Phases 4 and 5 of the Anderston flats represent the completion of a masterplan for the area. The final phase provides an additional 206 new build flats, with a mixed tenure of social rent and mid-market rent.
Collective Architecture’s design for the final two phases reinstates an important section of Argyle Street that was removed in the 1960s as part of the comprehensive redevelopment of Anderston.
Five new buildings, varying in height from four to seven storeys, front the streets around the site. Houldsworth Street to the rear of the site, is now lined with large south facing communal gardens that accommodate the level changes across the middle of the site, and the new buildings are pulled back into the site to form the street edge to the reinstated missing section of Argyle Street.
The area is car-free. Design of the flats is tender-blind, and uses three materials: sandstone, concrete and brick. The decision to use brick was related to its uses on warehouses at the back of the site.
Nick Walker of Collective Architecture said,
It is a beautiful brick, very robust, with quite a lot of variety.
The material was combined with areas of metal planning, to create a panellised effect.
‘Detailing,’ Walker said, ‘is quite restrained. There are indented soldier courses on the ground floor and firstly floor to create a sense of a plinth.’ These panels are slightly set back, and there are also some projecting brick details at the corners. ‘The result,’ Walker said, ‘is really interesting.’
The project also uses green glazed bricks in two tones as decoration to some of the low walls in the landscape – a piece of happy opportunism, since these bricks were left over from another job.
