'A Tall Storey ... but, a Fact Just the Same': The Red Road High-rise as a Black Box

Abstract

The advent of state-sponsored mass high-rise housing in post-war Britain brought into view a range of issues about the role of technology in everyday life. This paper draws on approaches in the study of science and technology in order to deepen our understanding of the socio-technical aspects of such high-rise housing, past and present. This thinking is elaborated empirically by examining a 1960s high-rise development, Red Road, Glasgow. The paper examines the inaugural phase of development and the most recent phase of 'redevelopment', the first stage of which is demolition. The paper extends existing accounts of residential high-rises generally and Red Road specifically, as well as elaborating an alternate analytical framework for understanding high-rise and supertall dwellings.

Small acts, kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

“…Rather, we demonstrate how false starts, modest aspirations, changing attitudes and implicit, activist dispositions are inextricably entwined with one another. We prefer, then, a non-linear account of the taking-place of activism that opens out what Jane Jacobs (Jacobs et al, 2007, also Latour, 1988 terms the 'black box' of seemingly assured achievements -in this case, like 'activism'.…”

Architectural movements, utopian moments: (in)coherent renderings of the hundertwasser‐haus, vienna

“…Third, Jane Jacobs' rich, subtle and innovative work on the Modernist high-rise has moved beyond purely semiotic and/or practice-based approaches (Jacobs 2006;Jacobs et al 2007). Her work accounts for the form-ing of artefacts that obtain coherence as buildings: in this case, "big" buildings.…”

“…Doing so enlarges our (geographers', historians', architects') explanatory field in terms of the production, inhabitation, materialization, management and dissolution of buildings (Jacobs 2006). A socio-technical lens for studying "thing-ness" recalls Actor-Network-style narratives that trace how assemblages of technologies and socialities co-constitute places (see also Gieryn 2002;Jacobs et al 2007). …”

“…That a single building cannot be confined to a single narrative is perhaps not surprising, given the "messiness" of materials, discourses and practices that constitute "buildings" (Lees 2001;Jacobs 2006). Nevertheless, geographers' accounts of buildings retain an inevitability about the relations that constitute their narratives (perhaps except Jacobs et al 2007), displaying a desire to tie up loose ends. I discuss how multiple movements around the Hundertwasser-Haus -by its architect, residents, and visitorsevoked utopian moments that were constituted by relations of different kinds, qualities and consistencies (often tenuous or even absent and disjointed).…”

UnMaking Public Housing Towers

“…I will address this in relation to the de facto demolition of Las Gladiolas (see below, "The Multiple Scales of Stairs and Lifts"). The significance of potential breakdown and disintegration to the life of urban physical entities like buildings was echoed by Jacobs and her collaborators (2011;2006: 3;Jacobs and Cairns 2011;Jacobs et al 2007) when they argued that the failure or success of modernist social housing high-rises as physical structures (labeled "big things" and "building events") is a direct result of the myriad, but generally invisible, economic, political, cultural, and environmental factors that enable them to either remain standing (and get framed within narratives of high-rise "success") or to get deteriorated and dismantled (and depicted as high-rise "failure"). This is particularly relevant to Las Gladiolas, whose demonized buildings and its component parts were entangled with symbolic questions of what an appropriate urban home and habitation should be.…”