It’s almost 60 years since a delegation of Glasgow councillors returned from Marseilles determined to transplant Le Corbusier’s Mediterranean vision of high-rise living to the banks

of the Clyde. It must have been one hell of a trip, because it engendered the most comprehensive redevelopment scheme ever seen in the UK.

Following that 1947 fact-finding mission, Hutchesontown and the Gorbals were among the first districts earmarked for wholesale redevelopment. Approved in 1957, the £13m Gorbals project saw 7,600 houses razed and replaced with 3,500 new homes, half of them in multi-storey blocks.

At 31 storeys, Balornock’s Red Road flats were the highest in Europe when they were unveiled in 1969. Areas such as Springburn and Townhead were bulldozed, while thousands of high-rise homes were created in Darnley and Summerston.

By 1979 Glasgow had more than 300 tower blocks. But then it almost all came tumbling down again amid the virulent backlash against post-war high-rise housing. The shock of the new was superseded by a spiteful distaste for the prematurely aged. Glasgow’s high-rise social housing had become synonymous with urban blight and social deprivation.

Now, however, the less than humble high-rise is being dusted down for a critical reappraisal. Earlier last week, the architects Cooper Cromar revealed their scheme for Elphinstone Place, a ground-breaking tower combining residential, commercial and leisure facilities on the site of the former Strathclyde Region HQ at Charing Cross.

The 39-storey, 440ft complex will house 202 apartments and will be Scotland’s tallest building. Cooper Cromar’s Alan Stark says: “Elphinstone Place is envisaged as an iconic addition to the skyline, a modern luxury tower block of the kind you’d expect to find in most major urban centres.”

Elsewhere on Clydeside, Scotland’s most high-profile architectural practice, gm+ad, are working on two mixed-use tower projects at Lancefield Quay and Glasgow Harbour. Alan Dunlop, of gm+ad, says: “These projects are designed to appeal to an upscale customer. The Glasgow Harbour tower, for example, is 23 storeys tall and has been created to maximis e the utility of all available social space. It’s the combination of uses — residential, business and leisure — that are key to a successful multi-storey complex these days.”

Even in the public sector, the long-embattled tower block is currently mounting an impressive rearguard action. In Glasgow’s Sighthill, which is under threat, tenants have banded together to tell housing bosses that they do not want their blocks demolished. A survey carried out by Sighthill Save Our Homes found that 90% of respondents wanted to keep their flats if improvements were made.

The residents’ leader Alan Graham says: “What people love about these blocks is the sense of belonging to a community. These are not the lonely places you’d recognise from media portrayals.”

Alan Dunlop believes that the simple passing of time has made this pro-high-rise sea change possible. “The terrible towers of the 1950s and 1960s are a distant memory for most, while at the same time widespread international travel has exposed us to towers in cities such as New York, Sydney and Melbourne.”

However, Miles Glendinning, the author of Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, sees a more pernicious agenda at work. “What’s driving this current revival is posh flats, glitzy, aspirational tower blocks created for executive-style mixed use.

My fear is that a fashionable market-led transformation of Glasgow’s skyline could in time prove just as destructive as anything that’s gone before.”

Love them or loathe them, the re-emergence of the tower block as plausible speculative development means that high-rise buildings are once again considered desirable.

This should be just as useful to those trying to retain the existing multis as to those marketing new ones.

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