High-Rise

THROUGH THE SQUARE WINDOW

Its not just Glasgow’s high-rise flats that can offer us a view of the city and the enveloping country; the city’s wealth of internal hills and drumlins and their blossoming tall buildings can do that too. The following pictures are examples of exactly that, and show views from five tall structures in and around Glasgow’s epicentre. They include a lighthouse, a science tower, an observatory, a cinema, and a library.

The Glasgow Science Centre of which the Science Tower is a part is a recent addition to Glasgow's ever-changing cityscape. In spite of initial teething problems involving a few ballbearings, the Science Tower eventually opened in 2004. It was at this time the tallest fully revolving freestanding structure in the world. Since it faces into the wind it normally faces west, and here we have a typical view from its visor looking over the Broomielaw, Yorkhill, Partick and beyond. The Kilpatrick Hills can be seen in the distance with the knobbly upthrust of Dumgoyne to the right. Spectacular views and well worth the wait!

Level Eleven of Glasgow University Library is dedicated to Fine Art and Philosophy. Standing as it does on the summit of Gilmorehill the building (not one of Glasgow's prettiest) offers uninterrupted views all over Glasgow. Fine Art and Philosophy have never been better accommodated. The building, designed by William Whitfield, was built between 1965-68. There are some wonderful images and info detailing this phase at -

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/sept2008.html

The 'Lighthouse' in Glasgow, formerly the 'Glasgow Herald Building' was completed in 1895 designed by the architectural firm Honeyman & Keppie, of which Charles Rennie McIntosh was an apprentice. It is a wonderful building which offers two outlook points from which to marvel at the city. This one looks north and east across Glasgow's intricate roofscape. From the other, the McIntosh Tower, one can admire the meandering River Clyde and the largest glass roof in the world (belonging to Central Station).The Lighthouse is currently home to Scotland's Centre for Architecture.

At the time of opening in 2001 the UGC Cinema in Glasgow, at 62m high, was the tallest cinema in the world. It boasted 18 screens with a capacity for 4,277 people. But its real treasure was a '19th screen' at the top of the building offering uninterrupted views of the city to the east and south and the Campsie bank to the north. Why anyone bothered with any of the other screens was beyond me, and besides this one, in the spirit of the true Scotsman, was absolutely free.

From the wonderful Paisley Observatory looking towards the Kilpatricks.

preamble

High-rise flats and tower blocks, of which Glasgow has its fair share, offer experiences not to be taken lightly. Being detached from the earth 17 floors up may resonate unkindly with one's 'terra interna' but in terms of affording us aspects on the greater wider city and its seamless connections with country and sea, it is a price worth paying. It comes as no surprise then to learn that many of Knightswood's high-rises (an area in west Glasgow) are named after mountains in the Highland range. Even Walt Whitman knew of the benefits of living in the sky when he wrote his View from the Seventh Floor. Yet, it's not just the views. The high-rise is a virtual microcosm of bizarre and colourful happenings. Whether looking out or looking in, the monolithic high-rise offers much to provoke the mind.

The header photo, above, is looking north-east from the top floor (24th) of Kirkton Flats towards Lincoln Flats and the Campsie Fells in the background.

song from the 17th floor

Quiconque habite dans un tour est un touriste. Erik Satie

True tourism begins in a tower
Looking out
To the region of being -

Earth-movement, meteo-morphosis
Draw out the beginnings of seeing
Paint the eye with cloud, dawn and dusk.

Even sealed, seventeen floors high, there’s the possibility of an education,
that leads the eye
out and up -

Diffractions, refractions,
reflections and deflections,
One learns of flex and flux -

What modern man wants is a room, well-lit and heated, with a corner from which he can watch the stars.

Sky birds, residents and errants
shoal through with a little wingwork,
light the sky with their passing cries.

Then, on a clear night,
From the lookout tower,
Noctilucent,
Physics, metaphysics,
Stellar tours
Oceanography,
Cruising across the cosmos
From the seventeenth floor,
the tourist,
gleaning the universe city,
the free, all-inclusive deal -

CLARITY NOT CLUTTER

The practice of 'Philosophy' in Japanese culture simply denotes the study of clarity. What better place to start, then, than 17 floors up, in the sky, gazing across the city. Courses can then be plot through the city and beyond. The eye of the high-rise window is the pathfinder par excellence. Here, the map is most definitely the territory. This is a sort of intimate version of 'google earth', or 'sat-nav', de-technologized, elemental, illumined by all the variagations of Scottish west-coast weather. Here, the eyes are the satellites, navigating the city, orbiting the brain.

from the 11th floor to the basement

Level eleven of Glasgow University Library (on Gilmorehill) is a high-rise and outlook tower par excellence. It is no wonder this is where the philosophy section is located. Any librarian will tell you that the arrangement of books in the layout of a library is a factor of some significant import. This reminds me of the instance when the Borders bookshop in Buchanan Street did a little re-arranging of its biblic tenants and in so doing relegated its philosophic section not only to the furthest reaches of a windowless basement (from an airy, enlightened second floor) but to that unbecoming corner adjacent to the toilets. I remember thinking at the time how symbolic this was. Where, at the bright and breezy entrance fluttered the myriad pages of all the populist 'shit-lit', the stuff of real quality was nowhere to be seen. The philosophy section was now a token slot in an otherwise 'bestseller bazaar'.

In one of the benighted philosophy books down in that boggy dungeon corner, there is an epigram that reads:

It is philosophy that makes man understandable to man, explains human nobility and shows man the proper road. The first defect appearing in any nation that is headed toward decline is in the philosophic spirit. After that deficiencies spread into the other sciences, arts, and associations.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

High-Rise

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song from the 17th floor

CLARITY NOT CLUTTER

from the 11th floor to the basement

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