The Queen of Anderston
Graeme Nicholls Architects were appointed by London-based developer Summix in 2022 to design a new city block within their major urban regeneration project at Central Quay in the Anderston neighbourhood of Glasgow. Our block is residential-focused, providing 172 new homes for private sale as well as 600m2 of commercial space at ground floor level.
Anderston is a neighbourhood within Glasgow's urban centre with a defined sense of community and a history associated with making- from its earliest settlement as a weaving village, through the boom of the pottery industry, and latterly as a centre for shipbuilding.
The neighbourhood's historical link to the pottery industry fascinated us, and our design references this in its external cladding consisting of black and white ceramic panels arranged in a checkerboard pattern to represent the China White and Basalt Black glazed ceramic objects that were typically made in the area.
The chequered design of the building's elevations also references the weaving patterns that would have been common to the area- with the facades following the rules seen in historic weavers' pattern book of mixing different proportions of black and white to achieve subtly different surface tones.
We have used this approach to define the key building elements- base, plinth, tower and crown.
The footprint of our perimeter block is a perfect 60x60m square, following the masterplan approach of integrating with the Glasgow grid-iron urban pattern. The mass of the block is realised as a five-storey plinth, with towers between nine and twelve storeys to each of the corners, in keeping with the architectural approach across the wider Central Quay regeneration. The rooftops of the taller north-west and south-east towers each feature crowns, which have a dual purpose of providing sheltered outdoor amenity space for residents, as well as integrating renewable energy technology within the buildings. The structures consist of lightweight steel frames topped with solar panels angled for optimal energy gain while referencing the historic factory rooflines of Anderston.
Location: Central Quay, Anderston, Glasgow
Client: Summix Developments
Size: 172 units + 600m2 commercial
Status: Planning Application Summer 2023