Glasgow City of Architecture
Recently I was asked if I had any memories of the Garden festival , but sadly no , it was before we came to this city . However , shortly after our arrival here , Glasgow was European City of Architecture , for which many memorable events were arranged .
There was a special exhibition of newly built houses by the Green , which we looked at together with friends from Suffolk , Dave an architect himself , so professionally interested . We , having recently moved in our new home , found these houses lovely to look at , but somewhat impractical , there was hardly any storage place , not even wardrobes to put your coats in , we thought that the design must have been more important than the life of people in these houses .
This was echoed by a lecturer from the university , a Professor Macaulay , who said as much about Mr Mackintosh ’ s house . I attended these lectures which were part of the programme of the festival .
Mr Macaulay told us that Mackintosh had been friends with the most eminent painters of his day but had not a single picture on his home ’ s wall , the place was so finely kept that nobody might be tempted to sit on these chairs by the fire place and eat fish and chips .
The former university building , “ Old College ”, was located on High Street .
Glasgow is said to be the city with the best Victorian architecture in Britain , if not in Europe , but it has not been very good at preserving its heritage .
According to Mr Macaulay , the finest Renaissance building in the city had been the old University , but Glasgow wanted a new one , so it sold the building to a railway company and had it demolished .
The job to build the new one went to a Londoner , Gilbert Scott , whereas Alexander Thompson was only allowed to transfer the gatehouse of the old university to the new site . That chosen site proved to be at first not suitable for the building and had to be made safe first , which put the price up considerably , not unusual for large public projects , like the Scottish parliament building which was being built at the time of the festival .
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