...............I have this thing for hideous, shabby, modernist architecture.
Tower blocks, concrete shopping arcades, hi-rise car parks, underpasses, urban motorways, municipal buildings, pedestrianised city streets..........
Growing up in a city that was transforming from one brand of hellish to another, I'm very much aware of the best of the old and the worst of the new.
The City Chambers, Central Station, The Art School (or any other Rennie Mac for that matter), Provand's Lordship, Greek Thomson, Glasgow Cathederal, the Merchant City. Just the tip of the iceberg. Then there's the parks. Kelvingrove, Queens Park, Pollok Park, Bellahouston, Ruchill........ some would say The Necropolis even qualifies in the latter category.
A city screaming with history. None of it mine.
Is that crass? Self centred? Possible. It's also understandable. We relate to our environments in a visceral manner. The high rise flats, the concrete flyovers, the dank underpasses, they all have that imprint in my infant mind. The M8 at St Georges Cross, viewed from Kelvinbridge, about 3/4 of a mile away seemed to hold a strange, even exotic lure to me as a child, for beyond it lay the city centre and beyond that..... well, who knew?
As stated above, I have a great deal of pride in Glasgow's architectural history, but it's the less conventionally aesthetic, modernist, nay brutalist constructions that were rattled up in the ten years prior to and following my birth that form my sense of identity for the pace I live, the place I am from.
In short; I Heart Rennie Mac, but have you ever stood on the Anderston Footbridge and just felt the world flow under your feet?
