Our work to support Scottish Opera’s vision to evolve a new headquarters development at New Rotterdam Wharf in Glasgow, has been submitted for planning consent. The project is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a smart, mixed-use development that integrates cultural creativity with the surrounding community and follows detailed Pre-App discussions with Glasgow City Council Planners and Design Group.

The proposed development at New Rotterdam Wharf sits within a context of rich industrial heritage, but also a contemporary context of changing attitudes towards the area – which continues to grow as a new cultural quarter for Glasgow. Inspiration has been drawn from the site’s historic and contemporary industry, from the massing and materiality of buildings that were once built on the site, and from the impact on the wider views of the site from the rest of Glasgow City.

The development will serve as a creative education and community outreach hub for Glasgow and proposals include world class rehearsal and performance spaces, adaptable for use as a film sound stage. Our approach prioritises the users of the city and the site, by embedding high quality, intergenerational, public realm with enhanced connections to the canal edge – one of Glasgow’s best, and least known, public open spaces. Working with HarrisonStevens Landscape Architects the plans include high quality public realm to all edges of the development and provide an innovative series of spaces – including a rooftop ‘hidden garden’ accessed directly from the towpath – that will serve to bolster Scottish Canal’s programme to regenerate this section of the canal.

The development would help secure Scottish Opera’s presence within Glasgow for the next 60-plus years.