People Make Cities: What makes a successful city?

What makes a successful city?

The old urbanist Lewis Mumford says “perhaps the best definition of the city, in its highest aspects, is to say that it is a place designed to offer the widest facilities for significant conversation.”

Conversation… That might be the essence of the city.

Conversations might take place electronically of course but texting is hardly conversation. They happen on street corners, at water coolers, in queues at the post office, on the bus but the best conversations are over a coffee, or a pint, or lunch and as a society we have become very sophisticated at creating settings that help us meet and speak to each other.

The late David Williamson of Matthew Algie, Glasgow’s great old coffee roasters, used to say of Tinderbox “nobody ever goes into a coffee shop because they really need a coffee – the coffee is just an excuse for something else – a date, somewhere to read the paper, wait for a train, do some emails, get out of the rain or the cold, have a conversation.”

Aristotle said “Man is by nature a social animal.” I prefer the intent behind Jimmy Reid’s alternative that “man is social being”.

One of the marks of a good city is the success with which it creates opportunities for people to have conversations with each other.

Conversations are best in the right place and cities offer the theatrical sets and backdrops that dramatise these close interactions.

You can do it in the back of a taxi but it’s the small scale social spaces that occupy the very special zone between the private space of the home an the civic space of streets, squares and plazas.

I imagine that all planners, architects and urbanists recognise Nolli’s plan of Rome. But I’m guessing that quite a few here aren’t familiar so I’ll indulge myself in something that was for me an important influence.

In my first year of architecture at the Mac I was part of a group project that elected to make a Nolli plan of Maryhill Road. Apart from the obvious public spaces on that street like the Community Central Halls and Queens Cross Church, we decided to include all of the pubs, cafes and chip shops as well. And it was quite a challenge because we had to go in to ALL of them and make a quick survey. Now, it would have been rude to go into a bar without buying a drink, so that’s what we did, from 10.00am sharp. I’m not sure how many of you will be familiar with such establishments as The Viking, the Caber Feidh…

I wish I still had the drawing but the point is that it was a brilliant way for us, as callow students to get to know the place beyond the skin-deep impression of streets and buildings.

In later years we designed lots of bars, and coffee shops, some nightclubs, hotels, airport lounges, meeting rooms, tea points, staff restaurants and pretty much everything else in between. We realised that these small-scale stage sets are the places that directly connect the real people that inhabit a city to each other and to the BIG architecture that gives a city its architectural form.

We talk a lot about social spaces and as a business we became good at creating spaces where people are happy to spend time, talking with each other, people watching, revelling in just being there.

Glasgow was a late-comer to the party that cut and pasted high street brands throughout the country. But eventually we got all of the objectionable Wutherspoons, Slug and Lettuces, Yates’s Wine Lodges, Walkabouts, and more recently 5 Guys and Byron’s that exist everywhere else. The property and investment people probably think that Glasgow has been extremely successful in attracting “retail brands”. We often hear that this is the second or third biggest retail destination outside London. Is it anything to be proud of?

The places where we meet are essential parts of the cultural fabric of our cities. People sometimes think that the culture is only what happens after the pre-theatre menu but for me the social spaces are the theatre. In our culture these little public spaces are how we welcome our visitors, how we celebrate and pass the time with each other.

I’ll go back to that key word in the title of this seminar – what makes a successful city…Success… Interesting that you wouldn’t choose to just ask the question “what makes a good city”? Implicit in the choice of the word success is the idea of competition. Some cities are successful and others are not – so how do you measure that?

I don’t really approve of the idea that you have to put a number against everything in order to figure out who is the winner. But I understand the reality that nowadays cities are, if not movable, at least flexible and changeable and very much in competition with each other for the spoils of investment, tourism and the taxes of their citizens.

Cities are made of people… (we know that because People make Glasgow.)

Where people meet, they will do business…that’s why cities grew up around the busiest crossroads, harbours and river crossings.

