Glasgow building to be modelled on it
Randy Boswell
Province
Peter Wall and One Wall Centre. DAVID CLARK — THE PROVINCE
Architects in Glasgow who have announced plans for the tallest structure ever built in Scotland say an acclaimed new Vancouver skyscraper was the “inspiration” for their project, which is designed to kickstart a modern regeneration of the ancient city.
One Wall Centre, a gleaming, 48-storey housing-hotel hybrid that has become a landmark on Vancouver‘s skyline, was described yesterday by David McNaughton, one of the Scottish architects, as “a modern icon of Canada.”
He added that with so much of Canada‘s architecture shaped by 19th-century Scottish stonemasons, “It’s nice to have architectural echoes back across the pond.”
The Vancouver tower, completed in 2001 and named the world’s best new skyscraper at the time, is British Columbia‘s tallest building.
Designed by the Vancouver firm Busby, Perkins and Will, One Wall Centre was the first high-rise in Canada to combine residential and hotel floors, and it pioneered a host of “green” features that reduce electricity use and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Its eye-shaped footprint and extremely slender construction have been hailed as unique, and the building was named B.C.’s top engineering project in 2002, partly for a series of innovations that ensure its stability in the face of high winds and earthquakes.
McNaughton, who is designing Glasgow’s version of the tower with partner Bob Ramage, said the city is infamous for “large, grim tower blocks” built after the Second World War and which have communicated a sense of “misery and desolation” to the world.
But with the city poised to invest about $3 billion for a massive urban-renewal program, a still-unidentified consortium has proposed the 42-storey building modelled on One Wall Centre as a gateway landmark in Glasgow’s east end.
Soaring 10 floors higher than any existing building in the city, the new tower would — like its Canadian counterpart — offer a mix of commercial units, hotel space and condominiums.
“From a professional point of view, it is the opportunity of a lifetime for me,” Ramage told reporters at Wednesday’s announcement of the project.
“It will not look exactly like One Wall, but when one is involved in a project like this, such structures become an inspiration.”
George Redmond, a Glasgow councillor who chairs the city’s facelift commission, told reporters Wednesday that “the skyscraper will be a legacy of Scotland‘s biggest renewal development.”
McNaughton said he and Ramage pored over architectural publications from around the world before they discovered One Wall Centre.
“We said, ‘Wow, that’s the kind of thing we would like to do.'”
They asked a friend in Vancouver to send pictures of the building and plan to visit the B.C. skyscraper as part of their own planning and development of the Glasgow tower.
McNaughton said they have completed initial drawings of the proposed building but are not yet releasing the images.
David Dove, a principal architect with Busby Perkins and Will, said Glasgow‘s planned imitation of One Wall Centre “certainly is flattering” and “we’ll be very anxious to see what their building looks like.”
© The Vancouver Province 2005
