Rutherglen Links Office Pavilions
Nomination
Category
ARCHITECTURE: Regeneration
Company
Keppie Design Ltd
Client
Clyde Gateway Developments Ltd
Summary
Clyde Gateway is the organisation behind Scotland’s biggest and most ambitious regeneration programme. It emerged as the result of a partnership between Glasgow City Council, South Lanarkshire, and Scottish Enterprise, backed by funding and direct support from the Scottish Government. Their mission, over a 20-year period until 2028, is to lead the way on achieving unparalleled social, economic, and physical change across their communities in the east end of Glasgow and in Rutherglen.Two and Three Rutherglen Links are another piece of the long-term initiative to renew the identity of the East End of Glasgow; to represent the value of investing in community. They offer entrepreneurial hope as part of this coherent, connected revitalisation. Located towards the southern edge of the Clyde Gateway zone, the newly completed office pavilions reinforce the qualitative agenda and ambition of the regeneration masterplan, located in the town centre close to Rutherglen Station, a few miles east of Glasgow city centre. They stretch out alongside the extended M74 and lay just south of the River Clyde.The two pavilions are designed to sit neatly within a varied and complicated surrounding. The plot is sandwiched on all sides: at the rear by traditional blonde sandstone terraced housing within a conservation area; to the south by the larger office building ‘1 Rutherglen Links’ which is visually prominent from the M74; to the east by a large new industrial shed, and finally, there is the relief of a small tree-lined park to the West.Two and Three Rutherglen Links Office Pavilions are structures of the highest Architectural Merit; an exemplar pair of buildings excelling in both placemaking and design quality. The buildings have also been designed with adaptability in mind. They are completely flexible in layout and can easily be adapted to a changing marketplace. The pavilions are a statement of intent; a declaration that their local community is valued and worthy of the investment of design quality in a new and hopeful environment. They have the ambition to be here for the long term, possessing a deliberately timeless quality to be enjoyed by occupiers and appreciated by the local community.