The function of a city is to create close face-to-face connections between as many people as possible.

How do you get to know a city? Not one thing, lots of overlapping experiences and moreover memorable interactions with other people. Busy is good and dense is good. Density creates conflict and energy (the roar of the crowd) and from that comes creativity.

• Communication
• Accessibility
• Safety

The role of architecture and design: You can’t build a city without design – it’s the process by which we plan what we are going to build but architects and designers should also be good guardians of quality and continuity.

Commitment to quality. Care, effort. Self-awareness. Didactic, owns the narrative, tells the stories.

The role of brand and distinctiveness: To be successful a city has to be distinct. The recognition of that distinctiveness is what has become known as its “brand”.

Here’s a checklist of some of the variables: Pick and mix… from American Place Branding guru Bill Baker:

• Architecture and design
• Attractions
• Celebrity and fame
• Climate
• Cuisine
• Culture
• Emotional benefits and feelings
• Ethnicity
• Events
• History
• Industry and local products
• Influence and power
• Landmarks and icons
• Legends and myths
• Location and access
• Natural environment
• Nightlife
• People
• Personality and values
• Physical attributes
• Social benefits
• Sport

In order to resist being subsumed in global homogeneity cities need to work hard to recognise and celebrate their uniqueness.

The thing that’s clear to me though is that you don’t have to tick all of these boxes. Even a small amount of a very strong tasting ingredient can dominate – and that could be positive or negative. How many Charles Rennie Mackintosh buildings are there in Glasgow? 5? 6? How many buildings by Gaudi are there in Barcelona? How many Beefeaters standing around in London? How many body snatchers in ancient Edinburgh?

Competition

Cities are in competition… locally and internationally. Perhaps competition is good after all. Civic competition is given spice by the close personal associations that we all have with our places – the cities that we chose to inhabit and those that we choose to visit, become strongly associated with our personal identities. We see it in our choice of football teams and by that measure alone Manchester must be one of the most successful, with 2 eponymous teams, perhaps closely followed by Milan and Dundee. Funny that there isn’t a “London United” or a “Glasgow United”.

Places should not be homogenous. We need not be flattered by the addition of a Carluccio’s. It’s no more than corporate imperialism.

“The level of esteem that a city’s name evokes has a direct impact on the health of its tourism, economic development, prestige and respect.” Often this is uncontrolled, random, unmanaged…

The branding experts always say that perception and reality should be in alignment but actually for real success reality has to exceed perception. I still found Venice, Rome, Berlin, Now York, Shanghai, Kolkata, better and more amazing that I had expected.

Distinct location, geography, economy, climate, history, culture, religion, architecture produces the city’s actual character… and all of this is usually expressed through the people that you meet there.

“70 – 80% of all American cities have NO dominant image at all in the public mind. Thus finding a core differentiating asset…becomes even more important”

Being different:

• The people
• Physical attributes
• Tangible benefits
• Intangibles

“Place branding is a team sport, best played by people of all age and interests with a healthy dose of what’s best for the common good – and with an out of town coach…”

Internal pride from external approval

“Cities often have a reality problem that city leaders prefer not to recognise”

Simon Anholt

• The nature of perception and reality
• The relationship between objects and their meanings
• Mass psychology

“Every place on earth wants to do something to manage its international reputation”

Is it all just about a few simple clichés?

• Edinburgh: You’ll have had your tea
• Liverpool: you do do design do you?

Mental pictures…

• Cape town
• Beiruit
• Berlin
• Wolverhampton
• Detroit

Those fundamental stereotypes may be unfair but fundamentally affect our behaviour towards people, places and products… at least until you have to opportunity to experience them, to visit the place, to meet the people first hand. Then you can make up your own mind.

Unforeseen beauty, kindness, empathy, drama.

The discipline of strategic branding has at least taught us that consistency is important.

The stakeholders have to be co-ordinated – impossible to co-ordinate everyone but at least the city agencies should be on the same page.

