a bigone era

Do you remember that I showed you three high rise tower blocks a while ago, destined for demolotion? Well, they have been demolished and it was spectacular to watch. This had been planned for a long time, the blocks had been empty for probably two years and they were stripped of all reusable materials since then. 

I marvel at the skills of those engineers calculating the placement and power of the explosive charges. Mindboggling really. We knew the date of destruction for a while but not the time. So when on that date a a helicopter started circling the area, we knew it was not long because a helicopter has limited flying time. We migrated over the to the right side of the hill we live on, together with what seemed all of Glasgow. The road going past the high rises was blocked, as was the Kelvin walkway. The residents in the nearby housing estate were evacuated for the duration. 

It was quite an emotional moment because these three high rise blocks had been part of the neighbourhood ever since we moved here twenty years ago and I took many photographs over the years. I quite like the aesthetics of a tower block. I know most people think they are a bit of an eyesore but I think they are a witness of their time. There was a lot of local resistance to the demolition, these blocks were the homes of many families. I am not sure actually what the plan for regeneration of this area is but I hope it is something worthwhile waiting for. Britain has the oldest housing stock in Europe, with only Belgium coming close. The peak of house building in Britain was soon after the Second World War, with not enough new housing built now. I learned about this on More or Less on BBC Radio 4 this week, a good coincidence.

As with many buildings of that time, they were not built for eternity and at some point, building maintenance will have become prohibitively expensive. I wonder about the environmental impact of demolition and regeneration, not so much from an immediate point of view but from a carbon budget point of view.  

It took about five seconds from the moment of the first explosion to there being only clouds of dust. I found that surprising but I hadn’t really thought about this so probably not surprsing at all. The only noise was that of the explosives but that was clearly just my memory playing tricks on me because the explosion on the video was clearly loud. But the actual collapse seemed very quiet. I was taken by surprise, it happened so quickly and without fanfare. I don‘t know what I was expecting, a countdown maybe? Or some kind of warning siren? No such thing happened. I am afraid I can‘t give credit to the creator of the video, Richard shared it on our family WhatsApp group and probably scraped it of the Facebook. By the time I had my phone out, there was just dust. 

After the demolotion, we carried on with our walk and Jack had fabulous time chasing imaginary foxes along the river. 

The following day, I wanted to see how much rubble there was from the three demolished buildings. Not much at all actually and very neat piles, too. Apain, surprising but then when I think about it, the buildings were mostly hollow spaces with walls and strong foundations. 

One block is still standing, this is too close to housing and needs to be denconstructed floor by floor. Much slower for sure but the neighbouring houses are really quite close. 

So for sure, the skyline seen on my walks will be different. Thanks for visiting 😊