Red Road Flats Demolition – News Update May 2008:
Glasgow’s tallest tower blocks set for demolition in £60m rehousing initiative fortenants: Red Road flats owned by Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) since 2003.

Previously:
Glasgow Housing Association has announced plans to pull down the city's notorious Red Road scheme as part of a £60m redevelopment. The eight skyscrapers - 1,300 flats packed onto this small site in these eight huge tower blocks - among Britain's tallest, are expected to be demolished over the next decade.
GHA confirmed the first demolition at the site, one of two 27-storey slabs, as it announced record investment in a new scheme for Balornock and Barmulloch. Detailed plans for Red Road Flats will be a matter for future consultations and the area's tenants group.
Around 600 low-rise private and social-rented homes will be built, filling in the spaces between Red Road towers and brownfields left by bulldozers tearing down an earlier generation of tenement homes.



Glasgow Housing : main page

Glasgow houses

Glasgow Housing - Tower Blocks


Glasgow tower blocks - images © adrian welch 2005

The city is well known (in Scotland at least) for the Comprehensive Redevelopment Areas which decimated slums in the fifties and sixties, replacing them with brave new world tower blocks and slab blocks. Some examples above from just south of the Crown Street area (left) and from the Gorbals (right). Queen Elizabeth Square housing by Basil Spence was demolished and has now been replaced by a CZWG masterplan (led by Gordon Duffy now of Duffy & Batt).


Glasgow tower block mural - scanned image © adrian welch 1988



Glasgow Council Housing - Brief History
The comprehensive development of central Glasgow areas was the largest of any city in the UK and thousands of tenements were demolished, principally in the fifties. The key area redeveloped was Hutchestown and the Gorbals.

In 1947, city councillors visited Marseille to inspect new tower-blocks devised by Le Corbusier. By 1979 Glasgow had more than 300 multi-storey tower blocks.

The Red Road flats at Balornock were, at 31 storeys, the highest in Europe. The first residents were welcomed in 1969, and the blocks were completed in the summer of 1971. However, by 1975 complaints were starting to emerge re the Red Road flats from residents. It was only in 1991 that Concierges were put in place.



Glasgow Housing : main page

Film: Andrea Arnold's award-winning 2006 movie 'Red Road'

Scottish Housing: best scottish buildings of the last three decades

GHA Housing
Euro inquiry into £4bn GHA housing transfer
The European Commission has launched an investigation into the financing of the £4bn Glasgow housing stock transfer
12.07.02

Glasgow housing : Houses in Multiple Occupancy

Drumchapel Housing

Historic Glasgow: best glasgow buildings of the past

Edinburgh Houses

Scottish Housing

Glasgow : back to index

Buildings / photos for the Red Road Flats Building page welcome:
info@glasgowarchitecture.co.uk

Red Road Flats Glasgow - page: adrian welch / isabelle lomholt

Glasgow Housing Association - Website: www.gha.org.uk