The Royal Exchange Square development is situated within a conservation area ina historical part of Glasgow city centre. The basis of the scheme is a 60,000sqft new build retail, health and leisure mixed-use development linked back to existing leisure facilities with the reinstatement of public realm spaces.

Glasgow is a city of dense urban blocks with lanes and lightwells carving through the sandstone mass and creating a city of fronts and backs. These incisions into the sandstone blocks allow daylight to penetrate the deep plan. The city of solids and voids offers both physical but also psychological legibility and this gives us a clue as to how we might approach subtleties of massing, materiality and detail in the proposed new build development alongside the immediate building context and wider townscape.

NORD’s approach is to create a bold form, which expresses a level of experimental courage. The design will represent a willingness to move forward without betraying our interests in historical continuity.