A COMMUNITY’S relationship with one of Scotland’s most notorious brutalist structures at the heart of a town’s centre has been explored by a collective of award-winning artists in a new book.
Concrete Dreams: The Rise & Fall of Cumbernauld Town Centre documents the “beginning of the end” of the building following the announcement of plans to demolish it in March 2022.
With words from Alison Irvine, photography from Chris Leslie, and illustrations by Mitch Miller, the book captures the complex legacy of one of the most distinctive, and polarising, structures from Scotland’s brutalist architecture era.
The building was seen as an unconventional solution to the needs of the residents of one of Scotland’s new towns, Cumbernauld, in the 60s and 70s when it was built.
The architects of the building aimed to house civic, municipal and retail facilities into a single brutalist “mega structure” that straddles the A8011.
Concrete Dreams is the group's third book, and they have built a reputation for documenting Scottish community's relationships with urban landscapes, which included covering the final days of Glasgow’s Red Road Flats.
The three artists, collectively known as the Recollective, spent almost two years with full access to the town centre building to document its planned demolition in detail along with interviews with experts and members of the local community.
“I think what was interesting was, there was that shift,” said Leslie.
“There was a time when everybody hated it and they thought, get rid of it, right? We're gonna get rid of it.
“Then everybody's like, all the residents and people who use it are like, wait a minute.
“What's happening next? What comes next?”
Irvine said that when she spoke to residents in Cumbernauld almost everyone had a strong opinion about the town centre and there were firmly two camps.
One that had grown to romanticise the building and how it had become synonyms with Cumbernauld and the other who saw it merely as an eye-sore and wanted it gone.
Leslie explained that the locals they spoke to “were full of humour, full of passion and nobody was on the fence, they were so well informed”.
Irvine added: “They either really, absolutely hated it.
“They had lived with it all their lives, hated it, and wanted rid of it or they just thought it was really special and wanted it kept and couldn't understand why nobody was preserving it and nobody was making a big enough fuss.
“I think there's still those two camps.”
Irvine continued: “What we did find was that even if there were people, and we spoke to a lot of locals, who maybe saw it being built when they moved in the sixties.
“They used it, they were fond of it, they had lovely stories attached to it and they understood the kind of utopian idea of it and why it was being built.
“But yet they still want to get rid of it as well.”
The architectural design of brutalism is regarded as a stark style of functionalist architecture which rose in popularity during the 1950s and 1960s across the UK.
Its art style is characterised by minimalist construction which showcases the bare building materials and structural elements.
Brutalism lends its name from the word “beton brut” meaning “raw concrete” and its industrial construction design of buildings typically uses massive concrete blocks and other raw materials like exposed metal.
Other examples of brutalist architecture in Scotland include the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery, Edinburgh's Cables Wynd House, also known as Leith Banana Flats, and Anniesland Court.
The controversial art style of brutalism has been debated for decades as some see the beauty within its simplicity while others disagree.
Cumbernauld’s town centre is an example of brutalist architecture's polarising design as it has won “awards” like Urban Realm magazine’s Carbuncle Awards for the most dismal town in Scotland, the Plook on the Plinth.
However, during the three artists' conversations with the locals, it became clear that the town centre served a much deeper purpose than just its design.
The book helps to identify the complex relationships around heritage and conservation, Miller explained.
“It's part of a bigger conversation about how we treat our heritage, our more recent heritage, and our towns in general,” he said.
Irvine said one of her key takeaways from the project was learning how much impact decisions made by planners at local authorities can have on communities for decades later and that Cumbernauld's town centre is a stark example of this.
“If you get it right, it has a really good impact.,” she said.
“But if you get it wrong, then that's it.”
Miller added that one of his biggest takeaways from creating the book was realising how good a project the town centre is and how proud Scotland should be of them.
“There is something wonderful and unique about it, but it kind of gets in the way of that,” he said.
“If there's anything I've learned from covering Cumbernauld, it's that there's actually a lot of good in Cumbernauld, and how good Cumbernauld is as a project.
“We stop talking about it as a failure and actually acknowledge that.
“A lot of those housing developments are great, and we should be proud of them.”
The group said there is scope for them to return and document the demolition work when it actually begins, which isn’t expected to start until around 2027–2028.
The project was funded by Creative Scotland and the William Grant Foundation, with support from the New Towns Project, North Lanarkshire Council and Graphical House.
The book was designed and published by Glasgow-based design agency Graphical House who worked with Recollective on the group’s last book, Barrowland Ballads.
The book will be launched on Saturday, November 23 at Cumbernauld Library, in the very heart of the iconic megastructure as part of Book Week Scotland.
There is also an online talk on December 5 where the details can be found here along with the book.
