The Scottish Event Campus on the banks of the Clyde in Glasgow, with a rather large reminder that the area used to be one of the city's largest docks before the SEC was built.
I would love to know how this new Purpose-Built Student Accommodation block on New City Road in Glasgow managed to get planning permission as it sticks out like a sore thumb and blots out views across the historic buildings of the West End of the city from the equally historic Speirs Wharf.
Glasgow's historic buildings, and the views of them, are one of the city's greatest and most unique assets, but the council planning department seems to continually ignore the need to protect them. The issue here is that if we lose them through poor planning decisions, they are often gone forever and we cannot get them back. As such, I would like to see a much more cautious approach to urban planning in Glasgow.
This is not to say that new buildings should not be built or developed, just that there needs to be a stricter set of rules to ensure they do not have a negative impact of their surroundings, and the city as a whole. If developers are not willing to stick by such rules, so be it, and we should not let the profit at the cost on the city as a whole. In my book a bad development is not better than no development.
When we lose an old building, we lose not just the architect's vision for its exterior, but all the other elements as well, like internal layouts, which can reveal so much about our social history. We lose all the little design features we all too often take for granted, but which make each building unique, like sculptures, and tilings and fonts and metalwork.
I always find 'ghost' buildings rather interesting, but this one on Queen Street in Paisley is a particularly intriguing as it comes complete with mantelpieces still surrounding the places where fires once burned to keep long-gone rooms warm and cozy.
Newer buildings surrounding one of the very few old ones left standing along the Anderston section of Argyle Street. It's the rather wonderful Art Nouveau style Glasgow Savings Bank building designed by James Salmon and J. Gaff Gillespie, and built in 1899.
A view along Robertson Street in Glasgow, with J.A. Campbell's A-Listed 1901 rather beautiful Glasgow Style Office building lying abandoned and derelict amongst the new developments of the city's International Financial Services District.
I may be being naive, but surely there's a way to require the refurbishment of listed buildings which are in such a poor state as part of the planning permission for new developments on neighbouring plots. This would be to the benefit of everyone concerned.
Alexander Stoddart's statue of Italia on Page and Park's Italian Centre in the Merchant City area of Glasgow. I love how this statue looks like it could have been made at pretty much any point in the last 3,000 years. Rather surprisingly, it's made glass re-in-forced polymer rather than, as it appears, bronze.
Former office block on Clyde Street in Glasgow. Designed by Eric A. Sutherland in a Free Style, it was build in 1907. It was converted into student accommodation in the 2010s.
I love it when old street furinture is left in place when streets get renovated. This great example is from Oswald Street in central Glasgow. I really want to know what it used to be for as the instructions on it are very precise, but are now rather cryptic given how this area has changed over the years.
Free Renaissance style warehouse at 137 Trongate in Glasgow. Built in 1885, it was designed by James Sellars, an architect who has had a major influence on how the city looks today. It lies boarded up and decaying, and has been for some time.
This is one of several listed buildings in a similar state along the Trongate, a major thoroughfare in Glasgow, and they give the entire area a very run down feel.
I feel Glasgow City Council has neglected this part of the city centre for way too long and that, regardless of who is running it, should be doing a lot more to bring such buildings back into use. And by this, I don't mean knocking them down and replacing them with generic-looking new buildings, but actually properly bringing the back into use.
Standing, heads bowed and arms crossed, this pair of Atlantes have been stoically holding up the building at 146 Argyle Street in Glasgow since 1903, but in all that time they've worked their way into the hearts of many of the city's residents, especially its younger ones.
This is one of the things which annoys me quite so much about the destruction of Glasgow's old buildings by developers who dismiss them as being of no importance simply because they are not a MacKintosh or a Greek Thomson.
When we lose old buildings, we lose not just a work of art and an element of our collective history, we also lose part of the connection between the people and their city, and once lost this connection can be very difficult to get back.