Glasgow, Scotland With Style
by Juliet Clough
Let Glasgow Flourish! Whoever dreamt up the city's motto got it in one. Flourishing is what Glasgow does best.
The panache with which the city has shaken off its reputation for post industrial decay, to seize the UK high ground in cosmopolitan chic is already legendary, an object lesson in reinvention for Britain's great Victorian cities.
With its commercial palaces reborn as sparkling shops, cafes and galleries, its once derelict waterfronts framing stunning new architectural vistas, and its thriving arts and design scene at once breeding grounds and magnets for international talent, Scotland’s largest city has become a byword for creative energy and style.
Glasgow is unique among UK cities in boasting an identifiable style all its own, the creation, at the turn of the 20th century, of one of the world's most famous architects and three art school cronies. Just as Gaudi in Barcelona and Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago left those cities forever indebted to their genius, so Charles Rennie Mackintosh brought international recognition to Glasgow with his unique, Scots-flavoured fusion of Modernist and Art Nouveau architecture and design.
Mackintosh's buildings - churches, public buildings and houses, all of them planned down to the last doorknob - bring pilgrims to Glasgow in their thousands, drawn by the vigorous lines, the audacious detail, and the uncluttered, humane interiors that were to inspire a generation of European designers. Rooted in the architecture of his native Scotland, they drew on Glasgow's industrial boom time technology, using glass, steel and concrete to forge an architectural language at once traditional and daringly contemporary. Mackintosh's most revolutionary creation, the Glasgow School of Art, is still in use for its original purpose and, say student guides there, an inspirational place to work.
Mackintosh was both heir and inspiration to a built-in flair for innovation that is once again transforming this high-octane city. The medieval monastic settlement that became a great mercantile centre and, later, the shipbuilding capital of the world is emerging as a centre of creative diversity and one of the UK's top tourism destinations. The city is today both the UK's largest retail centre outside London and - having doubled its market share in the last five years - the fastest growing conference venue in Europe.
And it's done it in style. Visitors and shoppers stroll a largely pedestrianised centre to browse shops of a quality unseen outside London. The likes of Ralph Lauren and Escada, following in the footsteps of Armani and Versace - have been falling over themselves to acquire Victorian palaces whose architecture plunders a wealth of classical European styles.
Accommodation supply has boomed to match, its 38 per cent increase over the last five years representing another style explosion. Glasgow was one of the first cities in Europe to boast a boutique hotel, with Ken McCulloch's One Devonshire Gardens crafting a mould that inspired Malmaison. City centre restaurants with rooms, including media haunt St Jude's; serviced apartments frequented by the likes of George Clooney; all find their natural home in Glasgow. The brilliantly quirky Arthouse hotel, whose celebrity guest list includes Eminem and Beyoncé, recently swept the board as Scotland's Leading Hotel, at the World Travel Awards held in New York.
The restaurant scene changes at a breathtaking rate to keep pace with Glasgow's insatiable appetite for the new. Design guru Sir Terence Conran has just hit town with étain, his first destination restaurant outside London, and with a new branch of his crisply minimalist mini-chain, Zinc. Established favourites, majoring on a traditional French treatment of the peerless Scots larder, keep company with a host of edgy newcomers, many of them reflecting Glasgow's status as Scotland's only genuinely multicultural city.
A trading seaport, facing the Atlantic, Scotland's most European-flavoured city has also looked West for inspiration. "Think Manhattan with a Scottish accent" said one USA style magazine. Think buzzy, metropolitan confidence, think wisecracking one-liners, think gallus humour learnt at the school of hard knocks. 'Wha's like us?' New Yorkers are like us, that's who.
Each of Glasgow's incarnations has brought huge stylistic dividends. The 18th century tobacco barons who dominated the UK trade with Virginia left us their Georgian mansions disposed around an elegant city centre grid of streets. Money from leading 19th century industrialists built what John Betjeman called the finest Victorian city in Britain. It stacked the much loved fantasy castle that is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum with works of art, some of them, including a world famous collection of French Impressionist paintings, among the most avant garde of their day.