In spite of all that thoughtfulness there’s an Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas, a Statue of Liberty in Tokyo, a Parthenon in Nashville, and in China, if you know where to look there’s an Stonehenge, A Washington Capitol, an Arc de Triomphe.

Politicians and leadership:

• Energetic and committed
• Autonomous
• Supported by electorate and executive team
• Supportive and effective service providers

Cities that can change:

Is this a successful City?

• Remote?
• Under-populated?
• Unhealthy?
• Poorly educated?
• Economically moribund?
• Lousy internet?

YET it is good to be here. We remember what it was to be great and that is sustaining. There is hope…

Universal services are usually provided by the civic government. They start out private and exotic – only available to the wealthy – but eventually we all got:

• Water and drains
• Waste disposal
• Roads
• Power and light
• Healthcare and hospitals

Properly fast internet ought to be next. It should be the current equivalent of roads, railways, canals and motorways of previous eras. Ironically, here, in The Merchant City, it is lamentable and it’s apparently because within this exchange area The City Council and University of Strathclyde have their own ‘big pipe’ intranets, making the rest of us too insignificant for the private suppliers to be very interested.

Virtual is fine but actual is the only place where we can taste and touch and smell and feel.

Vikas Mehta; wrote about The Street: A Quinissential Social Public Space. I think that you have to go smaller and into much finer detail but for him the basic building block of cities is the street.

He says:

“… one of the cardinal roles of the street, as public space, is to provide a setting for range of active and passive social behaviours… (without them) our cities and towns would be no more than agglomerations of privatised spaces and buildings, devoid of the space for the individual to be a complete citizen.”

“Good cities are places of social encounter. Creating spaces that encourage social behaviour in our neighbourhoods and cities is an important goal of urban design.”

“These encounters-the exchange of ideas and information-create innumerable possibilities to make innovation and growth possible.”

“Human beings receive fulfilment and enjoyment through interactions and contacts with others of their species. In sociological terms, our well being depends on a range of primary and secondary relationships”

So interaction is about fun as well as the economy but fundamentally when we come in contact with others we reinforce our social group. Its what gives us our identity, our individuality.

Which brings me back to homogenisation… 10 years ago a think tank called the New Economic Foundation published a report that coined the expression clone town Britain

The report stated: “Many town centres that have undergone substantial regeneration have even lost the distinctive facades of their high streets, as local building materials have been swapped in favour of identical glass, steel and concrete store fronts that provide the ideal degree of sterility to house a string of big, clone town retailers.”

NEF policy director Andrew Simms said: “Clone town Britain kind of creeps upon you – suddenly you turn round and your town is looking the same as every other town.”

The NEF report claimed that what it views as an ‘assault’ on the character of town centres “has been aided by planning and regeneration decisions that have drawn shoppers away from the high street and created a retail infrastructure hostile to small independent businesses”.

The report pointed out that:

• general stores are closing at the rate of one a day;
• between 1997 and 2002 specialist stores like butchers, bakers and fishmongers shut at the rate of 50 per week; and
• some 20 traditional (non-chain) pubs are closing per month.

The think-tank also identified what it termed a threat to “distinctive” local shops in the guise of the new breed of “micro-format” supermarket stores that have begun to replicate in high streets.

The question is whether our planning authorities need to do anything about it. When the conversation comes up the focus of attention is invariably Tesco, and the other mega-grocers but I’m more concerned by the little ones – Pret, Starbucks, Nero, Costa, Witherspoons, near here… Greggs, Pizza Hut, Jamie’s, Carluccios, Yates.

They are the enemy and you shouldn’t encourage them.

And why should planning policy allow these cuckoo clone brands do supplant unique local businesses? Would it be wring to introduce a bit of protectionism to the high street? I mean if there are controls on the design of your shopfront then why shouldn’t there be control over what (or who) is behind it?

Cities are focal points for specialisation.

