Red Road (flats) - Construction

Construction

After the publication of the Bruce Report in 1946, Glasgow Corporation identified Comprehensive Development Areas (CDAs), which were largely inner-urban districts (such as the Gorbals, Anderston and Townhead), with a high proportion of overcrowded slum housing. These areas would see the mass demolition of overcrowded and insanitary tenement slum housing, and their replacement with lower density housing schemes to create space for modern developments. The dispersed population would be relocated to new estates built on green belt land on the outer periphery of the city's metropolitan area, with others moved out to the New Towns of Cumbernauld and East Kilbride. These initiatives began to be implemented in the late 1950s.

Barlornock was one of the green belt areas that had hitherto little development prior to the construction of the Red Road estate. The original plans for Red Road were far more modest than the high-rise scheme that would ultimately emerge – it called for a complex of maisonettes no taller than 4 storeys. however, what emerged, designed by Glasgow Corporation architect Sam Bunton – conceived the scheme to house a population of 4,700 people, the 28 and 31 storey tower blocks were at the time the highest in Europe, although they were quickly surpassed upon the construction of the 42-storey Barbican Estate in the City of London in 1973.