The Great Buddha of Gilmorehill

Glasgow University Library, a cluster of six vertical elements, is, admittedly, not the most elegant of architectural structures. But then, also with six elements - 4 limbs, a torso and a head - neither, particularly, is the human being. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos (for whom all ornamentation was a crime) used to say that a building was for living in not for looking at. I have come to understand the university library thusly, as a building to be inhabited and not looked at. Once beyond its raw, artex-ed exterior, the library reveals itself as one of the great wonders of the human world. It is for this reason that I sometimes refer to it as The Great Buddha of Gilmorehill: for the wisdom on the inside, and not for an inelegant outside.

Having been constructed between 1965-68 and based on designs by William Whitfield, the library itself is (at the point of writing this in 2013) almost 50 years old. Whitfield's incorporation of independent towers was praised by the Architectural Review for changing the outline of the building 'from that of a lumpish cube to that of a cluster of vertical elements' thereby making a successful contribution to the skyline. Whitfield himself described it as 'a kind of disruptive camouflage' and claimed to have been influenced by the geometrical form of Northumbrian border castles.

Unlike the border castle however, the university library with its various attributes and properties evokes more of a religious aura. With its its light and airy cetacean interior, its 2 million plus books spread across 12 floors, its stunning panoramic views, Glasgow University Library is a virtual cathedral on top of a hill.

It is a sacred place where even the wind sings of its power.

There are some wonderful images and information detailing the construction phase at -
http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/sept2008.html

'Beneath the Cloud of Unkowing'

[From the canal towpath at Firhill, the eccentric library sits off to the right.]