Glasgow Transport Museum Building Architect

Glasgow Transport Museum, Zaha Hadid building Scotland, Riverside design by ZHA

Museum of Transport Glasgow

Riverside Museum, Scotland, UK design by Zaha Hadid Architects, London, UK

News Update May 2007

Delays of at least 18 months reported
Start on site due Nov 2007
Completion due late 2010
The opening of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow
Cost increase from £57m to £74m
Contractor: HBG Construction

Glasgow Museum of Transport

Museum of Transport Glasgow – new images 16 Nov 2007

Zaha Hadid Architects Win Glasgow Transport Museum
Gareth Hoskins Architects came 2nd

Glasgow Transport Museum Architects

Riverside Museum – Completion Photos
Museum of Transport Glasgow
photograph © Adrian Welch
Riverside Museum

Zaha Hadid : Riverside Museum Glasgow

Oct 2004

ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS CHOSEN FOR NEW RIVERSIDE MUSEUM

Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid has been chosen as the architect for Glasgow’s new £50m Riverside Museum, with Event Communications being selected to carry out the Exhibition Design work. The decisions were taken by the members of Glasgow Council’s Working Group on the Regeneration of the River Clyde after the firms on the final shortlists had made presentations and been interviewed.

The new Glasgow Riverside Museum will be a larger and improved replacement for the Transport Museum which is currently located at the Kelvin Hall. It is to be built on a site where the Clyde meets with Glasgow’s other main river, the Kelvin, and will be adjacent to Glasgow Harbour, a private-sector led mixed-use development extending to 120 acres.

Councillor Charlie Gordon, the leader of the City Council said:-
‘This is an important milestone in our proposals to turn a very popular Transport Museum into an even more popular Transport Museum in an iconic building down by the Clyde. It is also another part of the jigsaw in terms of the multi-billion regeneration of the river.

This was quite clearly a project that captured the imagination of many renowned architects and designers, and in Zaha Hadid and Event Communications we have got firms from the top drawer. I am sure that working in partnership with the City Council, they will create something world-class.’

The Transport Museum is a key element of the Council’s plans for the continued regeneration of the River Clyde. The project has been costed at £50m. The existing Transport Museum is one of the best-visited in Scotland, attracting around 400,000 people on an annual basis.

A total of 44 architects and designers had expressed an interest in working on the Transport Museum project. After a number of stages in which council officials carried out technical and financial assessments, three architectural practices and two exhibition design teams were placed on the final shortlists.

Zaha Hadid : Glasgow Riverside Museum

Glasgow City Council (GCC) PR 11 Oct 2004
The membership of the Working Group on the Regeneration of the River Clyde:-
Councillor Charlie Gordon
Councillor Jim Coleman
Councillor Dr Malcolm Green
Councillor Hanzala Malik
Councillor Dr Christopher Mason
Councillor Alex Mosson
Councillor Willie O’Rourke
Ms Lesley Sawers

Gareth Hoskins Architects : Glasgow Museum of Transport – Building Information

12 Oct 2004

Glasgow Transport Museum

From an international field of architects, Gareth Hoskins Architects were the only Scottish practice chosen as one of 8 shortlisted for the new Transport Museum.
Glasgow Riverside Museum
Glasgow Transport Museum Image © Gareth Hoskins Architects

GHA was one of the three practices invited to interview 8 Oct and were narrowly beaten to second place by Zaha Hadid.
Our proposals put forward an idea for a striking new museum building which, through the integration of its associated landscaping and consideration of sense of arrival and place, forms a new public destination within the Glasgow Harbour development that connects directly with its dramatic riverside setting.
Glasgow Museum, Clyde
Glasgow Transport Museum Image © Gareth Hoskins Architects

Our design is conceived as a series of interlinked, parallel structures which cantilever out over the river and through their volume and structural frame arrangement, allow a variety of gallery volumes of variable heights and scales to be achieved with a range of different configurations of visitor routes and journeys. The dramatic overall scale and form of these interlinked, steel clad bays echo the scale and presence of the shipbuilding sheds that once lined the banks of the Clyde.

Glasgow Museum of Transport Architects Shortlist

Glasgow Museum of Transport Architects Shortlist

GCC Transport Museum Building – 27 Aug 2004
Daniel Libeskind
Foster & Partners
Gareth Hoskins
Grimshaw Architects
Pringle Richards Sharratt
Alsop Architects
Zaha Hadid Architects

Many of the above architects are world famous and some have a pedigree in Scotland already. Fosters have had projects built in Scotland, Gareth Hoskins clearly have being the only homegrown architects, Will Alsop has worked on the Clydeside masterplan but has no resultant buildings and Zaha Hadid has designed the Kirkcaldy Maggies Centre currently under construction. The Glasgow Transport Museum shortlist is remarkable – but not unmatched – for a Scottish project in terms of how many ‘superstar’ or ‘signature’ architects are included. Certainly Glasgow City Council leader Charles Gordon has achieved his goal of forming a shortlist list of ‘leading international architects’.

