In a long, dark room with a claustrophobically low ceiling there is just about enough light to make out the bullet holes in the distant wall.
Paul Stallan, co-owner of Stallan-Brand Architecture + Design, is providing a brief but compelling tour of the former police training facility where the company is based.
His passion in describing the building and its history illustrates just how important this former Scottish Architect of the Year believes buildings and their functions influence those who use them.
Situated just south of the River Clyde, adjacent to Glasgow High Court in the browbeaten Laurieston area of the city, the strikingly pink-hued building has an illuminating story, much like its latest tenant. 
Stallan-Brand occupies a bright, contemporary space on the ground floor, safely above the former firing range and within walking distance of the large-scale urban regeneration project on which the company led the design.
When complete, the Laurieston Transformational Regeneration Area (TRA) will be home to a modern community of 800 new flats and townhouses.
“It’s been incredible, you get so much back from a project like that, from watching the transformation” says Mr Stallan. “I was born in Springburn. I watched tenements being torn down and replaced by tower blocks that were torn down,” he says. “I’ve seen two communities removed. You get a sense of that cycle and just want to get it right this time.”
Stallan-Brand was founded in March 2012 by Mr Stallan and his long-time friend and colleague Alistair Brand.
The pair first worked together in 1995 when they were recruited to open a Glasgow studio by Edinburgh architect RMJM. For many years the studio thrived, however there was ultimately a parting of the ways between the pair and RMJM in early 2012.
This offered Mr Stallan and Mr Brand the opportunity to start afresh, with their own business. 
A team of six was quickly built and in Mr Brand’s words they worked from a small space in the west end, “week to week, invoicing on a monthly basis to get cash in”.
Mr Stallan adds: “we were confident that through hard work and our relationships that we’d identify projects, and it began to snowball.” 
Winning a contract to renovate the modernist St Bride’s church in East Kilbride was followed by a contract with Keir in the education sector, giving the company some breathing space.
From there, the team has quickly grown to 20, the business has moved to its Laurieston home and focused firmly on what it wants to be.
“We were clear about the type of business we wanted to develop,” says Mr Stallan. “What we envisaged was fundamentally design led, of a certain scale and that was personal, where we’d be involved in every project, and it would have a shape that we could look after each other, and increasingly going forward we could be selective about the client we would work with.”
As part of that, Mr Stallan says the business will take a cautious approach to its finances. “We don’t have any debt; a lot of second or third generation practices are having to continuously service debt. We don’t have that and we don’t envisage that we ever will. That’s a discipline that comes from setting up a business in a recession.”
He adds that he and Mr Brand were clear from the start about what they didn’t want. “That stack it high, sell it cheap model of creating a sweatshop of technicians and aggressive fee tendering was not us,” he says. “We wanted a team of skilled people who complemented each and looked after each other.”
The plan is to develop a profile both locally and internationally – with Mr Stallan projecting that 20 to 25 per cent of work will be outside Scotland. Currently, Nigeria, Bahrain, Iraq and Australia are on the company’s radar.
And there are four areas of focus at the practice: regeneration, education, commercial mixed use and cultural projects.
In commercial mixed use, the company has just sought planning permission for a high-profile £75m redevelopment of the former BHS site on Sauchiehall Street. The 12-storey development will include 130,000sq ft of much-needed Grade A office space and is due to be completed in late 2018.
“That’s a real game changer for us. We’re definitely positioning ourselves as a practice that can do high end commercial work,” says Mr Stallan.
It is in education, however, that Mr Stallan clearly has a desire to create meaningful change – indeed he becomes more animated when the conversation turns to the role that schools play in the development of children.
“The whole agenda in education at the moment is the journey, how schools have become a big agent of change in communities,” he says. “A school has to be more than a school.”
Mr Stallan says that watching his children grow up, he found there was huge potential for improvement.
“What we’re seeing is that secondary schools are huge institutional, departmentalised environments, but there’s been a radical repositioning of early years primary because of an emphasis on play, socialisation and education.
“The way subjects are taught [in secondary schools] is culturally letting our children down. The pressure on attainment is so extreme, whereas the pressure should be on wellbeing, not attainment.”
Mr Stallan talks about how he envisages how thematic learning could be put in place, with maths, art and history – for example, all linked by children staying in the same place and having teachers come to them.
“If I had a big dream, in terms of design, it would be a full, progressive upper school campus where I could take some radical risks.” 
For now, the company will continue to build on its growing reputation. The business is now turning over about £1m, in line with projections. 
“We’d like to get turnover up but keep our shape,” says Mr Brand, adding that the plan is to work optimally and maintain numbers at around 25.
“That’s what we’ve got space for here, and if we burst out of that we’ve gone against what we always said,” adds Mr Stallan. “The end game is the quality of life, because work is so critical. The older you get, you get this sense of getting something back, doing projects you like with people you like.”
And with the practice reaching the size and scale the founders envisaged, now is the time to concentrate on building their own legacy, and finding a quality of life that is determined by making the next chapter in their story very much their own.
“It’s an old cliché but if you spend all your time looking back you can’t look forward,” says Mr Brand. “And we’re looking forward with a certain amount of satisfaction.”