Architecture + Design Scotland

Celtic Park Masterplan

20 September 2009

Introduction

This report relates to outline proposals for a masterplan for the Celtic Park area in Glasgow, presented at an A+DS Design Review meeting held on 25 August 2009 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

A+DS Views

1          General

1.1       We welcome the fact that Celtic Football Club has engaged in an exercise to develop a masterplan and to integrate future development plans into the City’s regeneration strategy. In combination with the adjacent new National Indoor Sports Arena (NISA) this site has been identified in the East End Local Development Strategy (EELDS) as a key location for the area as well as for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, when Celtic Park will be the venue for the opening ceremony. It is clearly vital to create a successful stadium area with attractive public spaces in what is currently a particularly bleak area of the city. We welcome the opportunity to comment at this early stage of the proposals.

1.2       A+DS have previously reviewed a number of proposals and plans relating to this area, including the finalised EELDS, the Commonwealth Games Village Outline Brief and the NISA proposals. Particularly relevant issues raised at these previous reviews included; the challenge of incorporating monumental arenas into developments, and their associated car and coach parking; a lack of information on proposals for areas adjacent to individual developments, resulting in an apparent lack of co-ordination of design across site boundaries; a lack of successful incorporation of landscaping into the NISA proposals and un-ambitious designs for the linking space between Celtic Park and NISA; unsatisfactory routes being created to facilities; support for possible re-opening of London Road rail line, with a dedicated station for the stadium / NISA, and for the re-use of the listed former school building beside Celtic Park.

2          Masterplanning process

2.1       Co-ordination of masterplans in the area

It was clear from the presentation that the Design Team are aware of the various Local Plans, masterplans and proposals for redevelopment in the surrounding area. However, there was little information presented to show how the Celtic Park proposals will work together with these other plans. The position and shape of the NISA building is generally indicated, but there is no detail of what sits around it, what is proposed at Springfield Cross, or on other areas ‘across the street’ from the site. This was previously highlighted as an issue on other related projects, including NISA, and we would expect it to be made clear that the separately planned areas are in fact designed to work together well. We encourage development of fully ‘connected thinking’ between the various parties involved in local regeneration, including the Council and the Clyde Gateway URC.

3          Public space strategy between Celtic Park and NISA

3.1       Co-ordination of design for public space

This space between the stadia is shown in EELDS as being conceptually one shared ‘square’ across London Road. The proposals as presented do not reflect this, in the way that the proposed buildings have been configured and the public spaces planned, presenting a fragmented and unresolved face from the site towards London Road. The proposals provide a space to connect the main Celtic Park main entrance to the NISA building on the route from the shared coach park and Dalmarnock train station. However, the space formed between these two major buildings also needs to address their scale, entrance relationships and the needs of the people who will use them to make an attractive external court serving both buildings. As noted previously for the NISA proposals, we would expect to see a more thorough and imaginative proposal for these public spaces, with a clear shared function and design intention, and a common language for their detail specification.

3.2       Area around former school building

We welcome the retention of the listed London Road School building, and proposed re-use as a museum and ‘front of house’ building for the football club, but suggest that there needs to be more consideration of the public space around it and how it relates to the plaza between the stadium and NISA. The decision to locate such a large volume of car parking around this building, particularly in the ‘square’ to the east appears to be at odds with the intention of making a high quality public realm.

4          Built form

4.1       Residential tenements

We support in principle the introduction of residential blocks along the new East End Regeneration Route (EERR) and behind Springfield Cross, to re-urbanise the block along the pattern of the retained Springfield Cross buildings, in line with the wider regeneration plans. However, further consideration and explanation is also required of the tenement’s built form and their relationship to adjacent spaces for them to become a convincing viable proposition e.g. relationship between the flats, their private amenity space and public space around the stadium, both in plan and section. Similarly the indicated gaps between tenements to the EERR do not appear to have a clear purpose or logic, and should be reviewed with a view to their effect on the continuity of the street frontage. We also suggest that the incorporation of commercial space should be clarified, and how this will activate and humanise the streets as public spaces.

4.2       Frontage to London Road

The strength of the presented form is weakened on London Road where the buildings neither form a strong urban edge, nor act successfully to define a sequence of public spaces. We suggest that further design development of their positioning and form is required, in relation to the study of the public space between the two arenas.

4.3       ‘Gateway’ Building

While the hotel / casino may be an appropriate use for this gateway location, we are less than convinced that the built form, and the spaces outside this intended landmark, will be attractive. The form of this building needs to address the re-introduction of the street frontage on the corner of London Road and the new EERR, as well as the new plaza to its south and east. We suggest that further resolution is required, to make this area into a welcoming and distinctive place on both match days and all those in between.

4.4       Architectural vision

We strongly suggest that if this document is to act as a masterplan for the future development of the area that there needs to be further work to establish a suitable architectural language of materials and form. The drawings so far are not very convincing in creating a vision for this area as an attractive places for residents to use on a daily basis, as well as for those visiting for sporting events.

5          Public Realm issues

5.1       Landscape Design

We recommend the incorporation of a landscape architect into the team, to help form a strategy for the range of public spaces, to help strengthen the proposals for the main spaces, and to broaden the scope of ideas beyond that currently presented.

5.2       Phasing and Public Realm Strategy

The quality of the external spaces at different phases of development needs to be considered, noting that much of the site is intended to be used as car parking until the areas allotted for housing can be developed, at an unspecified point in the future when conditions permit. Areas should be designed to be attractive and usable throughout their life, and we suggest building in some flexibility in the proposals to allow for uses other than car parking on non-match days.

5.3       Microclimate

We also recommend that there should be consideration of the local climatic conditions being formed around the stadium and the new proposed buildings e.g. sun studies, prevailing wind, to make the spaces attractive and usable, which may have a beneficial influence on the built form and layout.

5.4       Transport

We note that the proposed development plan will result in a significant loss of car and coach parking space, and we encourage the resolution of a clear strategy for its provision for sporting events to be established jointly with the neighbouring planned areas. We continue to support the efforts to re-introduce the London Road station as a good alternative to private transport, to help reduce the impact of car parking on the space around the stadium, local traffic loads, and the resulting levels of CO2 emissions.

Conclusion

We welcome the commitment of the Football Club in producing a masterplan for considerable future investment, with the aim of making a greatly improved environment around this focal point for the East End of Glasgow. There are a number of worthwhile principles set out in the document that pick-up on or incorporate design elements from the wider regeneration masterplans of the area. However, we have real concerns about the overall quality of the proposals. Generally the level of analysis and proposed solutions still appears diagrammatic and not to a high level of resolution, and the document does not successfully demonstrate how the proposals co-ordinate with other neighbouring regeneration schemes.

We recommend that particular issues in the proposals should be developed or reconsidered, in particular in the area of the main public space towards NISA, around the former London Road School and the proposed ‘Gateway Building’. The impacts of car parking and the phasing of construction on the quality of the environment for the foreseeable future need to be addressed. We encourage the project team to review these matters and focus the vision, to create an exciting high-profile ‘Stadium Quarter’ that makes the most of the opportunities presented. We would like to review the masterplan again once these issues have been addressed, ideally in conjunction with the other related surrounding developments.

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