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“The skyline of Glasgow is set to be radically transformed…”

This was the quote from Glasgow City Council in 2006 and since then the city has lost 25% of its high rise flats. As well as high rise flats – many schemes throughout the city have also disappeared – the last remnants of old Dalmarnock were demolished for the Commonwealth Games and all traces of the Oatlands estate have been wiped out by a motorway extension.

Since 2007 Glaswegian photographer and filmmaker, Chris Leslie, has been documenting the condemned and disappearing housing schemes of the city. Using photography and audio he documents the thoughts, memories and lost livelihoods of residents and the disappearance of schemes and communities – issues largely forgotten in the utopian goals of regeneration. Most of the areas he has documented have now disappeared or will do so soon.

His long term multimedia project on ‘Glasgow’s Renaissance’ can be viewed online here www.glasgow-renaissance.co.uk.

Chris is looking to get the project exhibited / published. If you’re interested please email him at chris@chrisleslie.co.uk.

More: Website | Vimeo | Twitter

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Take a look at Part One of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here

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PART THREE
The Gallowgate Twins: Endgame

By the end of August the last tenants of the Whitevale and Bluevale flats (The Gallowgate twin towers) will be moved out and the buildings closed for good.

Whitevale and Bluevale Flats – AKA – The Gallowgate Twins

I have been photographing the interiors and exteriors of the flats for the past few years and in the past few weeks I have been interviewing former and current residents to build a historical and visual record of life in the towers.

29/3 Bluevale

Billy – resident for 10 years on the 29th Floor

When D Day approached for the end of these flats I expected there would be some kind of formal documentation, just as there was in Red Road. But no-one, neither Glasgow City Council nor Glasgow Life / Glasgow Museums seems to be too bothered about these flats. Most people, it seems are happy to see the back of them.

Billy – resident for 10 years on the 29th Floor

Whitevale Camera Obscura – Setting sun hits the metal sheeting around the foyer of the Whitevale Flat creates a repeated camera obscura (the outside skyline reflected inside upside down)

But Glasgow’s Twin towers will hang on stubbornly for the next few years and contrary to popular belief they will not be demolished in time for the Commonwealth Games. It will take years to prepare the buildings and even then, no-one is quite sure how they will brought down. There will be no explosives or giant picking crane – they are surrounded by occupied lower flats and the proximity to the trainline is scarily close. These buildings were built to last and demolition experts are scratching their heads wondering how and when they can bring them down.

Photo montage of Former resident Tony and his younger brother on the balcony 1977 / 2013

One of the 5 remaining tenants waits for the lift outside his flat. He hopes to be rehoused by the end of the month.

Expect them to be turned into giant advertising beacons for the Games. Maybe they will be turned into a giant light installation with shining Hollywood style lights, welcoming visitors to the East End and the Commonwealth Games. But knowing Glasgow City Council and current budget restrictions, a big vinyl banner dropped from both flats will suffice.

I will have a short multimedia film complete on the Gallowgate Twin Towers in the next few weeks. Stay tuned and sign up at https://www.facebook.com/TheGlasgowRenaissance.

More: Website | Chris Leslie | Vimeo | Twitter

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Take a look at Part One of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here & Part Two here.

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PART TWO
The Human element – People behind (and in) the photographs and stories

THE EVICTED – Margaret Jaconelli, Dalmarnock Resident

Margaret walks along Ardenlea St in April 2008

As I venture round the empty landscapes of Dalmarnock photographing the empty tenements of Ardenlea St, I failed to see the net curtains indicating signs of life.  A woman’s voice calls me from a window, asking me what I am talking pictures of. It takes me a while to pinpoint her location as I’m faced with what I thought was a desolate, empty ruin. This was my first meeting with Margaret Jaconelli.

She has been living in Ardenlea St alone for over 5 years. All the other tenants were rehoused, as the buildings were to be demolished at some point. She held on stubbornly as she was one of the few who purchased her home back in the late 1970s.

Come the announcement of the Commonwealth Games coming to Dalmarnock and the plans to demolish Ardenlea St and much of the rest of the area are top priority. Margaret was offered a ‘market value’ of her 2 bedroom flat of £29,000 and asked to leave.  Knowing fine well she could never afford a new property with that settlement she refused and the long battle to evict her began.

It ended in March 2011 when she was served a compulsory purchase order and days later she and her family were evicted at 5am by sheriff officers and over 100 police who cut off and surrounded her home. Margaret continues her fight and has taken her case to the European Court of Human Rights.

You can view the short film documenting her story below:

THE POLITICIAN – George Redmond, East End Councilor

George Redmond stands on the corner of Ardenlea St

On Dalmarnock Gala day in 2008 I was introduced to George Redmond and joined him on a tour of the ruins of Dalmarnock. George used to live on Ardenlea St as a child, he shows me the empty plot of derelict land in between two destroyed tenement flats where once his home stood. He’s very keen to emphasise his role in facilitating Glasgow getting the Games and talks of the transformation of the area for the better.

George Redmond and Margaret have a confrontation.

As we end the tour we bump into Margaret, who happens to be one of George’s constituents. He tells Margaret that he is still trying to work something out for her, but in reality the Commonwealth Games will be for the greater good of the area and someone has to ‘take it on the chin.’

Roll on 5 years and Dalmarnocks landscape has been transformed and George Redmond has his eyes on the grand prize as leader of Glasgow City Council.

THE YOUNG TEAM – Dalmarnock, 2008

Dalmarnock Youth – 2008.

John and friends don’t seem too bothered initially when asked about what they think of the Commonwealth Games and what it means for Dalmarnock. But when I push a bit further and ask about job prospects and their future, he tunes in a bit more. He’s keen to be offered an apprenticeship to be a joiner or electrician. The local press and propaganda machine is hard at work explaining how many apprenticeships are to be made available for the East End youth.