The role of technology: You probably think I’m railing against technology. It is good to be off-grid a bit sometimes.

I suspect that usually, when you see someone tweeting as they cross the road, or texting in a restaurant, they are probably communicating with someone who is less than a mile away and it just adds to the idiomatic mix of communications that enrich our culture. It won’t stop them talking to each other.

But it will filter and package their language in a way that must diminish diversity.

I’m not so happy about that but I’m a lot less happy about the fact that 100m from here businesses struggle to get more than 10mb download speed and uploads at peak times are a complete joke.

So if anyone would like to have a conversation in the café downstairs about whom to talk to make that happen, then I’d be happy to speak to you!

Thank you.

Graven Images named the only British Gold Key Awards finalist for excellence in hospitality design

Graven Images has been named 32nd Annual Gold Key Awards Finalist for Radisson Blu Aqua, Chicago, representing the only British design studio to make it into the shortlist. Featured along with the Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group in the Best Hotel Design – Midscale-Upscale category, Graven Images was selected among 200 submissions from around the world.

Opened in November 2011, the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel unveiled the first look at the design vision for the upper-upscale Radisson Blu brand in the United States. The flagship hotel is located on the first 18 floors of the 81-storey Aqua Tower, named “Skyscraper of the Year” by Emporis.

Graven Images’ Creative Director Jim Hamilton carefully handpicked features and materials reflective of the city of Chicago to implement a design relevant to the surroundings and everyday life. As an example, steel work features heavily throughout the interiors, paying homage to the city’s iconic skyscrapers. Similarly, the lobby’s brick walls studded with backlit glass blocks resemble the cityscape seen from a distance.

Representing the Radisson Blu brand and Chicago’s unique architectural style, a thought-provoking, contemporary design crafted by Graven Images prevails throughout. The 20-ton steel staircase leading to the mosaic-tiled Filini Restaurant, a dramatic Egyptian brass medallion screen wall and a 50-foot-long gas fireplace are some of the most distinctive elements.

Gold Key honours are presented annually to design firms responsible for the most innovative hospitality properties completed or renovated within the past 18 months. Nearly 200 projects in 23 countries were considered, representing a 25% increase in entries over 2011.

Announced by The International Hotel, Motel + Restaurant Show® (IHMRS), finalists were selected based on aesthetic appeal, practicality and functionality of design. The winners will be revealed at a breakfast ceremony due to be held at the Mandarin Oriental New York on 12 November 2012.

Radisson Blu Aqua, Chicago

Tonight, Thursday September 27th, Graven Images’ Jim Hamilton will be doing a Billy Joel style live link-up on Skype to jointly host a tour of the interiors of the recently completed Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago. The tour has been set up by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

He’ll be broadcasting from his bed, in Glasgow Scotland, as the time difference means that it will be 11:45pm in Glasgow – and Jim will only just be back from the pub.

Appetite for Design event details

All work and play

Buildings are static but architecture creates journeys. Architects have to be more than just the travel agents – they have to be the storytellers, the playwrights, the movie directors.

While good architects have an intuitive understanding of the dramatic tension that comes from good architecture, they can be inarticulate narrators.

Which is ironic, because communication is ALL that an architect does. The thing that makes architects special is that they communicate using drawings as well as with words.

Drawings are for the communication of ideas and aspirations to clients.
Drawings are how architects communicate with themselves, and with other designers.
Drawings are how architects communicate with those craftsmen and professionals who are responsible for making buildings.

So with all this communication around why are new buildings often such dumb animals? Most corporate architecture is inert. Is it because it has nothing to say, or because the architect was so busy building the theatre that she forgot to write the play?

Through time even inert buildings will start to chatter and splutter – they start to give away secrets that only their owners should know. They tell visitors what its really like to work there, the truth behind the beautiful corporate jargon.

Buildings soak up the energy and experiences of those people who work in them. Like ghosts we all leave our imprint. Unhappy buildings tell tales.

