THE FASCINATION WITH SURFACE GIVES THIS MOST BASIC OF BUILDING TYPES AN INTELLIGENCE AND ENQUIRY THAT IS PALPABLE

摘要

In 1999, the Glasgow-based practice Glass Murray Architects, which was originally established in 1931, became Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects (GM + AD). The bulk of its workload has been in Glasgow, including the refurbishment of the Central Station, the Sentinel office development, the Radisson Hotel and Glasgow Harbour Phase Two, a major mixed-use development which is due for completion in 2010. The Dutch artist Herman deVries once said:' When I came to Scotland for the first time I saw on maps the names of many forests, but when I visited these places I found not forest, but moorland, or grazing land. Realising the impoverishment of this landscape, I studied all the topographical maps and made the text of a book In Memory of the Scottish Forests, containing the names of all those lost forests.' The forests de Vries searched in vain for were felled to fuel the Industrial Revolution. The smelting of iron ore consumed vast swathes of woodland, almost to extinction. Now, in turn, that industrial topography is being erased from the landscape.