But no one seems to offer them anything more than apprenticeships. When I chat to the local youth leader, he’s dismayed that no-one seems to be talking of or offering the local youth management trainee schemes, or telling them that they can aspire beyond that of an apprentice.  It’s as if they are only expected / allowed to reach a certain limit.  After 30 years of decline and poverty, social inclusion, any assistance or promise of jobs and new builds will always be gratefully accepted by the community.

THE UNKNOWN PAINTER (AND DECORATOR) – Sighthill, 2009

Davey’s Bedroom

Prior to demolition, all the flats in Fountainwell court at Sighthill go through a process of soft stripping, when all furniture and the window frames, plumbing and pipes are removed. All that is left prior to the actual blowdown is an empty wallpapered shell of a former home.

As I walk round the empty flats, some walls are painted bright colours, reds, greens and blues (sometimes dependant on their sectarian stance) perhaps to escape monotone grey concrete and concourse that surrounded them.  On the 14th floor of Fountainwell Court was the home of ‘Davey’ – the painter and decorator who had decorated his entire flat, walls and ceilings with everything and anything from supermarket flyers, newspapers, frozen burger boxes and margarine tubs.

My guide from the Demolition company is locally from Sighthill and knows all about Davey, he says he knows what boozer he drinks in so I could meet him, but he warns me “he’s a bit mental though, but a great painter and decorator.” Wandering through his former empty home looking at the meticulous way he has covered every inch of it, I understand both points.

I decide not to go looking for Davey and think that the pictures are better off on their own to document and give a somewhat unique insight into high rise living (and individuality).

Davey’s Hallway

You can view a short film on Sighthill below:

Written by Chris Leslie

Chris is looking to get the project exhibited / published. If you’re interested please email him at chris@chrisleslie.co.uk.

More: Website | Chris Leslie | Vimeo | Twitter

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Take a look at Part One of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here & Part Three here.

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PART ONE
Project origins – The Balkans

“But this is no time to dredge up vague premonitions. Savage, bestial city destroyers with no conscience are hard at work gutting, sacking, murdering the population, burning archives and libraries, demolishing museums and houses of worship.”
- Bohdan Bogdanovic, Serbian Architect, 1994

Comparing Bosnia to Glasgow is probably going to confuse and possibly upset some people, especially Glaswegians. But the inspiration for my project – The Glasgow Renaissance, with its doomed high rise flats, empty homes and desolation take me back 18 years to 1996; to the ethnically cleansed and destroyed towns of Croatia, and the jaw dropping citywide destruction of Sarajevo.

The connection between the two places is of course, far-fetched. People in Bosnia and Croatia had their homes destroyed, or had to flee them for very different reasons than the Glaswegians I have documented, and it is impossible to downplay or be-little the savagery that swept across the region. After the war, much of Bosnia’s landscape was ruined and empty and that’s when my journey began – and the comparisons began to emerge. Placing photographs of destroyed, empty landscapes of Glasgow side by side with those from Bosnia, with no captions and you may find it difficult to choose which is which.

Pakrac, Croatia – photo by Pete Pawinski

Pakrac Croatia, 1996. I spent 5 months here, working on a volunteer social reconstruction project in this destroyed and divided town.  Pakrac was 80-85% destroyed during the war and was in many ways, the middle of nowhere. In my time off I cycled around the ruins of the ethnically cleansed and destroyed homes. Sometimes quite stupidly (the area was littered with landmines) I ventured into abandoned buildings and homes.

Left behind were photographs, clothes, pictures on walls. As the homes were emptied most of the buildings were set on fire, so there wasn’t much to photograph but occasionally you would find the odd solitary shoe lying amongst the carnage and you only hoped that its owner had escaped and survived.

12 years later whilst out running I first discovered the Oatlands estate in Glasgow. Abandoned and partially boarded up, the flats had been emptied years before, but they remained littered with personal belongings such as letters, photographs, clothes and toys. It felt like people had fled in a hurry, unsure of where they were going, or their final destination.

Walking around what was left of the Oatlands I was taken back to my days in Pakrac. My wife freaked out claiming it could be dangerous, with security fences, rotten collapsed floorboards, and leaking gas meters – and sometimes it could be. But this time there were no landmines to worry about…

I moved back to Glasgow in late 2004 after 5 years in a sleepy Wiltshire town of thatched cottages, no crime, no litter and not even a sniff of dog s**t on the street, the polar opposite to the streets of Bridgeton. I remember driving past Ardenlea / Summerfield St in Dalmarnock on a cold misty winters evening at 4 in the afternoon and being transported back to the first time I drove into Sarajevo in 1996.

The Whitevale Flats have the most striking physical resemblance to the UNIS towers in Sarajevo. The UNIS towers were clear targets for the Serb artillery and a symbol of Sarajevo’s financial sector. Partially stripped back of their glass and facade the buildings resembled the brutalist concrete structure of the Whitevale flats, almost as if the latter are half constructed buildings, just awaiting their shinny coat of a glass and steel facade. (Maybe even putting cladding and glass on the Whitevale flats could be an option rather than wholesale demolition.)

The regeneration of Glasgow and the destroyed landscapes left by the process are temporary, these structures that will only exist for a limited time. Just like in Bosnia, they will be rebuilt in time.

In Bosnia the hope is that war will not return to create more havoc and destruction. In Glasgow we can only hope that in 30 years time the new homes and communities we are building now do not suffer the same fate of ‘knock em down, build em up again’.

Written by Chris Leslie

Chris is looking to get the project exhibited / published. If you’re interested please email him at chris@chrisleslie.co.uk.

More: Website | Chris Leslie | Vimeo | Twitter

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Take a look at Part Two of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here & Part Three here.