Think about the average new-build office building in the UK. A lazy combination of easy-detail finishes to satisfy the minimum requirements of complacent employers. Some kind of nominally architectural curtain wall graphic over a frame hanging with services and all masked with a flimsy inner layer of Gyproc, carpet and ceiling tile. With fluorescent lighting, and a little tiling or some light oak in the reception area.

These are the bland backdrops against which people play out their lives, hoping for a game of golf at the weekend or an occasional after-work piss up.

Who sets the agenda? Well the money lenders of course – and the over-nourished property agents and other dull boys who suck the love out of life, in their semi-hibernation cells of suburban bungalows.

Graven Images has always been disrespectful of corporate banality. Nevertheless, some of our best friends are big companies and surveyors, and there are always good people in there somewhere!

Two projects, both of them with a past, and looking for a future:

Student Loans at Lingfield Point, Darlington…

This was a factory for the thread makers Patons and Baldwins. It is north-lighted and employed generations of local workers. The original building was created to optimise industrial production and as such it falls short of the usual criteria used for planning a modern office building. But once we started to work with it we realised that it offers a wonderful volume to perform all kinds of tasks. It is as flexible as a theatre, and invites dramatic interventions that make the usual interactions of work just a bit more enjoyable. The building is up-front about its past, and it tells its own story through the exposed structure and services and the images of its construction and former factory days. But it also talks to its new users to help them do their new jobs. It invites them to lunch together, sends them for a coffee on the way to a meeting, tells them when to talk quietly and when its OK to make a noise.

We were pleased when this was recognised as being one of the very best office environments in the UK last year. We were also thrilled to hear stories from the people who work there about their friends and family who used to be factory workers in the same place.

The Blythswood Hotel, Glasgow…

Blythswood Square is a square with a past! Not only was it the place where the Monte Carlo Rally left from in 1955, but the square was notorious as the centre of prostitution in Glasgow, the scene of Glasgow’s infamous poisoning case in 1857, and start or finish point for marches and demonstrations for years. So when we were invited to re-design the former RSAC building, converting it into a 5 star hotel, it was a bit like being asked to produce a sequel to an already famous and well-loved movie. As always we tried to make a series of spaces that reveal and invite its audience to get involved. There is an underlying suggestiveness that people often need to really have fun. Particularly in hotels, that experience is created through the exaggerated social rituals of meetings, conversation and service. Very little is about function and most is about people and how they behave in different circumstances. If we might coin a new dictum, “Form Follows Culture”.

Uisge Beatha: Gaelic for Girlie?

Whisky—our water of life—symbolic of Scotland. Robust, subtle, international, exacting and diverse in its hundreds of variations, it is vital to both our economy and national identity.

It is the one product through which the whole world can know us and understand who we are.

But there is a silent creeping malaise eating away at the character of the strong drink; and it is being led by the effete troupe of girlish graphic designers and limp marketing people.

Whisky packaging design and ‘re-branding’ is too often the process of emasculating tradition, of introducing Disney-style Victorian heritage, of replacing real with fake.

Perhaps it is the sclerosis that makes us too lily-livered. Perhaps we have been drinking the perfume. What other excuses can there be for the striking similarity between the contemporary whisky label and those bottles of Eau-de-Cologne?

On the other hand, maybe the Sol-swilling hairdresser classes have never tried a drop of the hard stuff.

The design of whisky packaging has become worrying distant from the contents of the bottle.

The process was really started by United Distillers who launched the enormously charming and successful Classic Malts range. They introduced the idea of the babbling copywriter to the label, and the twee illustrations were so beautifully crafted and breathtakingly printed that one may excuse them responsibility for the fallout which followed.

The copy of Talisker is simultaneously perfect and cringing. Spoken in an English accent, “more than a hint of local seaweed” is of course bollocks. Bloody hell, it comes from Skye, not a meadow in the Dordogne. It’s a big whisky, not all shy and blushing.

