This is the final draft of a paper published as:

Gold, J.R. (2006) ‘The making of a megastructure: architectural modernism,

town planning and Cumbernauld’s central area, 1955-75’, Planning
Perspectives, 21, 109-31

Please see the published version for correct citation.

1
THE MAKING OF A MEGASTRUCTURE:
ARCHITECTURAL MODERNISM, TOWN
PLANNING AND CUMBERNAULD’S CENTRAL
AREA, 1955-75

by

JOHN R. GOLD

Professor of Geography,
Oxford Brookes University,
Headington,
Oxford,
OX3 0BP,
England.

Revised paper for Planning Perspectives, August 2005.

2
Biographical Note

John R. Gold is Professor of Urban Geography at Oxford Brookes University and a

member of the University’s Institute for Historical and Cultural Research. In 1999, he

won the AESOP Prize for the 'Best Article in a Journal or Collection of Papers Published

in Europe’. His most recent books, single or co-authored, are The Experience of

Modernism: modern architects and the future city, 1928-53 (Spon, 1997), Landscapes of

Defence (Prentice Hall, 2000), Representing the Environment (Routledge, 2004) and

Cities of Culture: Staging International Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851-2000

(Ashgate Press, 2005). Two other books are forthcoming: The Practice of Modernism:

modern architects and urban transformation, 1954-72, (Spon, 2006); and the co-edited

Olympic Cities: urban planning, city agendas and the World’s Games, 1896 to the

present, (Studies in History, Planning and the Environment series, Routledge, 2007).

3
Abstract

The development of the Central Area at Cumbernauld New Town was a landmark in
town centre design and an intriguing example of the convergence between
architectural modernism and town planning in the 1950s and 1960s. The ensuing
paper, which considers the genesis, development and subsequent reassessment of this
extraordinary structure, comprises five main parts. The first supplies conceptual
background, by seeing the Central Area as an expression of thinking about
megastructures. The next section examines the background to the designation of
Cumbernauld New Town and the challenges that its location posed for town centre
design. The third part discusses the way that Cumbernauld’s town centre, one of the
few megastructures ever built, evolved as the chosen form for this site, looking at the
progress from initial ideas through to the formal design. The fourth section reviews
the various phases of implementation, concentrating on the two initial phases – the
only ones that proceeded in line with the original megastructural schema. The final
section reflects on the abandonment of the megastructural principle after Phase 2 and
considers the wider significance of this episode. It highlights the design deficiencies
and poor political decisions that blighted the megastructure before commenting on the
implications of this episode for understanding the relationship between architectural
modernism and town planning.

4
Introduction

‘Cumbernauld was new in more than one sense. Not just a New Town but a
concept of community living. It would not only look different, it would be
different from other towns. … Everything centres on the centre itself. Although
still incomplete, it houses all the town’s social, business and recreational
facilities under one roof. Eventually it will stretch for half-a-mile and will
include a technical college, entertainment and sports facilities, as well as
department stores, penthouses, offices and shops’.1

Intoned by Magnus Magnusson, the narrator of the film Cumbernauld, Town for
Tomorrow (1970), these words remind us of a short-lived but fascinating episode in
the history of the British New Towns. Occupying what was described as ‘an
unpromising moorland ridge… fifteen miles north-east of Glasgow’,2 Cumbernauld was
the fifteenth New Town designated in Great Britain. Its design, however, broke
decisively with many of the principles that underpinned the Mark I schemes. It
abandoned the typical cellular pattern of neighbourhood planning in favour of cohesion
and compactness. The town had commensurately higher densities than its predecessors
and even featured small clusters of high-rise buildings. Traffic planning also sharply
diverged from earlier precedent. Strongly influenced by American experience,
Cumbernauld’s planners applied ideas for handling large throughputs of traffic to create
a town engineered – a verb commonly applied at the time – for the motor age.3 A spinal
high-density road passed immediately under the town centre, which was itself probably
the greatest single departure from previous practice. Cumbernauld’s town centre,
initially known as its Central Area, was conceived as a single multi-storey complex, with
car parks and service areas at ground level linked by stairs and lifts to shops, offices,
leisure facilities and dwellings above.4 Although only partly built to the original design,
it gave rise to what still has claims to be the most comprehensive vertical separation of
pedestrians and vehicles seen in a town centre anywhere in Britain during the postwar
period.
This paper considers the genesis, development and subsequent reassessment of
this extraordinary structure (Figure 1). In doing so, we recognise that the design of the
town centre itself was a product of an avowedly multidisciplinary team that turned to a

