Words: Júlia Pujals Antolin (She/Her)
It is always an exciting discovery stumbling upon a narrow street lush with glistening cobblestone, trendy wine bars, and fairy lights. But what happens when that street is instead heavy with years of abandonment? Who is willing to peel back those layers and trust that what lies underneath will be worth it? The Barras Market was once like this, an underused hub with a rich cultural past, however, the East End community has turned it into one of the most desirable spots in Glasgow. More often what developers see as wasted land, others appreciate as naked spaces to fill with communal practices, like the legendary raves at St Peter’s Seminary whose memories still draw people there to discover what is under the rubble.
There is a fine line between rehabilitating a space to make it useful and stripping a place of its particular identity. It is this frontier that the development group Many Studios set to navigate during the reconstruction of The Barras Market in the late 2010s. In 2024, many locals fear that the financial success of the marketplace has been possible at the expense of the neighbourhood’s culture, however, its investors still wonder if there is a point in stopping now. Regardless, the financial success of these young businesses that have inspired the coining of street names, such as “Hippie Lane”, does not necessarily equate to the success of the neighbouring and historical communities. Ashleigh Elliot, who manages the Barras, has been intentional in avoiding gentrification. But can such unstoppable renovations truly avoid endangering the traditions of the older generations that comprise the unique fibres of the Barras?
There have been considerable steps in affirming the ‘rough and ready feel’ of the Barras, like maintaining the original market colours. It seems that the architecture may be enough in and of itself to maintain the spirit of the place. The importance of the specificity of location, and its value in bringing people together, is a belief held by many, even as some locations physically deteriorate, such as St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross, formerly a Roman Catholic seminary that, due to the decrease in popularity of priesthood in the 60s, was abandoned shortly after.
In 2020, The Kilmahew Education Trust acquired the land in Cardross, expressing a similar approach to the Barras’ reconstruction on their website, balancing ‘open spaces’ and ‘the creative process’ with the need ‘to rebuild the economy.’ For now, the building exhibits the material signs of all the people that have gone through: the arches of the study rooms from its first pupils, the graffiti on the walls from the artists of the area, and the trampled quality attributed to more raves than one can count. Its uncared-for state has also made it a cultural centrepiece for events like the Festival of Architecture in 2016. The St Peter’s Seminary shows that ruins are only as abandoned and useless as their community lets them be.
The multiple uses of and definitions of place that coexist both in the Barras and in St Peter’s Seminary, from admiring their architectural value to recognising how time has changed their purpose, raises the question of how we can bring all these sometimes conflicting approaches to place making without risking losing any of them. Is this even possible, or does this kind of dispersed and divided attention doom architecture to a gradual disengagement? Just as the St Peter’s Seminary meant something different for religious than for non-religious groups, the Barras is seen differently by the vendors whose business depends on it than by its visitors and customers. Research on the St Peter’s seminary published on e-architect showed that trying to compress all ‘layers of history into a singular essence’ often comes at the cost of denying ‘the importance, or even presence, of time risking the buildings’ abandonment’. This atemporal approach, a sort of vacant memorial space, where there is no daily use of the space, risks gradually pushing micro-communities to lose sight of their place, as the spaces no longer serve their main purpose and their identity, which is made in these spaces, is lost. Still, if it is this blend of old and new, utility and sensibility, often opposite perceptions, that enables people from different backgrounds to enjoy these places, focusing the renovations exclusively to ‘get us in front of new people’, as Elliott aims to do, would effectively erase the essence of the Barras for at least one part of its users. As a study of the Barras renovations states, ‘it is no longer valid to superimpose an idea onto a community’ through architectural means.
As it seems, there is not one answer to how best to preserve the community spirit with material representations that do not hinder or ignore its histories. Architects are caught in the difficult position of respecting the existing environment without abandoning the distinctness of their work. Ultimately, they must ask themselves if rehabilitating disused spaces is beneficial to the original users or if it is a means to attract a new public that can elevate the place’s profits. As it stands now, the St Peter’s Seminary, albeit economically useless, contains all of the diverse identities that inhabited it during its varying states of decay. It is an example of how transcending the appearance of a place can not only unveil its secrets but also uncover or strengthen our own emotional ties to it.
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The Kilmahew Education Trust. (2022). Education trust Scotland: The Kilmahew Education Trust: Cardross. https://www.kilmahew.org/
Welch, A. (2023, November 17). Saint Peter’s seminary cardross study – e-architect. e-architect. https://www.e-architect.com/articles/saint-peters-seminary-cardross-study?utm_content=cmp-true.
Merino, M. (2023, February 1). Ashleigh elliott on the barras market: “there’s no community like it.” The List. Retrieved December 10, 2023, from https://list.co.uk/news/43071/cornering-the-market-i-thought-i-could-really-do-something-here.
Deakin, I. (2021, March 7). Lessons of longevity. Missing in Architecture. https://missinginarchitecture.net/lessonsoflongevity/
