The National Centre for Dance in Paris is an award winning adaptation of a 1973 council building.
In 2005 Atelier Robain Guieysse developed the buildings into modern dance facilities.
What you can do with old concrete buildings
Cumbernauld town centre fails to achieve listing
Historic Environment Scotland describe it as of “special interest” but not worthy of protection through the listing process.
The reasons given are odd – “Because of the advanced development proposals for Cumbernauld Town Centre, we decided not to proceed with listing at this time”.
This leaves North Lanarkshire council free to develop it as they wish, which could include total demolition. Which seems a bit like saying yes, it’s really important, but because the owners have other plans we’ll let them do what they want. Whereas the whole purpose of listing is to protect important buildings from the commercial vagaries of their owners, for the benefit of the wider population.
They add “Although we have decided not to list the site, we hope that our report will inform the decisions that are made about the site.” Which again, is at the whim of the owners to do.
Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy
Listed by Historic Scotland as a significant example of Modernist post-war hospital design, with architectural and historic interest.
Designed by architects department of South East Regional hospital board. The “matchbox on a muffin” design of tower and podium is a now classic design. Queen Mother’s hospital in Glasgow is similar.
More history here with an original model photo:
Beautiful buildings – by presidential order
Trump signed an executive order before he left office insisting all new federal government buildings must be considered “beautiful” and ideally be designed in the classical or traditional style.
The American institute of architects have denounced the order, although it didn’t go as far as banning modernist architecture, as was suggested when the order was in draft form.
Apart from stating that communities should be free to choose the architecture that works for them, it points out that the order makes government employees the judges of “taste”.
Town Centre Park [Universal Connections]
The bunker-like partner to the Dollan baths, a stone throw away from the town centre, next to the skate park, this is a grade C listed youth centre designed by Alexander Buchanan Campbell, who designed the baths too.
It’s hard to see much of interest beyond the impressive concrete parapet, but the summary from Historic Scotland describes it as an important example of post-war architecture, with a plan of interlocking geometric shapes (a semi-circular kitchen, a rectangular gym hall and a triangular ramp runway), and distinctive detailing, such as the shuttered concrete window and door lintels.
Lanark County Buildings
Not East Kilbride, but A listed buildings also in South Lanarkshire, not too far away – indeed, it is South Lanarkshire’s council headquarters. Lanark County buildings is the original, confusing name, given that it is located in Hamilton!
In the Sunday Herald 2021 list of 20 favourite modern Scottish buildings, the 17 storey tower in the International style is straight out of New York. The architect was David Gordon Bannerman, who worked for the county (and who curiously does not appear to have designed anything similar, just a couple of schools which have mostly been replaced, with the exception of Caldervale high from 1970).
The use of glass, concrete and steel, the regularity of detail and lack of ornamentation, the simple form are typical of the style.
Apart from the tower, there is also a large formal plaza with a central pond running the width of the plot, and the linked cylindrical Council chambers building (“podium”) contrasts nicely.
Susan O’Connor argues in The Architecture of Public Service (Twentieth Century Society, 2018) that such formal areas were part of the aesthetic of Le Corbusier and others who established this style, and its purpose was ceremonial. There are no benches after all, and the entrance to the building is actually over a bridge above the garden, not through it. These kinds of gardens are just as much about status as the redundant columns and fancy staircases of 19th century town halls, such as that in Glasgow. OK, they don’t insist on sticking the formal rooms up on the top floors in the old way, but there is still a fancy banqueting hall with a black timber block ceiling interspersed with recessed golden mosaic coffering, and full length tweed curtains, matching carpet and wallpaper, plus contrasting cedar panelling.
In many other places, such plazas have been cleared to make way for car parking, for example the Arts Tower in Sheffield…
Slate is used on external surfaces, a reminder of Lanarkshire’s mining history. There are county crests on walls and etched into glazed doors, which make the building a bit more local, and a little less International.
And like other civic buildings of the time, clerks and managers are not banished to dark, back corridors – they can now enjoy views from picture windows high above the surrounding landscape, a more democratic approach mirrored in better staff facilities eg canteens.
Dundee repertory theatre Class A listed
Built in late 70s, early 80s, one of the next generation theatres that had a more open, surrounding stage.
Design largely dictated by restricted site, but various volumes of simple form, in stone that matches neighbouring buildings and square.
Foyer underneath theatre space has ceiling that is simply the stepped rows of seats above.
Triangular details reflect the shape of the theatre space.
[https://c20society.org.uk/news/grade-a-listing-for-dundee-rep-theatre]
End of the Civic Centre?
Next month sees a new plan for the town centre, presented by the owners of the ageing civic centre (not the council, curiously), which has potentially come to the end of its useful life span.
Suggestions so far have included using the space vacated by Sainsbury’s in the Olympia to serve up the civic centre functions.