Blog: The BOAC Building by Gillespie Kidd and Coia
The BOAC building in Glasgow was built for the British Overseas Airways Corporation in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, and was completed in 1970. A five-story steel-framed office block, the upper floors are clad in copper, formed of sleek hexagonal openings around windows arranged in a gridiron. Although the facade's rhythm and proportions are in keeping with Buchanan Street’s array of finely crafted mercantile facades, the building also reads as quietly stark - its language of geometrically folded sheets of copper speaks more of the machine age that followed industrialization. Stonemasonry and handicraft are replaced with precise, modular systems and new kinds [...]
Blog: Our Lady of Good Counsel
Our Lady of Good Counsel. Dennistoun, Glasgow. Architect: Gillespie Kidd and Coia Completed in 1968 Had you been asked to imagine a category A listed Catholic church, you would’ve been forgiven for imagining images of spires and a crucifix form, with tall stained-glass windows populating the elevations which then allow light to cascade upon a rigorously ordered nave. However, this time you couldn’t be more wrong. Almost bunker-like in its brutalist appearance, Our Lady of Good Counsel lacks almost any architectural characteristics of a church and had it not been for the cross above it’s doors you may not have [...]