5
particular holistic architectural form to tackle a scale of planned urban development and
a marriage of functions that reached out well beyond the conventional scope of
architecture. The Cumbernauld town centre was, in fact, designed as a ‘megastructure’;
a term that essentially describes a vast, endlessly extendable and often multi-storey
structure or network that brings together a desired mix of complementary land-uses
and activities within a single integrated framework. Very few such structures were
built but, especially during the 1960s, the concept excited planners and architects alike.
As one of the few that ever made the transition from paper vision to built form,
Cumbernauld’s town centre merits close scrutiny not just as part of the history of the
British New Towns, but also because it represented an unique product of the brief, but
highly influential, period of convergence between architectural modernism and town
planning.
The ensuing paper contains five sections. The first sets the scene by
considering the conceptual background to the design of the Central Area in terms of
the development of thinking about megastructures. The next two sections discuss the
way that Cumbernauld’s town centre evolved as the chosen form for a locationally
challenging site. The fourth part looks at the implementation phases, analysing the
efforts made by the design team to re-conceptualise the traditional morphology of the
city centre and their attempts to craft a technologically advanced, but socially
responsive, environment that might meet the needs of the new age. The final section
reflects on the reasons for the abrupt termination of the megastructural design after
only two of its five stages were complete. It notes that, while there is no denying that
the megastructural parts of the town centre had manifest design deficiencies, at least
part of the responsibility for its problems lay in poor political decisions over initial
land allocations, resources and location. It also comments on the implications of this
episode for understanding the convergence between architectural modernism and
town planning.

***FIGURE 1 about here***

Megastructures

Identifying the Cumbernauld Central Area as a megastructure places it in a historical

6
tradition that recognises precursors but offers no single point of origin.5 Precedent for
megastructures might be found in the huge enclosing iron-and-glass pavilions erected at
nineteenth century International Expositions6 or, going back further, the inhabited
bridges of medieval European cities. Throughout its six centuries of existence, for
example, Old London Bridge (1209-1831) provided a flexible framework to which were
attached an ever-changing assortment of houses, shops, workshops, gates and
fortifications, a chapel, hostelries, watermills and even a square and colonnades.7 In the
twentieth century, a discontinuous series of schemes by pioneers of modern architecture
developed similar ideas further. Just before the First World War, the Futurist architect
Antonio Sant’Elia produced sketches of giant buildings spanning traffic arteries that
might configure the Città Nuova (New City).8 During the 1920s, Ludwig
Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt (Skyscraper City) envisaged huge slab blocks of flats
placed on a grid and a pedestrian deck at sixth floor level, with shops and workplaces in
the five-storey podia beneath.9 In various versions sketched between 1930 and 1942, Le
Corbusier’s Algiers Plans envisaged a residential viaduct snaking along the coast – 15
kilometres long, 26 metres wide, fourteen storeys high, and with a limited access
motorway on its roof.10 After the Second World War, a number of realised and paper
projects added to the impression that a shared vocabulary of mega-forms had developed.
These included Le Corbusier’s proposed civic centre for St. Dié (1945-6) and residential
complex (unité d’habitation) at Marseilles (1947-52);11 ‘High Paddington’ – Sergei
Kadleigh and Patrick Horsbrugh 's highly influential proposal for a glass-towered
vertical city for 8000 people to be built above railway tracks in west London (1952);12
Ralph Erskine’s plans for ideal Arctic settlements that embraced ‘continuous faceted
buildings’ to maximise energy efficiency (1959);13 and schemes by the Japanese
Metabolist movement, led by Kenzo Tange, for urban development in a series of
gigantic cylinders on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay (1958-60).14
By the early 1960s, precisely when the key decisions about Cumbernauld
Central’s Central Area were taking place, there was already a conceptual basis for
thinking about huge multilevel and multifunctional containers, which included ideas
about advanced use of construction technology, pedestrian decks, energy efficiency, and
high-capacity, limited-access transit systems. Those decisions, however, took place
before 1964, when Fumihiko Maki15 first introduced the term ‘megastructure’ to
describe the apparently modern trend towards huge multi-function structures. They
also took place well before the explosion of interest in megastructures that saw a