CRM himself owed an incalculable debt to the artisans and craftsmen who built the Clyde ships and adorned their interiors, says Stuart MacDonald, director of The Lighthouse, the Mackintosh building which houses the national centre for architecture and design. In 1944, the shipping magnate Sir William Burrell gifted his lifetime's art collection to the city. Housed in an airy, purpose-built showcase of glass, steel and smooth pink stone the Burrell Collection opened in 1983 to become an instant draw to art lovers the world over.
After the Second World War, the furnaces, the railway workshops, the mills and shipyards fell gradually silent, leaving grim urban deprivation in their wake. But Glasgow's indomitable, can-do spirit remained constant, fuelled by a self-belief that has always enabled Glaswegians to get out of reverse gear and find a way forward.
Nomination as Cultural Capital of Europe in 1990, in the wake of Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Florence and Paris, not only allowed Glasgow to showcase her thriving artistic assets but gave the old girl the confidence she needed to let her got-it-flaunt-it tendencies rip. In 1999 the city celebrated its reign as UK City of Architecture and Design, both events embracing Mackintosh's achievements as central to the city's image of its creative, design-propelled self.
It is where Glasgow's stylistic legacy meshes with today's burst of creativity that the sparks fly brightest. A healthy synergy between Glasgow's mushrooming community of artists and designers and the multi-disciplinary media based in the city is bringing a spate of talent across the border. Glasgow has blossomed into the UK's centre for the creative industries, which now employ 8 per cent of the working population. "It is punching way above its weight", reckons Stuart MacDonald: "Glasgow can hold its own today with Barcelona and Brussels".
The same cross-fertilisation flourishes in the Centre for Contemporary Arts, where film and television makers, computer games designers, visual and performance artists, musicians and dancers all rub shoulders. "A cutting edge commitment to risk" is how the CCA's head of development Tracey Kelly defines the centre's commitment to fostering new young talent and to bringing cross-arts programmes to the widest possible audience.
Not that Glasgow, home to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the national opera and ballet companies, as well as some 200 other cultural organisations, has ever needed much telling on that front. Its thriving museums and galleries are the most visited civic collections of any city’s in Britain. Cyril Gerber, father of the city's contemporary art galleries is a legendary promoter of young British talent, often hanging fresh work from the Glasgow School of Art beside that of illustrious forebears: the Scottish Colourists, Joan Eardley, and a whole line of Glasgow Boys.
Giant rock bands of the likes of Travis and Texas have followed a trail blazed by fellow Glaswegians Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet. Meanwhile, a new generation, spearheaded by Indie sensation Franz Ferdinand and Glasgow-based Snow Patrol is well on its way to conquering the world. With live music, rock to dance, the city's cellars foster a respected underground scene; out of this have grown labels such as Glasgow-based record companies Slam and Chemikal Underground and live acts such as Mogwai, Arab Strap and Brit award winners Belle & Sebastian.
"Ninety percent of the international artists who have ever played Scotland will tell you Glasgow audiences are the best in the world", says Dave Corbet of DF Concerts, the company responsible for promoting some 75 per cent of Scotland's live music events. "Warm, friendly, up for it, loud and appreciative. Glaswegians really know how to have a good time".
And none better than the city's 100,000-strong student population whose universities and colleges continue to lead the field in fostering some of Scotland's greatest inventive talent.
Focus of Glasgow's meteoric economic growth (2.4% in 2002 as opposed to a national average of 1.8%) the Clyde is coming back on stream. The gleaming plates of Norman Foster's Clyde Auditorium and the dazzling titanium Science Centre opposite reflect the shape of things to come. A ten-year project, providing 20,000 new jobs is currently transforming the old Pacific Quay into a media village, already earmarked by the BBC and Scottish Television. Meanwhile, US architects the Richard Rodgers Partnership are soon to throw a stunning ellipse of a bridge over the river, where the glossy towers of a new international financial services district are reaching skywards above the Anderston and Hydepark Quays.
As one visiting journalist said: "When you hear of post-industrial cities claiming born again status you tend to think 'Oh yeah?' With Glasgow, it's 'Oh Wow!'
