We are organising a number of very interesting trips accompanied by excellent experts and speakers. These will be a unique experience. Examples are:
One of the most celebrated built experiments in megastructural planning, Cumbernauld Town Centre was praised and then loathed for its daring, futuristic, sculptural architecture and its unique attempt to produce a 24hr urban core in a high-density, multi-storey structure. Less famous but equally interesting is the surrounding housing, a diverse zoo of Radburn layouts, low-rise, medium-density villages on Italian hilltop models, and point-blocks in parks, linked or divided by substantial roads. This tour will discuss the history and theory of this complex New Town, and its successes and failures.
Tour Guide Barnabas Calder. Barnabas is a historian specialising in post-war British and North American architecture and planning. After a history degree at Worcester College, Oxford and an MA in medieval architecture at the Courtauld Institute he did a PhD in the Department of Architecture at Cambridge, researching Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre building in London. He chose Christ’s College in order to be able to live in its Lasdun building.
The most consistent quality of Glasgow is change. The city is a meander in time, never a fixed point. It reached its apogee as a working city: forges, shipbuilding, football, wealth and poverty. We shall travel from the Cuningar Loop (the site of the steel forges now gone) in the east and experience the many faces of the city. We will end on top of a former shipbuilding crane in the west, now a tourist attraction. It was forged in the east. Even in a short trip like this we will see how the city grows and changes: It’s a living place!
Tour Guide David Hasson. David is an Architect and Urban Designer specialising in Designs for schools.He has also worked since 2008 as a part time Studio Tutor in Urban Design and Architecture, a lecturer in Epistemology (by subterfuge) and Technology, at the University of Strathclyde, Department of Architecture.
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A visit to a focal point of the European Industrial Heritage Trail; the World Heritage site at New Lanark will allow participants to see the village where Robert Owen pioneered his industrial utopian mill village. Sites include the preserved buildings including the woollen mill & Robert Owen’s House, and the adjoining falls of the Clyde trail.
Tour Guide Gordon Barbour. Gordon studied architecture at Edinburgh and Oxford. For the last 20 years has worked in the development and funding of social housing and regeneration in Glasgow, currently as Development Manager for Glasgow Housing Association, the city's largest social landlord..
One of Britain's most beautiful stately homes and best kept heritage secrets This tour offers the opportunity to see Dumfries House in Ayrshire. Designed and built by John and Robert Adam between 1754 and 1759 for the 5th Earl of Dumfries, and with a unique collection of Chippendale furniture, the House has been described as an 18th century time-capsule since the principal rooms and their contents have remained virtually unchanged for 250 years. In 2007, HRH Prince Charles headed a consortium that purchased the House to keep it accessible to the public.
Knockroon Development: The tour will them move to a key project within the estate undertaken to create a lasting legacy and act as catalysts for the regeneration of the wider area. This is the new urban extension to the neighbouring town of Cumnock called Knockroon, masterplanned by The Prince¹s Foundation for the Built Environment using its intensive Enquiry by Design community engagement model. You will visit the first Phase of a total of 770 residential units, a mix of commercial/retail/community facilities/open spaces. The development is planned over around 20 years. Mark has been involved in this project from the start so will be able to explain goals, process, impact and any question you might have.
Daily Telegraph article on Dumfries House
Dumfries House website
Tour guide Mark Greaves. Mark represents The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment as its Programme Manager for Scotland. The Prince's Foundation, a charity established by HRH, The Prince of Wales, aims to transform lives by making great places and has been at the vanguard of the movement towards sustainable and ecologically sound ways of planning, designing and building. Mark is a chartered Town Planner and has been involved in numerous and varied masterplanning and regeneration projects throughout Scotland, including Knockroon, the sustainable urban extension to Cumnock.
Hazelwood School is designed for children and young people aged 2 to 17 who are blind and deaf with cognitive impairment and physical disabilities. The children and young people who attend the school will never be able to lead totally independent lives and will require lifetime support. The school needed to harness best practice in design, clinical understanding and educational support. As well as caring for children with acute special needs the school is sited in a highly sensitive conservation area. The combination of these prime elements coupled with a variety of complex clinical needs made Hazelwood an extremely complex and challenging project, involving detailed pre-build analysis, development and discussion with client groups, teachers and children over a period of 18 months. The school was completed in 2007 and the contract cost was £6.3m
Tour Guide Monica McGeever is the Head of School at Hazelwood School.
Later in the year we will also announce half-day trips such as the Glasgow bus tour, the Transport museum, local architecture (Charles Rennie Macintosh, Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson), Art Galleries, Glengoyne Distillery, Edinburgh.
Information for longer trips (e.g. the Highlands and Islands) will be provided and facilitated but not organised.
There will be a small charge attached to the trips, and this will be announce before the registration starts. Keep an eye on this page!