The Glasgow Riverside Museum application seemed structured in a way unhelpful to Scottish Architects: ‘list three similar projects you have completed’; second round submissions were only funded by £2k per practice. Only three Scottish practices submitted. The Transport Museum Competition was run by Glasgow City Council and ‘overseen’ by the RIAS.

Glasgow New Museum of Transport Competition

Previous News re the Glasgow Transport Museum Competition

New Museum of Transport, Glasgow
Charles Gordon, of Glasgow City Council, was reported to have rejected appointing a Scottish architect for the new Museum of Transport in Glasgow’s Kelvinside in favour of a signature architect such as Foster or Gehry:

Give Scots a chance
‘Glasgow’s leaders were last night urged not to shell out millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money on a new museum to commemorate the city’s shipbuilding heritage’..Charles Gordon, the Glasgow City Council leader, said: ‘We would like an element to the building that is really monumental in size, that will give visitors the feeling of the sheer size of the ships and dwarf them just as the workers on the ships were dwarfed.’ The museum has been proposed as a replacement for the current transport museum at Kelvingrove in the West End of the city’.’

Signature Architect? Not another Bilbao please
Charles Gordon has said that the council plans to approach a leading international architect for the project. Some front-runners include Sir Norman Foster, who designed the Armadillo at the SECC in the city or Frank Gehry, who designed the world-renowned Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in the Basque country of Spain.
02.07.03

Letter from Alan Dunlop re Museum of Transport Glasgow:
02.07.03

Dear Adrian,
The leader of Glasgow City Council should be credited with kick starting the current regeneration initiatives for the Clyde, particularly, when many in the past had turned their backs. However, I guess like the majority of architects in Scotland, I am very disappointed that Charles Gordon is minded to approach a star name architect to design the New Museum of Transport.

To bypass home grown talent in favour of big names, may increase the profile of this significant project in the short term but does a disservice to all architects in Scotland and, moreover the county’s standing in world architecture will not improve if it’s architects are ignored or not considered worthy to compete for major public projects. I doubt if the international architects mentioned in the report in the Herald, will consider a £40m museum project in Glasgow as the most important in their offices. They might, but for a Scots architect it will be a lifetime project and consequently has more chance of being a truly great building.

Enric Miralles, the designer of our parliament, was an architect known only in Northern Spain until the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. That initiative gave him, and others like Raphael Moneo the chance to work on buildings of importance, which would also have an international appeal and increased Spain’s standing in world architecture. The ‘local architects’ rose to the challenge and I think a Scots architect could do the same on Clydeside.

Yours Sincerely
Alan Dunlop, Gordon Murray and Alan Dunlop Architects

Zaha Hadid Profile

INTRODUCTION
Zaha Hadid is an architect who consistently pushes the boundaries of architecture and urban design. Her work experiments with new spatial concepts intensifying existing urban landscapes in the pursuit of a visionary aesthetic that encompasses all fields of design, ranging from urban scale through to products, interiors and furniture.

PROJECTS
Zaha Hadid’s built work has won her much academic and public acclaim. Her best known projects to date are the Vitra Fire Station, Germany (1993/1999) and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Centre, US (2003).

Zaha Hadid’s most recent key building was for BMW in Leipzig, Germany

Glasgow Transport Museum: Give Scots a Chance

As discussed on this site back at the start of July, and picked up by the BD in their last issue, the debate about the Glasgow Transport Museum competition seems to be ongoing:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/12-8-19103-0-32-7.html
11.08.03

Riverside Museum, Glasgow

‘Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum is to be built between the mouth of the river Kelvin and Yorkhill Quay in the Clyde’s Lower Harbour’.
http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=1006522002
10.09.02

Zaha Hadid Architects

Glasgow Transport Museum designers, Event Communications, also worked on Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.

People’s Palace Glasgow Museum

Glasgow School of Art Competition
Glasgow School of Art design
picture from architect

Kelvingrove Art Gallery
Kelvingrove Gallery
photo : David Barbour / BDP

Comments / photos for the Glasgow Riverside Museum Building design by Zaha Hadid Architects page welcome