Claudia Massie

Glasgow

If the Science Centre represents a transition from shipyard to pleasure dome, the Necropolis still stands for the Second City of the Empire

issue 01 August 2015

A wet walk in a Glaswegian graveyard might not be your idea of fun, but then you might not have spent the past two hours in the Glasgow Science Centre. Endure that, and see the sodden Necropolis stroll swell in allure.

The Science Centre is one of the emblems of the new Glasgow. Rising from the old docklands on the south side of the Clyde, beside the BBC at Pacific Quay, it is one of the shouty new buildings leading the regeneration of the old shipbuilding areas. These buildings and their outlying friends still look like awkward blow-ins here, isolated blobs of glitter studding the wasteland. There’s not yet much sense of any connection with Govan Road, 200 yards to the west, but people are certainly coming here from somewhere for something, and in their multitudes.

The Science Centre is a vogueish sort of place that encourages absolutely everything except contemplation.

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