The Brutalist Buildings of Glasgow

As The Brutalist hits cinemas, we talk to Brutal Glasgow curator Rachel Loughran about her exhibition with Natalie Tweedie, which shines a light on the our city’s relationship to the architectural style.

Four images of Anniesland Court in Glasgow, showing the building with a Brutalist design across a mix of angles against a blue sky
Anniesland Court | Images: Laurie Corewyn

With The Brutalist in cinemas now, Rachel Loughran – curator of Brutal Glasgow – is expecting a cultural moment. Brutalism is back in the spotlight and the jury’s still out on the ever-divisive architectural style. Loughran’s interest in Glasgow’s buildings blossomed through her interest in Scottish literature, in particular the work of Alasdair Gray. Her MLitt Degree Show at the GSA (Glasgow School of Art) saw her collaborate with the Alasdair Gray Archive to produce a recreation of the author’s studio complete with interactive QR codes which allowed audiences to delve into a virtual version of Gray’s seminal novel Lanark.

Brutal Glasgow debuted at the Trust’s Merchant City HQ at the end of last year and showcased Glasgow’s Brutalist beauties and the stories therein. In the days leading up to the release of The Brutalist – about a visionary Hungarian architect escaping wartime Europe for America – we caught up with Rachel to learn more about how our built environment can shape us. Specifically, how Brutalist buildings have shaped Glasgow and how film and literature, in turn, may have shaped our collective opinion of these often under-appreciated gems. 

“Brutalism is a very contentious term,” says Loughran. “For some, it means a very specific architectural period in the 1950s, into the 60s, which is only aligned with [pioneering ‘New Brutalist’ architects] the Smithsons. For others, it just means something big and concrete and ugly. And for many people in Glasgow it is a failure because we [tend to broadly] equate it with the high rise flats that were built in the 1960s and well into the seventies.” Citing an essay that Miles Glendinning wrote for the exhibition, she says that the Gallowgate Towers – twin tower blocks that were maligned by surrounding residents – are a prime example. Many don’t realise that they saved many Glaswegian from the unsanitary conditions of their crumbling tenements. They may not have screamed ‘utopia’ to the people looking up at them, but given their raison d’etre – fast, efficient housing for those who needed it – they’re due a major re-appraisal. That’s what Brutal Glasgow tries to do: to set the record straight on these buildings by telling the stories of those closest to them.

A grid of four images showing the BOAC building in Glasgow's Buchanan Street, A Brutalist building against a blue sky
The BOAC on Buchanan Street | Images: Laurie Corewyn

She harvested “deeply personal stories [that] provide a whole new perspective that you can’t see by standing in front of a building.” Hearing from residents of Anniesland Court, a huge residential block in the west end of Glasgow, was a particular highlight for Loughran: stories of wee grannies drying their laundry on the top floor of the huge tower which inspired a sense of shared ownership. 

She also spoke to pupils of the former Our Lady and St Francis all-girls Catholic school – often called Charlotte Street – who she found through Facebook. Contrary to the dismissive manner in which the school is sometimes remembered, not least because of its imposing Brutalist shell, “many of them saw their school as the forefront of female education,” she says. In this respect, the architecture mirrored their hopeful view for greater autonomy in the future. One ex-student remembered being full of the feeling that, for young women, it was their moment to go and be whoever we wanted to be. “That was a fantastic insight,” Loughran recalls.

The Pontecorvo, a building designed by prominent Scottish Modernist Basil Spence as part of the Glasgow university, is even more derided in memory. “It was quite imposing,” says Loughran. “It was very much complying to the idea of form and function working together so succinctly, [but] too succinctly, because then it couldn’t be repurposed and it had a pretty bad decline.” However, when she spoke to one of the technicians who used to work there, he spoke in a way she had never heard it being spoken about before. “He had a very intimate connection with [it. For him] It was a place of collaboration: he would collaborate with professors, lecturers, students, with other technicians and porters. He felt so sad when it was pulled down because he felt like his experiences and his memories were also being pulled down with it.”

Rachel Loughran and Natalie Tweedie stand in front of Natalie Tweedie's illustrations for the Brutalist Glasgow exhibition at the Glasgow Heritage Trust
Natalie Tweedie (Left) and Rachel Loughran (Right) in front on Natalie Tweedie’s Brutal Glasgow illustrations

The exhibition’s partnership with Glasgow Heritage Trust emerged from the shared philosophy of changing people’s perceptions of the buildings that are still standing; to spark a conversation about our inherited landscape, whether we love or hate it, with a view to mitigating the type of heartbreak expressed by Pontecorvo’s technician. If everyone had seen it as he did, perhaps it would still stand today. An oft-quoted passage from Alasdair Gray’s Lanark comes to her mind: “Glasgow is a magnificent city. Why do we hardly ever notice that?” 

Loughran, channeling the novel’s protagonist, is right. One of Glasgow’s most magnificent buildings, the BOAC designed by Gillespie Kidd and Coia on Buchanan Street, goes almost unnoticed despite being one of the city’s busiest streets. Instead, the city centre is associated with things that aren’t even based in Glasgow. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, for example, is often mistaken as a Glasgow story despite being set entirely in Edinburgh. The Scottish capital is an example of somewhere whose ornate architecture – and the snobbery around it – has benefited its reputation. This is despite much of that architecture being poorly insulated and maintained in comparison to Glasgow’s Brutalist builds, yet the pervading connotations of the Victorian style win the public perception test. Last year, Gray’s Poor Things was transposed from its Glasgow setting to London, causing many to criticise the film for ignoring Glasgow’s presence as a character in and of itself. Others were more simply moved to ask the question that Loughran keeps repeating. Why is Glasgow – culturally and architecturally diverse as it is – so often sidelined? 

A still from The Brutalist, featuring three figures in wide shot against a Brutalist building
A still from The Brutalist (2025), courtesy of A24

Many American cities to which, as in The Brutalist, Modernist architects migrated after the war have managed to hold up their bricolage cities of varying architecture as iconic landscapes, so where does the difference lie? To answer this question, Loughran points to The Smithsons’ savviness when it came to positively marketing their imposing structures. In collaging photographs of their monumental buildings with icons of the new, youthful America like Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe. They were cool by association. In stark contrast, the UK in the 1990s vilified social housing, most of which had been built in a Brutalist – or, at least, Modernist – style in the preceding years. And the stigma survives even now, even though Scandinavian countries – quite rightly, might we add, see affordable public housing as a source of pride. 

In this light, Rachel Loughran’s Brutal Glasgow – with its myriad gorgeous illustrations by Natalie Tweedie – is an example of perception reclamation. While the exhibition has completed its run at Glasgow Heritage Trust, it is still available online at glasgowheritage.org and is set to have a second life at The Pyramid at The Anderston this February. The striking, 22-room building was designed by Glasgow architects Honeyman, Jack and Robertson and it has just been announced that its community room will be the new home of Brutal Glasgow from Sunday February 23rd – 29th. Furthermore, Natalie Tweedie’s prints are available to purchase from nebo-peklo.co.uk