Cumbernauld Town Centre, Architecture, Construction, Megastructure Demolition, Exhibition + Symposium

Cumbernauld Town Centre

Listing and Demolition News for the Antonine Shopping Centre, Scotland, UK

20 April 2022

Cumbernauld Town Centre Listing

Listing application submitted for imperilled Cumbernauld town centre, a Brutalist megastructure once voted Britain’s most hated building, reports Building Design.

An application has been submitted to give Cumbernauld town centre listed status amid plans for its demolition.

photo : Ross Watson / Cumbernauld Town Centre building, courtesy of wikimedia commons

North Lanarkshire Council announced last month that it had purchased the massive brutalist structure – known as The Centre Cumbernauld – with the intention of knocking it down it and replacing it with a new town hub.

photo : Chris Upson / Cumbernauld Town Centre, courtesy of wikimedia commons

Previously on Glasgow Architecture:

Cumbernauld Town Centre

Photographs from 1968 visit by Norwegian architecture student Dag Nilsen, now Associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway – added 6 May 2011:

photos © Dag Nilsen

Cumbernauld Town Centre – photos added 28 Apr 2011:

photos © Dag Nilsen

added 26 Apr 2011:

photos © Dag Nilsen

Date of completion assumed to be around 1964.
Does anyone know the precise date of completion for this megastructure?
Wikipedia says 1955, but maybe a little later.
Please mail info(at)glasgowarchitecture.co.uk

photo © Adrian Welch

Cumbernauld Shopping Centre

Cumbernauld town centre never reached its full potential and now, forty years later the town centre now finds itself deprived of quality shops and has numerous vacant shop units.

photograph from NR

Through a project initiated by artist Neville Rae, originally from Cumbernauld, fifteen Art Space & Nature post-graduate students from Edinburgh College of Art will occupy numerous vacant shop units within phases one and two of Cumbernauld town centre.

This exhibition is the outcome of a dedicated five-week research and development period and will present work that responds to the geography, architecture, art and sociology of Cumbernauld.

The exhibition opens on the 14th of March 2009 and will run for one week.
The work produced ranges from architectural drawings, models, sculpture, installation, painting, video, audio, text and performance.

For the opening of this project there will be a symposium, taking place in Cumbernauld Theatre. A panel gathered from artists, architects and historians will come together and use Cumbernauld town centre as a starting point for discussion on the past, present and future of Cumbernauld.