Livingstone Tower | |
---|---|
Former names | Alec House Social Sciences Building |
General information | |
Status | Completed |
Type | Academic |
Architectural style | International Modern |
Location | Glasgow, Scotland |
Coordinates | 55°51′40.42″N4°14′36.45″W / 55.8612278°N 4.2434583°W |
Current tenants | University of Strathclyde |
Year(s) built | 1962–64 |
Completed | 1964 |
Inaugurated | 9 February 1966 |
Owner | Glasgow City Council |
Height | |
Roof | 52 metres (171 ft) (estimated) |
Technical details | |
Structural system | Reinforced Concrete |
Floor count | 15 (+ 2 underground parking levels) |
Lifts/elevators | 4 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Covell, Matthews & Partners |
Developer | Glasgow Corporation / Royal College of Science and Technology |
Main contractor | Sir Robert McAlpine |
The Livingstone Tower is a prominent high rise building in Glasgow, Scotland and is a part of the University of Strathclyde's John Anderson Campus. The building was named after David Livingstone. The address of the building is 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow.
The building is the tallest structure on the John Anderson Campus, and is a notable landmark in the eastern side of the city centre, and its high position on the drumlin of Rottenrow means it can be seen from some considerable distance throughout the city's East End. It is one of a cluster of high-rise buildings to be constructed in the centre of Glasgow during the early 1960s; the others being St Andrew's House (1964), Fleming House (1961), the Royal Stuart Hotel (1963) – and the nearby Glasgow College of Building and Printing (1964), with which it shares many design and engineering similarities.
The Livingstone Tower was constructed between 1962 and 1964 as Alec House – a commercial office building in a partnership between Glasgow Corporation, the former Royal College of Science and Technology and a commercial development company. [1] The site was formerly occupied by a row of houses and a church, but these were cleared in 1960 after Townhead was declared a Comprehensive Development Area (CDA) in the 1950s. As part of this development – inspired by the findings of the 1945 Bruce Report, central areas of the city were re-zoned for commercial or educational use. Groundbreaking on the site commenced in April 1962.
The building is of reinforced concrete construction and was state of the art in its construction methods at the time – being clad with a curtain wall in opaque dark green glass spandrel panels framed by orange metal uprights. With its original commercial use in mind, it featured an advanced elevator system for its day – four Otis Autotronic high speed lifts (also used in St. Andrew House on Sauchiehall Street) which were capable of responding to the traffic flow within the building at specific times of the day. The tower is served by two staircases within the main service core while a third staircase that serves only the first two floors was added by the University in 1966 due to these levels being devoted entirely to classrooms. The building is electrically heated and was also intended to feature a restaurant on the ground floor which the University later turned into a student refectory.
The tower sits atop a 3-storey concrete podium shared with the neighbouring McCance Building, an NCP car park, and a row of retail units at street level on George Street. There is also private car parking for Glasgow City Council. There was also a raised concrete podium between the tower and the McCance Building – originally this was an open-air plaza connecting the two buildings, which also contained a drive through drop-off area facing the west side of the building which formed its main entrance – this space was replaced by the Collins Building in 1973 (see below), when the building's entrance was moved to the Richmond Street side in conjunction with a new campus security office.
In early 1965, shortly after the creation of the University of Strathclyde from the Royal College, the building had still not attracted any private tenants. The adjacent McCance Building which was built at the same time to house the expanding Andersonian Library, as well as the Royal College's new arts and social sciences departments. The two buildings ultimately became part of a plan to expand the University by adding more buildings and learning space, and an agreement was reached with Glasgow Corporation to lease the building for 99 years. The lease was formally signed on the 2nd February 1965. In May of that same year, the University dropped the original Alec House name and initially renamed it the "David Livingstone Tower" after David Livingstone – in recognition of his study at the medical school of Anderson's College (the original institution from which Strathclyde University evolved), but the name was soon shortened to simply "Livingstone Tower". At the time the building was used to expand the departments that were to be included in the McCance Building.
The building was formally opened by the then university Chancellor, Lord Todd of Trumpington on 9 February 1966. [2]
In 1967, a roof penthouse was added which contained an on-campus residence for the Principal.
The entrances and ground floor of the building were substantially remodelled in the early 1970s – in 1972 the original entrance plaza to the west of the tower was replaced by the Collins Building, with new office spaces created on what was the ground floor foyer. A security services building was added on the north side, which now contained the main entrance to the tower from 26 Richmond Street.
In 2000, the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship was given purpose-built accommodation by expanding the roof penthouse into offices, thus creating a fourteenth floor, accessed by stairs from the thirteenth floor. It was part of the Strathclyde Entrepreneurship Initiative. The Hunter Centre provides elective classes related to different areas of business. It was named after Sir Tom Hunter after his £5 million endowment to the university to help fund the new centre. In 2011 they relocated to the 199 Cathedral Street building, being replaced with the Strathclyde Business School Centre for Corporate Connections department.
The building received a refurbishment in 2010, which saw internal realignment of some rooms and facilities, [3] replacement of the outer spandrel panels, a new modern languages centre built, and the floors redesignated by transposing the ground floor to level 1, thus the former roof terrace becoming Level 15. The studios of the radio station Celtic Music Radio used to be on the 14th Floor of the building within the Hunter Centre.
Under the University's £300m masterplan for campus consolidation and renewal published in the 2000s, it was proposed to vacate the entire Livingstone Tower/McCance/Collins Building complex and relocate the Humanities and Social Sciences departments to the Lord Hope Building in Cathedral Street. A revised plan was released in 2011 which showed that the tower would remain in use until the year 2023, after which the building would be returned to Glasgow City Council for future redevelopment. [4] However as of 2023, the plan has stalled, and the tower will remain part of the University's estate for the foreseeable future.
