Merchant City Creative and Cultural Hub
Tuesday 15, December 2009
The King Street South Block is a 4 storey 50,000 square foot Edwardian building in the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City.
Wasps has provided two floors of studios for around 60 artists at the building for the past four years. It was originally only intended as decant space until the Briggait redevelopment was complete but we have managed to negotiate a long lease with Glasgow City Council to keep the building for creative use.
The council has wanted for some time to build a ‘Creative and Cultural Industries Hub’ in the Merchant City and had already identified this building as a potential site, once other arts organisations housed in the building were relocated into the city’s flagship Trongate 103 venue.
We are now fundraising to deliver the ambitious project which will provide:
• 102 workspaces (3,588 sqm / 38,620 sq.ft) in total for up to 112 visual artists, cultural social enterprises, and new and established commercial creative businesses
• Dedicated meeting rooms, a social space & roof terrace
• Stunning new ground floor foyer & multi-function space for exhibitions & events
With the varied blend of creative practices to be housed in the new building, we believe this hub can become one of the country’s most inspiring places for creative people to work; an environment where visual artists, social entrepreneurs and commercial business owners can develop their careers, grow their business, interact and collaborate.
We’ve already received confirmation of £950,000 from the Scottish Arts Council for the £3.5million redevelopment. If the rest of the money can be raised by April 2010 as planned, we aim to be on site in the summer and open the new facility in early 2011.
Award-winning architects, NORD, have created a simple yet elegant design for the building which creates uniqueness in the identity of each floor - examples of some of these designs can be seen below:
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