Let Glasgow Flourish! Whoever dreamt up the city's motto got it in one. Flourishing is what Glasgow does best.
The panache with which the city has shaken off its reputation for post industrial decay, to seize the UK high ground in cosmopolitan chic is already legendary, an object lesson in reinvention for Britain's great Victorian cities.
With its commercial palaces reborn as sparkling shops, cafes and galleries, its once derelict waterfronts framing stunning new architectural vistas, and its thriving arts and design scene at once breeding grounds and magnets for international talent, Scotland’s largest city has become a byword for creative energy and style.
Glasgow is unique among UK cities in boasting an identifiable style all its own, the creation, at the turn of the 20th century, of one of the world's most famous architects and three art school cronies. Just as Gaudi in Barcelona and Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago left those cities forever indebted to their genius, so Charles Rennie Mackintosh brought international recognition to Glasgow with his unique, Scots-flavoured fusion of Modernist and Art Nouveau architecture and design.
Mackintosh's buildings - churches, public buildings and houses, all of them planned down to the last doorknob - bring pilgrims to Glasgow in their thousands, drawn by the vigorous lines, the audacious detail, and the uncluttered, humane interiors that were to inspire a generation of European designers. Rooted in the architecture of his native Scotland, they drew on Glasgow's industrial boom time technology, using glass, steel and concrete to forge an architectural language at once traditional and daringly contemporary. Mackintosh's most revolutionary creation, the Glasgow School of Art, is still in use for its original purpose and, say student guides there, an inspirational place to work.
Mackintosh was both heir and inspiration to a built-in flair for innovation that is once again transforming this high-octane city. The medieval monastic settlement that became a great mercantile centre and, later, the shipbuilding capital of the world is emerging as a centre of creative diversity and one of the UK's top tourism destinations. The city is today both the UK's largest retail centre outside London and - having doubled its market share in the last five years - the fastest growing conference venue in Europe.
And it's done it in style. Visitors and shoppers stroll a largely pedestrianised centre to browse shops of a quality unseen outside London. The likes of Ralph Lauren and Escada, following in the footsteps of Armani and Versace - have been falling over themselves to acquire Victorian palaces whose architecture plunders a wealth of classical European styles.
Accommodation supply has boomed to match, its 38 per cent increase over the last five years representing another style explosion. Glasgow was one of the first cities in Europe to boast a boutique hotel, with Ken McCulloch's One Devonshire Gardens crafting a mould that inspired Malmaison. City centre restaurants with rooms, including media haunt St Jude's; serviced apartments frequented by the likes of George Clooney; all find their natural home in Glasgow. The brilliantly quirky Arthouse hotel, whose celebrity guest list includes Eminem and Beyoncé, recently swept the board as Scotland's Leading Hotel, at the World Travel Awards held in New York.
The restaurant scene changes at a breathtaking rate to keep pace with Glasgow's insatiable appetite for the new. Design guru Sir Terence Conran has just hit town with étain, his first destination restaurant outside London, and with a new branch of his crisply minimalist mini-chain, Zinc. Established favourites, majoring on a traditional French treatment of the peerless Scots larder, keep company with a host of edgy newcomers, many of them reflecting Glasgow's status as Scotland's only genuinely multicultural city.
A trading seaport, facing the Atlantic, Scotland's most European-flavoured city has also looked West for inspiration. "Think Manhattan with a Scottish accent" said one USA style magazine. Think buzzy, metropolitan confidence, think wisecracking one-liners, think gallus humour learnt at the school of hard knocks. 'Wha's like us?' New Yorkers are like us, that's who.
Each of Glasgow's incarnations has brought huge stylistic dividends. The 18th century tobacco barons who dominated the UK trade with Virginia left us their Georgian mansions disposed around an elegant city centre grid of streets. Money from leading 19th century industrialists built what John Betjeman called the finest Victorian city in Britain. It stacked the much loved fantasy castle that is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum with works of art, some of them, including a world famous collection of French Impressionist paintings, among the most avant garde of their day.
