East Kilbride
East Kilbride was the first new town built in Scotland in 1947. New Town designation was a pragmatic attempt to soak up some of the population from an overcrowded and war ravaged Glasgow. Its design was indeed an anathema to the chaotic and sprawling Glasgow: clean straight lines, modern accessible public spaces; and footways, bridges and underpasses built with the pedestrian in mind. It was designed as a self contained community — with industry, shops, recreation facilities and accommodation all within a planned geographic area.
The plan was similar to several New Towns in the South East of England (So called “Mark I” New Towns) with a town centre, accessed by large principle roads. Housing was then clustered into low density neighbourhoods, each with their own distinctive character and secondary centre. Light industry was then located on the outskirts of the town, linked to distributed roads. Despite several attempts to bring the rail link into the town centre, East Kilbride remains a town dominated by cars and buses.
St Brides RC Church is easily the most acclaimed modern church in Britain. Although the bell tower (an ecclesiastical bolt-on, insisted on by the Catholic Church) was destroyed in the 1980s a recent renovation means it has manged to retain much of its original character. Of course, the most surprising aspect of the building is the material used — red brick from Victorian sewerage systems. Modernist architects Izi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan, architects with famous firm Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, are not renowned for their use of traditional brick. However, post-war material shortages led to innovation of this kind in many British New Towns — causing a multitude of structural issues still being addressed to this day.
East Kilbride, unlike Cumbernauld New Town a decade later, was comprised almost solely of low density housing. This was in-keeping with the “Mark I” New Town’s across the UK which were influenced much more by garden cities and the ideas of Ebeneezer Howard. The small local neighbourhood centres contained shops, churches and social buildings like community centres. The criticism is that these neighbourhoods created atomised villages with no sense of larger, pan-East Kilbride community.
The category-A listed, Dollan Baths, named after the first Chair of the Development Corporation, Sir Patrick Dollan, is the architectural highlight of the town. Designed by Alexander Buchanan Campbell and influenced by world renowned Kenzo Tange the baths were the first Olympic sized swimming pool to be built in Scotland. The massive concrete rib cage dominates the surrounding area and although the baths have been modified many times over the years the building has never lost its character.
