Can wires not be put in the basement areas, or under string-courses or round the back – or just undergrounded and concealed within the structure as they should be?

And all that seen from… the top of the Pillar! What a waste of space the Spire really is.

cqcsb:absolutely no offence taken; sometimes the big idea just needs to swamp the practicalities!

GrahamH: magisterial post brought down to earth by cqcsb’s bus lanes and toilet railings. O tempora, O mores!

It’s difficult to understand why there is not a move to reinstate roodscreen and altars; they already have a ‘temporary’ (movable) nave altar and if the two discarded altars are as unique as suggested, then this reinforces the case. With the current vogue for the ‘older use’ of Mass, this would all make perfect sense. If Benedict’s re-reform of the mass takes root, you will suddenly find lots of apologists for destruction becoming advocates of ‘restoration’. Watch this space.

The mockup of the Drumcondra Metro stop looks a very bland affair; remember the genuinely iconic London Underground suburban stations from the 1930s. No room here for an attempt at a similar high-quality design?