Queen Elizabeth Square

Gorbals, Glasgow

The design of this urban block is intended to re-affirm, over a decade later, the typology first proposed by the practice in the masterplan for Crown Street. The design completes a block continuously fronting all four adjacent streets enclosing a central shared garden. The southern range is a continuous concave row of townhouses, two-storey on the façade line with a third floor set back, allowing sunlight to penetrate the central garden. The original masterplanning idea of ground and first floor maisonettes being virtual houses for families in the tenement blocks is deliberately expressed in this scheme by allowing the curves set up for the houses to ripple around the whole site for the two lowest floors of the buildings. The upper flatted parts of the tenement buildings restore the convention of following the street line, emphasising the simple grandeur and scale of the streets. Client: Cruden Estates