CRM himself owed an incalculable debt to the artisans and craftsmen who built the Clyde ships and adorned their interiors, says Stuart MacDonald, director of The Lighthouse, the Mackintosh building which houses the national centre for architecture and design. In 1944, the shipping magnate Sir William Burrell gifted his lifetime's art collection to the city. Housed in an airy, purpose-built showcase of glass, steel and smooth pink stone the Burrell Collection opened in 1983 to become an instant draw to art lovers the world over.
After the Second World War, the furnaces, the railway workshops, the mills and shipyards fell gradually silent, leaving grim urban deprivation in their wake. But Glasgow's indomitable, can-do spirit remained constant, fuelled by a self-belief that has always enabled Glaswegians to get out of reverse gear and find a way forward.
Nomination as Cultural Capital of Europe in 1990, in the wake of Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Florence and Paris, not only allowed Glasgow to showcase her thriving artistic assets but gave the old girl the confidence she needed to let her got-it-flaunt-it tendencies rip. In 1999 the city celebrated its reign as UK City of Architecture and Design, both events embracing Mackintosh's achievements as central to the city's image of its creative, design-propelled self.
It is where Glasgow's stylistic legacy meshes with today's burst of creativity that the sparks fly brightest. A healthy synergy between Glasgow's mushrooming community of artists and designers and the multi-disciplinary media based in the city is bringing a spate of talent across the border. Glasgow has blossomed into the UK's centre for the creative industries, which now employ 8 per cent of the working population. "It is punching way above its weight", reckons Stuart MacDonald: "Glasgow can hold its own today with Barcelona and Brussels".
The same cross-fertilisation flourishes in the Centre for Contemporary Arts, where film and television makers, computer games designers, visual and performance artists, musicians and dancers all rub shoulders. "A cutting edge commitment to risk" is how the CCA's head of development Tracey Kelly defines the centre's commitment to fostering new young talent and to bringing cross-arts programmes to the widest possible audience.
Not that Glasgow, home to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the national opera and ballet companies, as well as some 200 other cultural organisations, has ever needed much telling on that front. Its thriving museums and galleries are the most visited civic collections of any city’s in Britain. Cyril Gerber, father of the city's contemporary art galleries is a legendary promoter of young British talent, often hanging fresh work from the Glasgow School of Art beside that of illustrious forebears: the Scottish Colourists, Joan Eardley, and a whole line of Glasgow Boys.
Giant rock bands of the likes of Travis and Texas have followed a trail blazed by fellow Glaswegians Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet. Meanwhile, a new generation, spearheaded by Indie sensation Franz Ferdinand and Glasgow-based Snow Patrol is well on its way to conquering the world. With live music, rock to dance, the city's cellars foster a respected underground scene; out of this have grown labels such as Glasgow-based record companies Slam and Chemikal Underground and live acts such as Mogwai, Arab Strap and Brit award winners Belle & Sebastian.
"Ninety percent of the international artists who have ever played Scotland will tell you Glasgow audiences are the best in the world", says Dave Corbet of DF Concerts, the company responsible for promoting some 75 per cent of Scotland's live music events. "Warm, friendly, up for it, loud and appreciative. Glaswegians really know how to have a good time".
And none better than the city's 100,000-strong student population whose universities and colleges continue to lead the field in fostering some of Scotland's greatest inventive talent.
Focus of Glasgow's meteoric economic growth (2.4% in 2002 as opposed to a national average of 1.8%) the Clyde is coming back on stream. The gleaming plates of Norman Foster's Clyde Auditorium and the dazzling titanium Science Centre opposite reflect the shape of things to come. A ten-year project, providing 20,000 new jobs is currently transforming the old Pacific Quay into a media village, already earmarked by the BBC and Scottish Television. Meanwhile, US architects the Richard Rodgers Partnership are soon to throw a stunning ellipse of a bridge over the river, where the glossy towers of a new international financial services district are reaching skywards above the Anderston and Hydepark Quays.
As one visiting journalist said: "When you hear of post-industrial cities claiming born again status you tend to think 'Oh yeah?' With Glasgow, it's 'Oh Wow!'