Look Up Glasgow: World Class Architectural Heritage That's Hidden in Plain Sight - Hardcover

Searle, Adrian; Barbour, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1908754214 ISBN 13: 9781908754219

Publisher: Freight Books, 2013

Synopsis

A stunning coffee table book of Glasgow's world-class architectural detail, hidden in plain sight at the tops of the city's iconic buildings

Glasgow is Scotland's largest city, its streets a constant frenetic bustle of activity, but rarely do its residents take the time to stop and look up at the extraordinary architectural heritage all around. Glasgow's image belies this world-class architectural detail, comprising of stunning sculpture, ornament, friezes, gables, and decoration, the vast majority of which are hidden in plain sight above eye level. Writer Adrian Searle and specialist architectural photographer David Barbour have scoured the city, bringing together in one volume a fabulous record of the hidden jewels of "the second city of the Empire," created in a time of great wealth and virtuoso craftsmanship now long gone. The book also includes poetry from six of Scotland's leading poets, responding in very individual ways to Glasgow's extraordinary urban environment. This collection will be a beautiful surprise to residents, visitors, and non-residents alike, demonstrating that it is much more than just another post-industrial British city. It will be a book that those passionate about the city and about architecture will treasure.

About this title

About the Author

Adrian Searle works in design and publishing, edits the literary magazine Gutter, and has edited a number of award-winning anthologies. He commissioned and cowrote 101 Uses of a Dead Kindle and Dougie's War. David Barbour is a freelance photographer. For 15 years he was the in-house photographer at international architectural practice BDP.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Look Up Glasgow

World Class Architectural Heritage that's Hidden in Plain Sight

By Adrian Searle, David Barbour

Freight Books

Copyright © 2013 Adrian Searle and David Barbour
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-908754-21-9

Contents

FOREWORD, 
CITY CENTRE, 
MERCHANT CITY, 
CHARING CROSS, 
WEST END, 
EAST END, 
GOVAN, 
SOUTH SIDE, 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, 

CHAPTER 1

CITY CENTRE

    The Derelicts

    Kona Macphee


    They beg along the inner city miles,
    these empire's orphans, each a hefty waif
    of blurring stonework, downward-slipping tiles:
    not yet unlovely, ever more unsafe.
    Façades and gutters foster tufted plumes
    — funereal wild ironies of green —
    while rain and roots slip in to higher rooms
    and do their wreckers' work unpaid, unseen.
    Passing, we buzz with possibility
    (Academy of Joy? Some arty den?
    A Makers' Market? Haven of tranquility?),
    our whimsies ghosting shells with life again:
    and yet we never give these failing graces
    more than the unlived lives behind our faces.


    Glasgow album

    Kona Macphee


    O photographer!
    Why this beryl litany,
    these cobalt encores?

    Blue is for tourists;
    a native heart knows snapshots
    grey-scaled, street-wise, smirred:

    the city, wet-sheened,
    resting in its hill-rimmed dish
    like a vast glazed tart

    a wet mist rolling:
    camouflage for the ghost-ships
    still haunting old men

    summertime downpours:
    the river's bygone highway,
    the road a river

    nightlife parallels:
    rain tracks and spaghetti straps;
    shopfronts as mirrors

    women on a train:
    fifties-raucous, trinketed;
    splashy umbrellas

    a seedling hard-man:
    skinny, chippy, jitter-eyed;
    sleet-melt on tattoos

    a doorway's shelter;
    banter with passing soakers:
    glasgow smiles better


    The Postman

    Graham Fulton


    as I stare up at the face
    of a mythical man in pain
    staring straight down from a wall
    a postma1n in red coming out of a café
    tells me if
    I walk down the hill and turn right
    into Waterloo Street
    there's the most beautiful building
    in G

Edition details

• Publisher: Freight Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1908754214
• ISBN 13: 9781908754219
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224