Glasgow: Cowcaddens Underpass

Call it the Garscube Link, the Phoenix Flowers or the Metal Petals; the improvements to this route are attracting many names!

With funding support from the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and Scottish Enterprise, this £3.5M project has improved links between the canal and the City Centre. The metal petals were inspired by the former Phoenix Park that was lost to the area when the M8 was built.
This important new public realm development is about re-connecting North Glasgow back to the city centre for pedestrians and cyclists.

It is the first phase of the regeneration of the Speirs Locks area in Glasgow and was designed by 7N Architects and RankinFraser Landscape Architecture for the Glasgow Canal Regeneration Partnership (GCRP), a partnership between Glasgow City Council and ISIS Waterside Regeneration, supported by British Waterways Scotland.

The project has involved the radical revitalisation of this crucial link to the City Centre which was severed by the construction of the M8 motorway in the 1960s. The existing route was a hostile environment: dark, dirty, noisy, and intimidating. The new public realm is significantly wider that the previous underpass, held together by a single, flowing, red resin surface that doesn’t constrain those using it to a single, confrontational, route.

The project recently won the ‘Best Future Building’ category at the 2010 Scottish Design Awards.
The route is illuminated by a ribbon of 50 coloured aluminium “flowers”, fluttering through the space 8m up in the air, that draw the visitor through the route in deliberate contrast to the solidity of the concrete. The Garscube Link has been christened The Phoenix Flowers, a reference to the former Phoenix Park which once occupied the site before the construction of the motorway.

For more information about this project, please call Gary Watt on 07717 178 342.