Cragganmore is better. The exquisite Victorian etching is so redolent of a Robert Louis Stevenson frontispiece and pubescent schoolboy days that the result is quite anally retentive. It spawned a legion of bastard children, all watercolours and soft-pencil drawings of hielan’ hames from Coatbridge to Corpach.

Oban, another ‘Classic Malt’, manages to get a 250-word essay on the front-along with a couple of seagulls. A made-up history for a real product and a real place.

And how the masses did follow, like lemmings to the crag. Illustrations of glens and bothies and every kind of bird and animal that ever graced our shores.

Farm animals, foxes, fish, cats, even oyster catchers, were drafted by London casting agencies to become representatives for our historic drink.

Not everyone can have a stag or a grouse. One of the distillery managers was given a blackcock. He was not amused.

Cream and green and gold became the uniform of the wannabe brands who are not sufficiently confident in themselves to recognise and articulate their own qualities.

Of course it is quire natural to try to follow those who appear to be the leaders, but it is shocking how easy it has been for designers to regurgitate heritage grammar in the most inappropriate settings, and then dress it up with sweet wee stories about some local alkies.

The tendency towards corporate branding has at times taken on a monolike approach—usually more appropriate to oil companies. The ‘Connoisseurs choice’ range from Long John makes a single brand out of more than 35 products.

Whilst this may be efficient and rational, it is against diversity and against the very uniqueness that its name professes to promote. Diversity is the foundation of richness. Once lost, it is impossible to re-invent.

Our culture is expressed through the design of our products. International homogeneity may eventually erode all that which is essentially Scottish and it is important to value the vernacular and sometimes crude work of old typographers and local printers.

That is where our true graphic tradition resides. It can still sometimes be seen in bakers’ bags and in the hand-painted fascias of independent retailers in small towns.

In order to keep it, we have to understand it and value it. There is always an easier route than clear thought and unfortunately this often comes seductively disguised as creativity.

Not all are bad: The Glenlivet is handsome and straightforward, and the soft serifs of The Macallan seem to reflect the character of the rounded single malt.

Laphroaig is almost controversial in its black and white plainness. No trivial ornament is deemed necessary from Scotland’s most richly flavoured whisky. In standing separately from the cream and decal-edged crown, Laphroaig is at once crude but unique. A man’s drink, a rough diamond.

Glenfiddaich and Chivas Regal are the Versace whiskies—a lot of gold, plenty of glitz. They represent that catholic strain in our national characteristic which relishes decoration, excess and conspicuous wealth.

But nevertheless they are magnificent classics. Perhaps they are not so fashionable at the moment but they will be long lasting, only ever in need of the occasional minor adjustment rather than wholesale re-design.

It is said that the distillers are concerned about the lack of appeal which whisky has to the style-conscious youth market of the under-25s.

The problem is not with the packaging but with the baggage of prejudice and snobbery that surrounds many of the brands. Much of new design work reinforces these attitudes—only recalling the floral wallpaper and decorative borders of suburban Edinburgh.

The trend of printing directly onto the bottle, made successful by Absolut and so many of the designer beers, has crept in as well.

What is rational for a clear spirit is plain daft for whisky. The awful Bowmore has adopted this technique with great enthusiasm, probably to impress the youngsters. I trust that when the heady thrill of being different wears off, the gimmick will become clear.

There is no harm in stepping to one side of idiomatic convention for a moment. J&B is the best of these. Enormous red text on a yellow label (a special kind of yellow which is more green), and all on a superb green bottle.

It is recognisable at a hundred paces. The design is unique and robust, it uses some of the same typographical devices as many of the others but achieves the design with such confidence that it cannot be missed—whether on supermarket or gantry shelf.

You can recognise Johnnie Walker from a mile away as well. The round bottle and confident naffness speaks volumes. Red or Black? Nothing could be more direct.

