Bluevale & Whitevale Flats:
Two 31 storey blocks; the tallest buildings in Scotland and the second highest public housing schemes in the UK. The towers are 91 metres high and each contains 174 flats. Just higher than the Red Road flats this pair of towers dominate the area soaring high above all that surrounds them and visible for many miles. There is a brutal purity to the design, with the square plan shape, and continual balconies running around all four sides and from nearby looking upwards at the buildings the simple form of the square identical rings stacked one upon the other soaring upwards is a powerful and photogenic form. However the harsh unrelentling use of concrete, rigid geometry and uncompromising repetitive forms demonstrate that the buildings are pure examples of brutalism. Whilst the term brutalism derives from the french 'béton brut', for raw concrete, here it belies the meaning many ascribe to it of being harsh, dehumanised and quite simply brutal. Currently still in use as housing many of the individual flats are boarded up and the area is lighted by unemployment and poverty.
Completed in 1968, demolition is currently expected by 2016.
The photographs on this page were taken on two seperate occasiosn: very early on a spring morning and late on a summer afternoon in 2011.

street address: 109 Bluevale St & 51 Whitevale Street, Gallowgate, Glasgow
Latitude / Longitude: 55.855884,-4.21551 (sourced using Google Maps)

view from the south looking up towards the two towers


south elevation of the east tower of the pair, showing the repetition of the square rings of each floor ascending the tower


view up the south elevation of the west tower


the two towers from the south-west corner


tower top


the central portion of the two towers as they visually overlap one another


the corner of the middle floors and the glazing around the corner of each floor


corner of the balconies running in rings around each floor


many of the flats are now empty and secured with metal shutters over the windows


view up the brutalist structures


view from the west, with closed Whitevale Baths to the right of the photograph


view of the flats from the hilltop of the Glasgow necropolis


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view from the city centre at St. Enoch approximately 2.5km west of the pair of towers