Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced 4 July that HMS Queen Elizabeth & HMS Prince of Wales are to be commissioned securing the future of dockyards across Britain, amongst them BVT Govan & Scotstoun. Flagships of the Strategic Defence Review the carriers are the latest phase of a program that sees the fleet reduced in absolute terms with a refocussing on technology and force projection. The carriers will be escorted by a compliment of 6 Type 45 Destroyers and up to 7 Astute class submarines, each vessel capable of fielding 36 F-35B Joint Strike Fighters (a strategic partnership between the US and UK militaries).
Twin Queen Elizabeth class vessels will re-establish the United Kingdom on the front tier of naval powers providing an independant expeditionary capacity 2nd only to that of the U.S. In honouring her duty as mature democracy Britain will possess the capability to safeguard national and global security from the manouvres of increasingly ugly emergant regimes.
Glasgow 2037, city of the dead. The abandoned city lies before, a vast sprawling ghost town. Most of the city is made out of burned-out shells, stretching for miles and miles. There are signs of looting crowds looking for food and water, birds nest in the grand hallways of St. Andrews Hospital, all of the buildings have succumbed to nature's onslaught. From fungus to ivy, to grass and weeds, nature has reclaimed its authority over this urban wasteland.
Chaos reigns as the British government is forced to rebuild Hadrians wall, entombing Glasgow and its people within a barren northern hinterland. No, mercifully this isn't the SNP nightmare but consequence of the no less cataclysmic "Reaper Virus" the primary plot mechanic synonymous with Doomsday, a big budget Sci Fi/Horror flick. Filmed on location in Haghill, deemed believable approximate to a post plague society and glimpsing a very different future for 110 Queen Street alongside a bizarre classicised City Chambers, masquerading as the fictitious St Andrews Hospital. Bit of fun but a reminder that continued ascendency is never a guarantee.
City Palace is a distinctive twisting form housing civic registry offices alongside commercial office space, the design of which is touted as a unique Russo-British collaboration of 3 key talents
Tony Kettle: UK Director, RMJM
Karen Forbes: Head of School of Painting at Edinburgh College of Art
Philip Nikandrov: Russia Director, RMJM
This arrangement marked a conscious effort to explore a world beyond the purely functional response. As consequence to this approach no design elements can be said to draw the hallmarks of any one contributor, the entirety of minutiae apparently a fusion of influences from the team. Very democratic and somewhat dubious but the line was firmly held for the camera's in the face of some incredulity.
But City Palace is significant beyond its powerful architectural symbolism for the structure sends forth an equally strong message in the economic sphere, that of Russia's newfound wealth and prosperity. The tower defines a growing sense of dignity in the Russian people brought about by a flood of petro dollars to a once moribund nation. Politically too the project marks a rare example of Russian/British collaboration within the context of a deteriorating relationship at leadership level. City Palace may illustrate a new found freedom of architectural expression but it does so within the confines of an autocratic society and associated climate of fear.
The site benefits from favourable vantage within the "Moscow City" district of the Russian capital occupying a key position alongside the Moskva river and enjoying direct line of sight to the historic centre some 4km distant. Marrying undoubted artistic and negotiating skill with perseverance through fraught economic cycles have seen RMJM win the competition not once, not twice but thrice in a tale stretching back to 1998.
Benefitting from a client keen to push boundaries the scheme is a reaction to the fall of Communism and product of the resultant groundswell of public disgust at a modernist movement foisted on the city by Soviet overlords. The resultant spiral geometry cleverly stacks commercially favourable square floor plates around a circular core purportedly redolent of a whole raft of natural, architectural and biological influences, ranging from a couples embrace, intertwined ribbons, the double helix of DNA and the swirling onion domes of the Kremlin. Everything it seems but the true genesis of it all, Malmo's Turning Torso. Such superficial similarity is however brushed aside by well rehearsed argument detailing localised symbolism of "marriage" and "family". Is this archi babble froth or product of detailed local research of culture and use? The evidence is to the latter but an honest admission of influential rivals would not have gone amiss.
Fittingly for a nation with highest rates of marriage (and divorce), City Palace will contain a wedding chapel as part of its planning gain, the resultant civic space funded from the commercial tower. Keen to dignify what can be a conveyor belt of identikit ceremonies, the hall will employ the powerful visual presence of the tower above to awe those below through glass skylights. The resultant downpouring of light is promised to be in constant flux such that no two weddings will experience the same quality of light. Presumably overcast day's will be reserved for divorce.
From inception light has played an integral role in shaping the design and focussing thought. Each facet of glass is offset against the next and each floor is rotated through 3 degrees. The resultant sheath of rippling glass produces a unique kaleidoscope of refracted and reflected light that traces the sun's trajectory deep within the office interior. It is perhaps appropriate then that a stray ray of sunlight should have illuminated RMJM's display at a critical planning session. Whether divine inspiration in a religously freed society or fortunate astronomical conjunction this foretaste of the refractive power of light proved illuminating for the flamboyant mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov. Having seen the light as it were he was prompted to remark "looks like a beautiful woman in a sea of men". Lack of familiarity with Yury's past flames mean this comment cannot be accurately contextualised but cursory looks at some of the abortive neighbouring plots suggest the Moscow planning office may benefit from the installation of additional glazing for the enlightenment of subsequent meetings.
futureglasgow would like to thank Tony Kettle and Karen Forbes for taking the time to detail their plans and explain their vision to an, at times! hostile audience. It was both a unique occasion and a successful one.
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