Glasgow's Post War Listed Buildings

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To celebrate the excellence and inventiveness of Glasgow's post-war architecture, Glasgow City Council and Historic Scotland have collaborated in producing a short book on the city's distinguished modern architectural heritage.

This the second publication of its type in Scotland which is recognised through listing. The first book looked at Edinburgh's Post-war Listed Buildings and was published in 2011.

Listing of Scotland's Built Heritage

Listing is intended to recognise the special interest of Scotland's built heritage and to prevent unthinking change. Any building or man-made structure can be considered for listing. Buildings erected after 1945 may merit listing if their special interest is of definite architectural quality.

The listing of buildings less than 30 years old requires exceptional rigour because there is not a long historical perspective and they will normally only be considered if they face immediate threat.

The first lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest in Glasgow were compiled in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1980s all of its building stock was comprehensively resurveyed and at this time many of the prominent Victorian and Edwardian buildings were added to the lists, along with a handful of outstanding interwar buildings, many of which were begun before the Second World War and not completed until afterward.

Unsurprisingly, it was not possible to recognise the best post-war buildings a mere decade or so after they were first erected, therefore an understanding of them has been built up gradually.

In the mid-1990s, with the benefit of growing research into this area of study, post-war buildings have been suggested to Historic Scotland as individual listing proposals, or have been listed following reviews of the work of well-known architects, such as the practice of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, or Sir Basil Spence and more recently as part of the reviews of significant estates such as the University of Glasgow and the University of Strathclyde.

There are 38 post-war listed buildings in Glasgow (6 Cat A, 28 Cat B, 4 Cat C(S)). This equates to almost 1/5th of the national total of post-war listed buildings.

Gillespie Kidd and Coia are represented the most in the post-war listed buildings currently found in Glasgow with 9 buildings included on the lists. Thomas Cordiner is the second most represented with 5 listed buildings. Both these practices worked extensively for the Glasgow Diocese and many of their listed buildings are churches.

The earliest listing of a post-war building in Glasgow dates to 1989.