Cumbernauld Town Centre
is now a crumbling shadow of its former self, which has just been awarded
a
UNESCO listing as an architecturally significant 20th century landmark. Uncared
for and neglected, it embodies some powerful lessons on architecture, its
love
affair with functionalism, and the design mindset of the Cold War. This writing
seeks to examine a few exemplary stories of architecture and design, and
to
look at the conflation of morality and planning. There will be comments from
architects and planners- both named and anonymous- but firstly some autobiography.
There was always something mysterious about the town centre at night.Not in
the dark: we were used to the rain-lashed upper decks after school or mid-evening,
hurrying down from the chip shop to the warmth of the mid-levels.The deep night
– later than we inhabited -held strangeness, unknown acts taking place
which we could only infer from evidence noted on early morning trips to the
swimming pool or to the bus stop to Glasgow. Vomit-splashed stairways, occasional
blood, smells of perfume and vinegar mixing with the acrid rubber tiling. Occasionally
we would linger over torn shirts and knickers. In an age predating pervasive
CCTV surveillance, imagination created wild nights of danger and excess which
probably outstripped any reality. These traces sat uneasily with the sense of
future which the architecture of ramps and venting towers intimated. After all,
the future would be cleaner; 2001 was taking shape around us. Wasn't there a
plan for a helipad on the roof? By contrast, the body fluids, scraps of clothing,
and food scattered across the decking suggested a less stellar destiny.
Now, with security cameras guarding the deserted decks at night, the place exists
in a purely virtual manner. One factor remains the same- constant piped music
played throughout the building, originally intended to stimulate shopping, now
perhaps the soft-cop angle of an urban pacification programme.
optimism incarnate; image by Geoff Copcutt, 1963
The Golden Eagle Hotel,
on the edge of the monolithic town centre, was the major landmark approaching
from Glasgow. The huge neon eagle could be seen from 8 miles away. As its
structural instabilities became more
apparent
over
a period of several years, the hotel was closed down and eventually demolished.
A landmark abandoned by its citizens yet as familiar as the dashboard of
your
own car...
In succeeding years, further elements of the central structure hit a crisis
point of rotting concrete and metal failure. The south section with its water
tower, panoramic decks and massive basement car parks were in turn cordoned
off and demolished from the top downwards. The Development Corporation evaporated,
and political control of the town was ceded to a district authority situated
to the south whose interest in the town as an experiment was minimal. The bright
models and plans for this town for tomorrow were lost overlooked or forgotten.
Attempts were made to soften the effects of the exterior ramps and raw facades
with cladding and re-surfacing. The acrid smell of the rubber tiles gave way
to polished flooring; the stark shapes of the original core were amended by
the surrounding encroachment of large retail sheds. The "penthouses"on
the very top level of the town centre with magnificent views across central
Scotland, were converted from apartments to small office units.This demise of
the habitation possibilities of the town centre was the final admission that
any sense of communal totality, of civic livability, had been surrendered. Further
developments of the town were as innocuous as possible. Golf Course Modernism,
Barratt estates, and sprawl.
There's currently a revival of interest in New Brutalist architecture but always from the perspective of the cultural centre. Londons’ South Bank, for example. I'm interested in it as lived experience.I remember reading JG Ballards' "Crash" and "the Atrocity Exhibition" at an early age and thinking that it must be some secret documentary he was making around town...