The design addresses the bigger formal issues with the gusto of the whisky without becoming obsessed with the trivial and effeminate curlicues of printers’ ornaments.

The trouble with graphic designers is that they are mostly very good at making things look pretty.

Whisky doesn’t need pretty. It is not that kind of drink.

Andy Wightman: 6000 Miles – written piece

Until presented with these ideas, I didn’t know of the existence of the Tarlair Lido. Hidden away beyond Macduff, I guess most people outwith that part of Banffshire will not have heard of it either. But what a delightful place!

In the school holidays in October 2004, I cycled with my family along this coast from Elgin to Aberdeen. It’s one of my favourite parts of the country which, despite an austere feel, is home to a rich culture – one which has remained resilient in the face of the homogenisation and dislocation apparent in so many other places. At 6am I enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and an apple turnover in a small baker’s shop in Portsoy. It supplied confectionery to the big supermarkets all over the north of Scotland. A Cruickshank’s lemonade lorry passed me on the road. We cycled past dozens of small farms and businesses that thrive in these parts. The names and the signage were unfamiliar. These were north-east businesses in the north-east selling north-east products.

In one sense, therefore, coming across signs directing us to the Sashimi Machine in Macduff would have been no surprise. Odd though a reference to Japanese food culture would appear, it would nevertheless have appeared as yet another indigenous response to how to make a living from the land and the sea (or in this case a fusion of the two). It might also have made us pause and reflect for a moment about the Scottish diet of fried fish, bakery products and fizzy drinks!

This self-reliance and independent spirit is rooted in the history of the land – a place that has sometimes been referred to as the ‘poor man’s country’. This was a place where the peasant survived longer than anywhere else in Scotland, where upward mobility was possible in farming and where, as a consequence, family enterprises took root from modest beginnings and, in many cases thrive to this day.

For those with no access to the land, there was the sea. Despite recent problems in the fishing economy, it is the sea that remains at the centre of the economy of much of the north east coast. But the sea is an increasingly contested space where a living is becoming more difficult in the face of environmental change and the regulations and legislation surrounding fishing. I don’t much care for the fish-farming industry where protein from the sea is harvested to feed farmed fish in intensive caged systems. The Sashimi Machine is different. It’s a meeting of farming and hunting on the border of the sea and the land – on the coastline. It’s a place for husbandry of the marine resource to promote healthy eating and, importantly, an opportunity for valuable education on the nature of food and how it’s produced and consumed.

One of the secrets of survival in the modern capitalist economy is to add value and to exploit niche markets. In food products, the north-east has a tradition of excellence and innovation, producing some of the finest produce in the country. Graven Image’s proposal for the future of the Tarlair Lido neatly reinforces this tradition and strengthens it by exploiting the tourism potential. Had the Sashimi Machine been in existence last autumn, we would not only have lingered longer in Macduff, we would no doubt have been anticipating it by exposure to it in the shops we visited and the delivery vans we cycled past on the way there.

Andy Wightman
Writer and Researcher.
Author of Who Owns Scotland

Comment

I’m pleased that Glasgow has won the Arts Council of Great Britain’s accolade to host a year long festival of architecture and design in 1999 because I’m hoping that it will help persuade the world that Scottish and British products are among the best in the world.

It seems that we always think that other countries have more of a winning formula in the design stakes than we do. We value Italian furniture, French fashions and American jeans over our indigenously designed products.

What we often don’t know is that many exotic imports are created by British designers; Claire Brass for Alessi, Tom Scott at Ford, Julie Tierney and Marcus Oates at IBM, and of course Alexander McQueen at Givenchy and John Galliano at Christian Dior.

