Urban Housing Brief – Living in Agreement, Tradeston, Glasgow
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Urban Housing Brief – Living in Agreement, Tradeston, Glasgow (Studio Work 4)
| Institution | The Glasgow School of Art (Mackintosh School of Architecture) |
| Course | Studio Work 4 (SW4), Stage 4, Semester 1 |
| Project | Urban Housing – Tradeston, Glasgow (blocks A, B and C) |
| Phases | Phase 01 Block Investigations (group, 3 weeks); Phase 02 Individual Investigations (4 weeks) |
| Outputs | 2 × A1 sheets + 1:500 group massing model; 3 × A1 individual sheets; SW4 Design Report |
The Urban Housing brief asks Stage 4 students to propose sustainable, dense urban housing for three blocks of Tradeston’s grid on the south bank of the Clyde, moving from group urban strategy and typology studies to an individual proposal on one block.
Context
Housing makes up most of the city’s built form (around 73% of Glasgow homes are flats). Tradeston, once part of the Gorbals, grew with the cotton trade, became an area of warehouses serving Tradeston Quay and is now poised for regeneration under Glasgow City Council’s South Central Local Development Framework. The theme Living in Agreement calls for a strategy that works with the fragmented landscape, remnants of the grid and layered histories instead of the tabula rasa of past developments.
Phase 01 – Block Investigations (group)
- Urban Strategy: analyse the three blocks and their relationship to Glasgow’s urban fabric (infrastructure, routes, street geometry, footprints, heights and materials), decide what to retain, retrofit or replace, and distil guiding design principles in diagrams and statements.
- Typological Studies: test housing typologies and precedents against your principles, exploring massing, circulation (including fire escape and accessibility) in large-scale sections (1:200 minimum).
- Massing Studies: test building volumes, streets and open spaces in a 1:500 group massing model, including density, height, orientation, sunlight and shadow, recorded photographically.
Output: two carefully composed portrait A1 sheets and the model, brought to the studio review.
Phase 02 – Individual Investigations
- Life Between Buildings: design “rooms of agreement” – shared courtyards, pathways and gathering spaces – through plans and sections.
- Envelope: study public and private elevations, environmental performance, materiality, identity and active ground floors.
- Thresholds: study transitions from public to private and outside to inside – porches, lobbies and circulation – for safe, equitable access.
Output: three portrait A1 sheets for digital presentation and review, supported by design-led research recorded in the SW4 Design Report.
Assessment
Assessment criteria are mapped to the ARB competency outcomes under six ILOs: Professionalism, Design/Create, Research, Communication, Skills and Knowledge – including inclusive and sustainable thinking, sufficient housing density, fire escape and accessibility strategies, retrofit of existing buildings and response to Tradeston’s histories
