MAKING a spectacle out of the demolition of the Red Road flats at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games is in poor taste ("Red Road flats demolition to be offered as Games entertainment", The Herald, April 4, and Letters, April 5, 8, 9 & 10).
They should be dismantled with shame and humility and a resolve to make a better city, not with triumphalism, a sporting commentary and some firecrackers.
The event is unlikely to resonate with those who lived there and goodness only knows what the rest of the world will make of celebrating the opening of "the Friendly Games" with destruction. The image of exploding towers is all too raw for far too many people in far too many places.
This week, Glasgow celebrated the official opening of the new building by Steven Holl Architects named in honour of Dame Seona Reid and sitting respectfully opposite Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterwork ("Song, confetti and tears as new art school building is officially opened", The Herald, April 10). There is also fine, innovative social housing taking shape in New Gorbals within spitting distance of the recently-demolished tower blocks there. We should be celebrating these arrivals, all delivered with the leadership and support of Glasgow City Council, rather than gloating over the towers' departure.
Removal of the tower blocks of Glasgow is certainly an important part of the city's story that should be recorded and shared widely as an achievement, but to celebrate this with a live spectacle at an international sporting event is crass and insensitive. This should be substituted in the ceremony with a proper celebration of the truly outstanding heritage of architecture and design in Glasgow that has and will endure.
Professor Christopher Platt, Head of School; Professor Brian Evans, Head of Urbanism; Dr Johnny Rodger, Reader in Urban Literature; Professor Florian Urban, Head of History of Architecture & Urban Studies; Sally Stewart Head of Postgraduate School; Alan Hooper Head of Undergraduate School; Robert Mantho, Urban Architecture & Urban Design; Henry McKeown, Architectural Design; Dr Robyne Erica Calvert, History of Architecture;
James Mitchell, Humanitarian Architecture, The Mackintosh School of Architecture of The Glasgow School of Art,
167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow,
I ADMIRE the courage of David Grevemberg, chief executive of Glasgow 2014 (Letters April 10) in attempting to defuse the unrest over the Red Road proposals.
I would rather he had suggested, not that the inclusion represented a city which could change, but a city which could learn.
We are titillated by Mr Grevemberg with the suggestion that more details of the opening are to be revealed in the coming weeks. After the first one, this could for some be a worrying prospect. If one of these details is planning to have a uniformed horseman enter, wearing a traffic cone on his head, I will almost certainly feel a strong compulsion to drink hemlock.
However, the issue which struck me as most absent in his letter is the fact that he has not suggested what Glasgow Housing Association or the dislocated people in the area are getting out of the inconvenience of complying with the tight Games opening schedule. The new responsibility to a global audience which has been thrust upon the organisers must surely be accounted for.
The letter suggests that the demolition is viewed as "business as usual", which implies that Glasgow 2014 feels no obligation to provide even a token to anyone in the area to compensate for borrowing the event.
Bill Brown,
46 Breadie Drive,
Milngavie.
DAVID Grevemberg's letter extolling the virtue of including the demolition of the Red Road Flats in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony beggars belief.
Addressing the proposal in terms of commemoration, celebration and engagement with the people of Glasgow is, to my mind, crass. Telling the story of the people, the area and the community surrounding these flats merits more than 15 seconds of bangs and dust.
As for regeneration, what are the plans and time-scales envisaged for the area? Will we have to wait for the next major international event scheduled for Glasgow?
Ronnie McKay,
7 Fortieth Avenue,
Whitehills,
East Kilbride.
WHAT are the members of Glasgow City Council thinking about in allowing this embarrassment of the Red Road flats demolition to go ahead at the Games opening ceremony?
As a former councillor in Glasgow some years ago I am certain that all members of every party at that time would have opposed such a ridiculous event taking place.
I hope the city council and the Lord Provost will think again and put a stop to this absurd nonsense before it is too late.
John Richmond,
32 Lochhead Avenue,
Lochwinnoch.
IT appears to me that there is a synergy between the events leading up to the resignation of a minister ("Public are happy to see the back of Miller and critical of Cameron", The Herald, April 10) and the decision to demolish the Red Road flats as part of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Game.
The former could have been avoided had the minister, irrespective of the rights and wrongs in the situation, simply accepted the findings of the Standards Commissioner and repaid the £45,000. That, I am sure, would have been the end of the matter.
As for the latter, setting aside the idea that this is just a ploy to get the cost of the demolition of the flats covered by budget of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, the only way this destruction would have any positive contribution to the image of Glasgow would be if this was immediately followed by a time-lapsed photo-shoot of the building of the new houses which will accommodate the athletes in the east of Glasgow - eventually to become part of Glasgow's housing stock. In this way the destruction of the old leading into the construction of the new would create a positive vision of Glasgow.
Whilst the public recognises that politicians have to make decisions, sometimes unpopular, it is the growing void between the "leaders" and the "led" that promotes disquiet. The arrogance of some politicians does make you question if they have any idea of the consequences of their decisions.
Alan McKinney,
10 Beauchamp Road,
Edinburgh.
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