Gary Hughes applauds a musical animal in one of Europe’s trendiest cities, but hasn’t a good word to say about two grey and soulless London thoroughfares
My modern wonder is the Armadillo concert hall in Glasgow. I commute from Glasgow every week and there is nothing nicer than flying into the city on a Friday night after a hard week working in London to look out of the window and see this beautiful piece of architecture sitting on the banks of the Clyde because it reminds me I am home. I think that Glasgow has come up a hell of a long way in the past 20 years from being the image of a mean city to actually one of the liveliest and trendiest cities in Europe. I think the Armadillo is one of the signs of the rebirth of the city, so it means a lot to us. And I have seen some bloody good bands play there – Dirty Pretty Things, Texas and Van Morrison to name but three.
Beautiful beastie
The overlapping, aluminium clad shells of the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 1997, have earned the building its Armadillo nickname.
My blunder is anything on the Euston and Marylebone Road in London. There can’t be a more depressing thoroughfare anywhere else in Europe. It’s grey, it’s horrible, there’s no signage, there’s nothing to say that you’re actually in the centre of what is one of the most exciting cities in the world. It hasn’t been designed in any shape or format. It leaves you absolutely soulless on the way to work.
Road of tears
Euston Road and Marylebone Road were built as a bypass through the fields north of London in the 1740s. The Euston Road is currently the subject of a redesign by Terry Farrell and Partners
Postscript
Gary Hughes is chief executive of CMPi, the publisher of Building
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