johnglas

Those are impressive and informative pictures, but they appear to show almost grotesque levels of overdevelopment, with old Georgian terraces and warehouses crowded out and overshadowed by testosterone-laden commercial blocks (not necessarily bad in themselves). Progress?

The first two images have to be in the atrium of the OPW in St Stephen’s Green.

Yes, but what does the Spire do?

Again, not to flog the topic to death, but GU (founded 1451) was located in the 17th, 18th and most of the 19th C in the High Street right in the heart of the old town. However, Victorian snobbery and prudery wanted to remove the students away from the vice and smells of the city and fly to a more salubrious west-end suburb (as it was then). The railway company also made them an offer they couldn’t refuse (another Victorian trait). The new site was on top of a drumlin (good Irish word), much of which was too steep to build on (even in Glasgow), hence the grassy areas; it’s also contiguous to a major public park (Kelvingrove, hence Lord Kelvin),which reinforces the green aspect.
If you really want to see how not to do a municipal square, look at George Square here; an elegant if dull late-Georgian square trashed with cheap red tarmac in the interests of commercialism.

Ah, yes, but gunter’s point is the Brit obsession with mown grass (it’s because we can’t get rid of the toff cringe, don’t ye know). Mown grass and municipal planting are the sine qua non of public open space in GB.
Get rid of the grass and get in some decent paving/gravel; forget the American examples – WASPs are even more Brit than the Brits themselves. Look at the continent – gravel’s the boy.

ake:when are the kitsch police going to raid this church? The colour scheme I could live with (it will be repainted at some point and it is ‘tasteful’). The ‘Lourdes grotto’ should be torched by some iconoclast bent on doing everyone a favour.(NB I do not mean this to be taken literally.) I have often wondered just what religious message these grottos are meant to convey (as opposed to the very clear message the obscured altar conveys). Like you, one can only despair at the liturgical illiteracy, not to mention the artistic affront. Are the parishioners at Carrick so supine?
Very good pictures: keep them coming.

Shouldn’t the effusive language about ‘… a sophisticated ‘mix’,etc.’ give us all pause for thought, not to mention the up-to-date reference about congestion and carparking? A generation later this ‘sophisticated’ development is just another piece of urban tat. Whatever about the architectural purity of Gilbey’s it did have presence and impact and what replaced it certainly was not an advance.
It’s a fallacy to think that ‘contemporary’ equals ‘modern’ or that either equals ‘progress’ or ‘improvement’. Think carefully before you demolish, especially in this location.

It’s not looking good, is it? When the SECC (Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre) was built here in the late 70s, it was clad in some pedestrian metal cladding and painted salmon pink! It is now battleship grey and doesn’t look any better.
Has anyone seen any illustrations of what the interior will look like? Presumably they’re spending their money there.

It’s interesting that, although the reredos is beautiful and well-mannered, it looks so Victorian compared to its immediate surroundings; there seems also to be a quandary about what to do with the furniture. The three (Jacobean?) chairs look really out of place place behind the altar and the chairs on either side look completely superfluous. The altar frontal, though beautiful as well, looks literally tacked on.
On my one visit to St Mary’s it was in the throes of a ‘reordering’ which seemed especially brutal and disorientating. Has that now all settled down? Where have the superb medieval choir-stalls with misericords ended up?

gunter: I’ve lost where you did the original post, but re the SAS Radisson hotel in Argyle St, it was designed by Gordon Murray and Alan Dunlop and there was a discussion about it (and a contribution by AD himself) on the thread: ‘What is “good architecture”?’ on 19 Mar 2003.
I have to fess up and say that I’m now seeing it as part of the streetscape; I don’t like it, but life’s too short and it’s there. And it’s not sandstone. (PS The Ta Paell-ya ‘Spanish’ restaurant in the hotel does brilliant tapas.)