Join the GIA and Rob Morrison, Director of Agile City, for our next Sustainability Tours and Talks Event: Civic House

Civic House was built in the 1920's as a print works. Since 2017 Agile City CIC have been redeveloping the building as a hub of cultural and social enterprise. In 2018 Collective Architecture were commissioned to develop an ambitious retrofit strategy with the brief for the building to become to become a small-scale power plant. By dramatically lowering the heating demand and producing electricity via PV the building now generates twice as much electricity as it consumes over the course of a year.

The project is an exemplar for the creative reuse of post-industrial cities’ former factories and warehouses, which are often left to fall derelict despite their architectural value and cultural heritage. These buildings that once supported industrial growth – and an explosion in carbon emissions – can now support new green industries and a low-carbon future.

Built in the 1920s, Civic House is located just north of Glasgow city centre in a quarter now known as Speirs Locks. This was once part of a thriving industrial district that grew up around the Port Dundas terminus of the Forth and Clyde canal. But following the building of the M8 motorway in the 1960s, the already declining area became a post-industrial island – cut off from its inner-city context by the canal to the east, the M8 to the south and a busy road to the west.

Photo Credits: Andrew Lee