John McAslan's vision will put George Square at the heart of Glasgow

Whatever McAslan thinks, his practice John McAslan + Partners has won more than 200 international design awards and has offices in London, Sydney, New York, Belfast and, of course, McAslan’s homeland, Scotland. It does rather suggest he’s long known what he’s doing.

John McAslan (Image: free)

And many have noticed. Last year the publisher Thames & Hudson published a sumptuous monograph on McAslan’s career, Making Architecture. In 2022 The Financial Times described him as “the master of architectural reinvention,” citing his work at King’s Cross, his extensive redevelopment of The Burrell in Glasgow and his practice’s ongoing work redeveloping Penn Station in New York.

“From the youngest age I was always interested in making things better than they were,” McAslan tells me. “We’ve been doing this for 40 odd years and it’s not something we’ve ever shouted about. It’s just been natural.”

It is midday on a Friday and McAslan is getting ready to go into work for the afternoon when we speak. “I’m one of those sad bastards who goes to work on a Friday, but somebody has to do it, Teddy. It’s even sadder when you don’t mind.”

But before that he is talking to me, about art and architecture and climate change and The Beatles and homelessness and George Square and anything else that crosses his mind.

Oh, but McAslan is a tonic. Words and ideas rat-a-tat out of him at speed. He is constantly in fifth gear and then he’ll come to a corner, shift down and ask, “What was your question?” Usually I’m so far behind him trying to catch up that I can’t remember.

Right at the beginning of our conversation I ask him, what is architecture for? For the following 20 minutes he gives me a disquisition on the importance of art and the sciences which takes in his involvement with the Burgh Hall in his home town of Dunoon (which he helped save from demolition, buying it for £1 and then played a part in bringing it back to life; he’s now the chair of the Trust), his plans for its future, climate change, the uselessness of politicians, the Bilbao effect and the role architecture has to play in contemporary life.

Here are the edited highlights.. Architecture, McAslan argues, must grapple with the issues of the day; climate change, poverty, homelessness. Without affordable housing, he points out, how can you solve the latter?

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“I think, for the profession to have meaning it must be at the centre of those conversations, not at the edge of them.

“And therefore architecture has got a huge and fundamental importance, but only if we as architects engage in the issues of the day and have a powerful voice.

“Otherwise, we become slaves to clients who want cheaply built buildings, weak planning systems that allow buildings that are built too big and are unsustainable.

“So, long-winded answer to say I think architecture is incredibly relevant and is maybe the most important …” He stops and asks himself a question. “Is it the most important? …”

A beat, two beats. “Certainly, you can’t miss it,” he decides.

“What we can do is bring our skill to bear and I think make the world a better place. But we need to work hard in thinking, what is that and how do we express it? And how do we position the profession at the heart of the world rather than as a peripheral thing.”

McAslan wants to do the same in his role as chair of the Burgh Hall Trust in Dunoon. He tells me he is keen to revisit the artist Joseph Beuys’s idea of planting 7000 Oaks in the 21st century. “Imagine all the ecological benefits.”

McAslan also fancies building a modern-day Kon Tiki, a raft out of the debris washed up from the Holy Loch and then sailing it somewhere. “I don’t know how far you’d get. I shouldn’t be the captain. I’d be blown out into the Atlantic and lost forever.”

What might be noticeable in all of this is that at no point has he talked about form or materiality or any of the concepts we might expect architects to engage with.

When I ask him how he first became interested in architecture growing up in Dunoon he begins by talking about The Beatles.

Queen Street Station in Glasgow (Image: free)

“When I was a kid I didn’t really have much engagement with architecture. But every Christmas time I would get a Beatles album. That was the big present. What I used to do is, I would draw the Beatles albums.”

In short, he would copy the album covers (“it was very easy with the White Album”). That in turn led him to start drawing the ranch houses he used to see in American magazines brought to Dunoon by American servicemen. “I was really taken by ranch houses and all the things we didn’t have.”

And this would eventually lead him to study architecture at Edinburgh University. After graduating and travelling around America he worked with the architect Richard Rogers which was to prove hugely inspirational.

“I worked at Richard Rogers’s office for a long time. He was a fantastic man, amazingly supportive of young architects and I benefited from knowing him after I left the practice. Amazingly generous.

“He was a great source of inspiration for me. And it just so happened that he produced a number of brilliant buildings that were hi-tech in this country. But it resonated with me because it was an architecture that was non-hierarchical. It was pop architecture.”

Working for Rogers also gave McAslan an insight into the importance of the application of research and architectural knowledge.

“A lot of architects go to a source like, say, Zaha Hadid and they get a gorgeous shape, but don’t actually interrogate how she got there.

“Therefore it’s just blobby stuff that has no meaning, whereas Zaha was an artist who developed and then honed her approach.”

McAslan has had plenty of time to hone its approach on one project in particular. George Square. In 2013 his practice won the original competition to redesign Glasgow’s central hub, only for the plan to be cancelled almost immediately. In 2021 McAslan + Partners were successful again in a competition rerun and work is expected to conclude on the George Square redevelopment in 2027.

“We are making progress and developing the scheme. It’s moving forward,” McAslan says today. “And the real challenge for us is how far can the project extend itself in its various directions.

“It’s not just about the square, it’s about the avenues that lead to and from the square and connect the city to the west. A little bit to the east towards the historic part of the city, south to the merchant city. Less perhaps to the north. It’s such a steep hill.

“So, to me, the key thing is how far can we go to join it all up and therefore for the impact to be felt as far as possible.

“The budget is so constrained it could be spent many many times more and therefore we have to be incredibly careful - like the Burrell - to allow the budget to extend as far as possible. And we have to get as much possible use out of the square itself without turning it into a fairground.”

The George Square & Avenues plan ©JMP (Image: free)

It’s a chance to do something he has expressed a love for before. Place-making.

Well, up to a point, he says. “Probably our instinct is to do less than more with the space because it’s wounded, of course, by the ugly Queen Street Station. I think what’s happened to Queen Street Station is pretty second-rate.

“On three sides it’s very handsome. It’s a gorgeous space to be in. The civic chambers and the buildings to the south and the west side are great buildings. And then the avenues that lead from it. It’s a brilliant space, so we have to make it so that it resonates historically, that we extend the public realm as far as we can and that we ensure it’s affordable and maintainable.”

What does this all mean? Perhaps that at 70 McAslan is just getting started. He’s about to restructure his business ownership but the word retirement is not in the blueprint.

“I hope no one thinks I’m going anywhere. The only way I’m leaving here is in a box with a lid. On or off, you can choose.”

John McAslan is speaking at the Boswell Book Festival, Dumfries House on May 11 at 10.45am. Making Architecture: The Work of John McAslan + Partners is published by Thames & Hudson