Along with the rest of the world we envy exciting design from Barcelona, the colourful, rustic styles of Provence and Tuscany, and Germany’s super smooth technology. However, I believe that we have only just begun to mine our rich resources of Scottish design inspiration. We have already found it within ourselves to produce tartan and the Paisley pattern, world class knitwear and textiles, Macintosh coats and, our very own genius, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

In Scotland we are lucky to have a distinguished tradition of design which is currently being rekindled and presented on a world stage in the lead up to our Year of Architecture and Design. In 1999 designers will be challenged to look forwards to the millennium instead of backwards to Scotland’s distinguished heavy industrial past and unrivalled Victorian heritage.

Today, Scottish architects and designers are working to create new ways of living for a new century—designing buildings and products which will place Scotland firmly on the ‘most desirable list’ for a long time to come.

From Glasgow to Shanghai

Glasgow has one of the oldest traditions of design education in the world. It is home to the famous Glasgow School of Art designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1896 and has the largest architecture and design community in the UK outside London.

The city was Cultural Capital of Europe in 1990 which gave a further boost and increased flourish to the design community. And in 1999 we got our own Architecture and Design Centre , The Lighthouse, another Mackintosh building which had originally served as the offices for the Glasgow Herald. The building was re-animated by local architects Page and Park. It is one of Europe’s largest Architecture, Design Centres and has become one of Scotland’s premier venues, attracting more than 250,000 visitors in its first year.

But not only is Glasgow a magnet for international aficionados of design, the creative community is increasingly outward looking and many of the city’s leading consultancies now undertake regular high profile international commissions. Graven Images is one such consultancy. We’re an international, cross disciplinary design consultancy which has operated from its Glasgow base for over seventeen years and last year we started to make fascinating inroads into China.

One exciting commission was the creation of ‘Britain at the Leading Edge Showcase’, the UK government’s biggest Chinese event of the year, featuring the work of more than fifty of the UK’s most innovative companies from six industry sectors. Visitors to the Shanghai-based exhibition, opened by Trade and Industry Minister Patricia Hewett, were given a guided tour by ‘Maddy’, a Chinese-speaking avatar created by Digital Animations Group, also based in Glasgow.

We were also asked to design a 200 square metre stand at the All China Hi-Tech in Shenzhen which would be clearly branded as British and would be visible and distinctive in a noisy and competitive environment.

Our solution was to conceive the stand as a promotional vehicle, a ‘prequel’ to the major ‘Britain at the Leading Edge Showcase’ described above.

We created a gloss white floor onto which were carefully placed a series of simple objects; a curved box containing a projected video, free standing totems containing UK sector information, and glass cases containing monitors. Each of the monitors showed the same ‘Maddy’ who acted as a tour guide to the exhibition. All of the text and the video were in Chinese. We were delighted when the stand was given ‘Best Organised’ and ‘Best Designed’ awards for the Fair.

We hope to be returning to China soon and building on our relationships there, and indeed having more opportunities to draw inspiration from a culture and a country so different from our own.

How to find us

Graven Images is located in Glasgow’s Merchant City. Our studio occupies the ground floor in a courtyard which is located just off Candleriggs.

Candleriggs is one of the streets that runs between Trongate and Ingram Street and is around 5 minutes walk from Queen Street Station.

Click on the link below to view map:

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Graven Images Introduction

Graven Images is like no other design organisation.

Since 1985 we have continued to provide a unique range of services for business, including interior, exhibition and graphic design.

Our people are talented professionals drawn from a wide range of creative and technical specialisms. We often work in cross-disciplinery teams on projects around the world. Together we create integrated design solutions that work.

We pride ourselves in being structured thinkers and organised, eloquent team-players. We are committed to getting things done and being good people to work with.

Our in-house research capability and academic partnerships ensure that our work is always relevant and innovative.

We respond to client’s real needs with real-world solutions that are creatively excellent and provide measurable benefits.

We are also experienced in supporting businesses through periods of change and in helping clients to identify new strategies and opportunities for business success.

Above all, we enjoy working on tough challenges for passionate people. We love what we do and are proud of what we’ve achieved by working closely with our clients.

Ross Hunter, Managing Director