The building is located within the John Anderson Campus of the University of Strathclyde. It is part of a mixed-use development which includes the University's own McCance and Collins Buildings, a two-storey sub-surface NCP car park, and a row of retail units at street level on George Street. There is also private car parking for Glasgow City Council.
The tower itself (arguably designed in the International Style) follows a contrasting architectural paradigm to the rest of the attaching buildings, which are of a distinctly Brutalist style – fashionable in the 1960s.
Games developer Chris Sawyer, an alumnus of the University of Strathclyde, based one of the skyscraper sprites appearing in the computer game Transport Tycoon on Livingstone Tower. [5] Livingstone Tower is affectionately known by students as 'Livvy Tower' or 'Livi tower' and is one of the most popular buildings on campus.
The Livingstone Tower is the home to many departments including:
The University of Strathclyde is a public research university located in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1796 as the Andersonian Institute, it is Glasgow's second-oldest university, having received its royal charter in 1964 as the first technological university in the United Kingdom. Taking its name from the historic Kingdom of Strathclyde, its combined enrollment of 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students ranks it Scotland's third-largest university, drawn with its staff from over 100 countries.
Jordanhill College of Education was a higher education college in Jordanhill, Glasgow, Scotland. It opened as a teacher training college in 1921. The college merged with the University of Strathclyde in 1993, becoming its Faculty of Education. In 2012 all educational activities were moved to the John Anderson Campus and the campus closed.
The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum, which are all located in various buildings on the main campus of the university in the west end of Glasgow.
John Anderson was a Scottish natural philosopher and liberal educator at the forefront of the application of science to technology in the Industrial Revolution, and of the education and advancement of working men and women. He was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was the posthumous founder of Anderson's College, which ultimately evolved into the University of Strathclyde.
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is a concert and arts venue located in Glasgow, Scotland. It is owned by Glasgow City Council and operated by Glasgow Life, an agency of Glasgow City Council, which also runs Glasgow's City Halls and Old Fruitmarket venue.
The Rottenrow is a street in the Townhead district of Glasgow, Scotland. One of the oldest streets in the city, it underwent heavy redevelopment in the 20th century and now forms part of the University of Strathclyde's John Anderson Campus. The street runs along the summit of a drumlin known historically as Balmanno Brae, although this name has long fallen from use.
The Strathclyde Business School (SBS) is one of four faculties forming the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1973, but tracing its history back to the establishment of the Royal College of Science and Technology's Department of Industrial Administration in 1947, the school is located on Cathedral Street within the John Anderson campus of the university. It offers courses for business education and management development.
Townhead is a district within the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is one of Glasgow's oldest areas, and contains two of its major surviving medieval landmarks – Glasgow Cathedral and the Provand's Lordship.
The Royal College of Science and Technology was a higher education college that existed in Glasgow, Scotland between 1887 and 1964. Tracing its history back to the Andersonian Institute, it is the direct predecessor institution of the University of Strathclyde. Its main building on George Street now serves as one of the major academic and administration buildings of the University of Strathclyde.
Glasgow University Library in Scotland is one of the oldest and largest university libraries in Europe. At the turn of the 21st century, the main library building itself held 1,347,000 catalogued print books, and 53,300 journals. In total, the university library system including branch libraries now holds approximately 2.5 million books and journals, along with access to 1,853,000 e-books, and over 50,000 e-journals. The University also holds extensive archival material in a separate building. This includes the Scottish Business Archive, which alone amounts to 6.2 kilometres of manuscripts.
Strathclyde Students' Union (Strath Union) is the representative body for students of the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, since its founding in 1964.
The Faculty Of Science is one of the four faculties which make up the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland. The faculty contains a number of departments offering various undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
The James Weir Building is an academic building in Glasgow City Centre, Scotland, United Kingdom and is part of the University of Strathclyde’s John Anderson Campus, situated between the Townhead and Merchant City districts of the area. It was completed in two stages between 1956 and 1964 as an extension to the Royal College Building. It is the third largest building on the John Anderson Campus in terms of overall floor area after the Royal College and the Curran Building. In addition, the stair and lift tower on the south east corner of the building is the second highest structure on the campus after the Livingstone Tower, and is highly visible throughout the eastern side of the city centre.
The John Anderson Campus, the main campus of The University of Strathclyde, is in Glasgow, Scotland. The campus is self-contained in its own area which straddles the Townhead and Merchant City districts on the north eastern side of the city centre, while being only minutes from the M8 Motorway, George Square and is located midway between Queen Street Railway Station and High Street station on the North Clyde Line.
The Andersonian Library is the university library of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Established in 1796, it is one of the largest of its type in Scotland.
The Strathclyde Telegraph is a student newspaper which was founded in 1960 and is edited, written and produced by students at the University of Strathclyde. It is the University of Strathclyde’s only printed student newspaper and is produced on campus.
The Graham Hills Building is a major building on Strathclyde University's John Anderson Campus, located in Glasgow, Scotland. The structure, originally known as Marland House, was completed in 1959 by the General Post Office (GPO) and was acquired by the university from the GPO's successor – British Telecom (BT) in 1987.
The Wolfson Centre is an academic building within the city of Glasgow, Scotland and part of the University of Strathclyde's John Anderson Campus.
The St Paul's Building, is a deconsecrated church building located at 104 John Street in the Townhead area of Glasgow, Scotland. Originally constructed in 1904, it has been part of the University of Strathclyde since 1953, when it was converted for use as the Chaplaincy. The building lies on the western edge of the university's John Anderson Campus, close to George Square.