It was a spectacle of weary familiarity for many Glaswegians: a crowd gathering to watch a conflagration in progress, streets clogged with emergency vehicles, the city skyline blurred out with smoke.<\/p>\n
For many who saw the fire next to Glasgow Central railway station, which broke out on Sunday afternoon, the acrid smell of smoke dampened by the Monday morning drizzle recalled the blazes at Glasgow School of Art\u2019s Mackintosh building, which remains a burnt-out shell<\/a> after two devastating fires in 2014 and 2018.<\/p>\n But the loss to fire or other neglect of the city\u2019s Victorian heritage is becoming a semi-regular occurrence \u2013 take the collapse of B-listed (buildings that are major examples of a particular period, style or building type) tenements around Albert Cross, Pollokshields last summer, or the derelict building blaze in Carlton Place, the once elegant Georgian terrace on the south bank of the River Clyde, in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cYesterday\u2019s fire looks like a tragic accident but it highlights a brutal reality: Glasgow historic architecture is extremely vulnerable and too often those who make this point are called out as nostalgia buffs,\u201d says the architect and critic Rory Olcayto, who published a call-to-arms essay on the state of the city<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n Dismantling work begins on the south facade of the devastated Glasgow School of Art in 2018. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cUntil Glasgow<\/a> treats its built fabric as part of its social fabric, these crises will keep happening,\u201d he warned. \u201cToo many senior decision\u2011makers in Glasgow still act as if the city has to choose between looking after people and looking after its buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n He acknowledges the city council is beginning to put money into fortifying heritage architecture, such as long\u2011abandoned B\u2011listed tenements in the city\u2019s west end being brought back into use as affordable homes \u2013 proof, he says, that Glasgow can address social need and protect its historical fabric at the same time.<\/p>\n The fire broke out in a building adjacent to Glasgow Central railway station on Sunday. Photograph: Joe Diaz\/PA<\/p>\n And there are other examples of active care in the city centre \u2013 opposite the site of Sunday\u2019s fire are the Egyptian Halls, the vast A-listed (buildings that are outstanding examples of a particular period, style or building type) commercial space designed by Alexander \u201cGreek\u201d Thomson. It has been empty for 15 years, shrouded in grubby scaffolding, but recently the council has sought to use its compulsory purchase powers in tandem with a developer to renovate the building for restaurants and hotel space.<\/p>\n The hollowing out of the city centre<\/a> \u2013 now a mess of gap sites and stalled renovations \u2013 is familiar across the UK. The decline in footfall and rise in online shopping, accelerated by the pandemic, has hit hard, while the rapid inflation in construction costs and interest rates means much-needed residential conversions have stalled.<\/p>\n There are 143 buildings in the city centre on Historic Environment Scotland\u2019s \u201cat risk\u201d register, and the council established a built heritage commission two years ago with the express purpose of managing and restoring the city\u2019s vacant and derelict properties. The hosting of the Commonwealth Games this summer will be another galvanising moment when global media will again be focused on the city.<\/p>\n Niall Murphy, the director of Glasgow City Heritage Trust<\/a> and a specialist conservation architect, has some sympathy for the council. \u201cEveryone assumes that this is a council problem. In actual fact, it\u2019s the owners of the building \u2013 they\u2019re the ones who are meant to be maintaining the building.\u201d<\/p>\n Murphy says the trust has been working for some time to change the culture of maintenance of historic buildings in the city centre \u201cso that we become proactive rather than reactive\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can appreciate the city\u2019s problem,\u201d he says. The council is keen to use the 3.3m sq ft of vacant commercial space in the city centre to bring people back into the city, retrofitting it for residential use. But nearly 30% of that vacant space is in pre-1919 buildings, like the one that burnt down on Sunday.<\/p>\n Map of Glasgow Central fire<\/a><\/p>\n These traditionally constructed buildings cost much more to turn into housing and are unlikely to have compartmentalisation, where there is a proper separation between the shops and the upper floors.<\/p>\n The Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney, a longtime campaigner for Glasgow\u2019s neglected heritage buildings, says the original Glasgow School of Art fire was similarly the result of high-risk materials used in a historic building \u2013 in that case someone was using combustible foam with the projector \u2013 and called for stricter safety protocols<\/a> for pre-1900 buildings.<\/p>\n But while the initial cause of the Glasgow Central fire remains unclear, one fire science expert, Prof Guillermo Rein at the department of mechanical engineering, Imperial College London, says the presence of lithium-ion batteries in the vape shop where the fire is thought to have begun may be significant.<\/p>\n He argues the safety problems with the batteries may be more important than the building\u2019s design. \u201cThis may not have been a conventional shop fire,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cLithium-ion battery fires tend to be unusually resistant to suppression, because they are designed to be protected from water but generate intense heat, reignite, and in large numbers can result in fire conditions that are difficult to bring under control. That could help explain why even a highly trained and well-equipped force like the Scottish fire and rescue service faced such difficulty in suppressing the initial fire.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a spectacle of weary familiarity for many Glaswegians: a crowd gathering to watch a conflagration in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-466710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}