Glasgow's architectural heritage must be preserved

The same audit reports a staggering 2,226 buildings at risk in Scotland, 151 of them in Glasgow, almost 10% of the total number of listed buildings. Glasgow’s success in regeneration initiatives and individual conservation projects has not been translated to a wider strategy of urban conservation, integrating its very substantial and significant architectural heritage.

In order to conserve a building and a city it is necessary to adapt them to contemporary needs, without damaging their values and significance. This is how historic cities have evolved over time, making them beautiful as well as sustainable. For this purpose, it is appropriate to enable new design for the existing and new buildings.

This does not mean to ask architects to design facades in stone that is no longer sourced in Scotland. As Carlo Scarpa, Rafael Moneo, David Chipperfield and other architects have demonstrated, appropriate design in historic buildings and gap sites of historic cities does not mean to copy the forms and materials of the surrounding buildings, but to understand and respond to the history, architecture, materiality and culture of the place, and to design in a contemporary way, creating architecture of quality.

Dr Cristina Gonzalez-Longo (Image: University of Strathclyde)

Adequate procurement processes have to be in place to allow for this, crucially - as it has happened since eighteenth-century and even before-, there should be architectural competitions, ensuring that the best possible conservation and design is realised. This is much needed for the Glasgow School of Art, and the much beloved ABC building site. New generations of architects do not have the opportunity to employ their knowledge and creativity, and they do not feel that they can be contributors to our environment.

Many significant buildings in Glasgow, in Scotland and globally were won by competition by very young architects. They had however a robust education and training and mentors and role models to refer to. For example, William Leiper (1839- 1916) served his apprenticeship with Boucher & Cousland, going then to London to work for John Loughborough Pearson and William White, entering to the circle of Edward William Godwin and William Burges. He won the competition for Dowanhill Church (now Cottiers) in Glasgow when he was 25 years old.

We still hear how architectural conservation is considered difficult and expensive, which is the case if there is a lack of skills and expertise in the design team as well as a lack of extensive preliminary studies and investigations that allow to reduce the uncertainties that conservation interventions involve. The require a different methodology and expertise than a new construction, and thereafter additional education and training is required.

This involves appropriate curricula and capable and experienced teachers, at all levels of education. It should start from schools to raise awareness of this field of work, and going to vocational training and higher education. Overall, public funding should support a robust programme of capacity building to ensure that the specific competences are available and in place. The new UNESCO Framework for Arts and Culture Education (2024), signed by all countries, which promotes multistakeholder collaboration and broad intersectoral partnerships, is an opportunity to implement integrated approaches and new methods of delivery.

Looking at the pictures of A.M. Doak et al. book ‘‘Glasgow at a Glance’, it becomes evident the serious deterioration that has taken place in historic buildings even in the last 60 years. A particularly striking one is the Monteath Mausoleum at Glasgow’s Necropolis, which is vanishing in front of us. This is a great piece of architecture and cultural significance, as well as a landmark in the Necropolis skyline. It is a Category A Listed site that needs to be conserved, urgently.

A world-class Glasgow architect such as Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson is largely unknown abroad, despite the great work of Gavin Stamp and others to disseminate his work. Three of his masterpieces have not been in use for very long time: Caledonia Road Church is a ruin in an awkward motorway setting, St Vincent Street Church and the Egyptian Halls are also waiting to be brought back to life.

As Cottiers in the former Dowanhill Church demonstrates, it is possible to successfully conserve buildings, by providing uses sympathetic to the original architecture. But before proceeding to conserve and reuse vacant and deteriorated buildings, it is necessary to map, survey, study and assess them, in context. The key problem for unsuccessful architectural interventions is the lack of an expert team able to prepare a detailed preliminary assessment, so that the intervention is - following good conservation practice-, restricted to the minimum necessary.

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Unfortunately, for commercial interests, reducing energy consumption in buildings has been made equivalent to adding materials such as insulation, which many times is not necessary, and sometimes is even more damaging both for the building fabric and the health of the occupants. During the 1970s and 1980s extensive inappropriate stone cleaning was carried out in facades, with very damaging consequences. Indiscriminate retrofitting of buildings could have the even worst effects as it will also affect the health of the inhabitants by creating more condensation in the interiors.

Many basic parameters such as the thickness of existing walls are not taken in account, basing interventions on assumptions of walls built-up rather than scientific evidence. Buildings may appear similar but thickness of walls varies from building to building and many times even from floor to floor, thereafter different measures are required. There is also a very large variety of stone used in Glasgow’s buildings with very different performance and durability, depending also very much on the orientation and exposure of the buildings and elements, as well as their setting and microclimates. Sometimes models are used but tend to be partial, focused on individual elements such as windows or roofs, or simplified ones, without considering the buildings as the complex systems that they are.

To address the education and training needs required for conserving built heritage should be a national priority, as the historic environment is not only good for our well-being and that of future generations, but it is a critical factor for economic development. Overall, how countries and cities conserve their heritage is a key indicator of sustainable development.

Last but not least, a call for a consistent use of terminology in the field of architectural conservation should be made. If a building is reconstructed without any scientific evidence, it should not be presented as conservation. And, indeed, restoration (bringing the building back to a particular period of its history) is not conservation as buildings should reflect not only their original design but all their history.

Retrofitting, when required, as well as reuse, are very much part of an architectural conservation project, which is, above all and architectural project. As such, it has two main purposes: to conserve and to innovate. As the history of architecture demonstrates these two issues go hand by hand. And, certainly, time and the building history have to be taken in account, in a critical way, and based on scientific evidence, not on opinions and assumptions, and designing new parts in a contemporary way. Overall, architectural conservation is a cultural action, not just a technological or economic one.

Recreations or restorations to achieve ‘former glory’ by making new constructions to look like old one is inappropriate for both cultural and technical reasons, creating future problems of maintenance and even designation.  Instead, every effort should be put in conserving the architectural heritage, prioritising that at risk to be lost.

Dr Cristina González-Longo is a RIBA Specialist Conservation Architect, the Director of the MSc in Architectural Design for the Conservation of Built Heritage, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde and the President of ICOMOS-CIF

The issues presented in this article and other will be discussed, within an international context, at the ICOMO-CIF 40th Anniversary Symposium in Venice (4th – 6th November) https://cif.icomos.org/icomos-cif-40th-anniversarys-2024-symposium-and-study-tour-in-venice/