7
genre emerge that incorporated anything from relatively modest university extensions,
town centres, integrated housing proposals, leisure complexes and transport
interchanges to more speculative plans for cities within geodesic domes, endless urban
grids, for continental-scale cities and even for complete extra-terrestrial cities in
geostationary Earth orbit.16 The Cumbernauld town centre megastructure, indeed,
owes less to the mood of breezy, anything-is-possible technological utopianism that
catalysed avant-garde architectural thought during the mid-to-late 1960s as to two
rather more mundane factors arising from the everyday practices that underpinned
postwar urban development.
The first concerned the seldom-recognised convergence of interest between
architectural innovation and the commercial logic of property development.
Developers in the late 1950s and 1960s approached their schemes primarily from the
viewpoint of the amount of floor space created, allowing designers a remarkable
degree of freedom in design provided that they maximised the amount of space to let
and met local authority stipulations about aesthetics. They were particularly fond of
mixed developments that could attract a broader cross section of users. In those
schemes, major users took the prime sites at the highest rents, with lower rent-
yielding activities, like leisure amenities or flats, filling the remaining spaces that the
prime commercial users did not want.17 At the Bull Ring Centre in central
Birmingham (Sydney Greenwood and T.J. Hirst, 1961-4), for example, the
developers’ architects managed to fit an integrated structure to an awkward four-acre
sloping site, covering three separate parcels of land that spanned the inner Ring Road.
Once the cross-section was decided, it was possible to make use of the slope by
constructing a centre on six levels; three of which were devoted to retailing and
leisure services, one to car parking and access, one to delivery, and one entirely
occupied by a ballroom. Delivery systems, including lifts and access corridors, were
placed at the rear. Although not couched in megastructural terms, the end product had
considerable de facto similarities with the structure that eventually emerged at
Cumbernauld.
The second factor involved the complex and multi-stranded relationship
between architectural modernism and urban planning. Planning historians have paid
increasing attention to the ways in which architectural modernism impacted on the
planning process in the postwar period. While earlier studies18 focused primarily on
the supposedly mesmeric impact of visionary precepts, more recent research has

8
examined the various components of what has been termed either ‘modernist
planning’19 or ‘CIAM urbanism’.20 These distinct, but closely overlapping notions21
are usually interpreted as attempting to translate the ‘revolutionary premises of work,
housing, transportation and recreation’22 that characterised the thinking of the Congrès
Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) into principles for urban planning.
Inter alia, this implied: ‘the separation of land uses, the accommodation of the
automobile in the form of high-speed highways, the rejection of the street and street life,
(and) the treatment of buildings as isolated objects in space rather than as part of the
larger interconnected urban fabric…’.23 Yet while these might have represented ideas
drawn from the dominant reading of the relationship between modernism and urban
planning, there were other strands to modernist thought which maintained that the
resulting transformed urban environments comprised a ‘pallid version of the pre-war
urban dream’.24
A good illustration of this point, and one with considerable relevance to the
present discussion, was the debate over the twin and potentially conflicting notions of
‘urbanity’ and ‘mobility’. The proceedings of an international Congress at Hoddesdon
in 1951 (CIAM VIII) indicated that the members of CIAM themselves appreciated the
need to look for ways to create attractive and vibrant city centres, although as yet they
were unable to offer solutions.25 A vociferous group of younger architects, already
seeking to exercise greater power within the Modern Movement, recognised part of the
problem lay in the combination of the functional differentiation of land use and the
alluring imagery of the ‘city in the park’, which were together having the hitherto
unsuspected consequence of creating dispersed and low density cities.26 What was
required, they argued, was a renewed concentration of people in the city in order to
provide a better basis for community. At much the same time, a number of observers
noted that the sudden rise in private car ownership could exert enormous influence on
the emerging shape of the city. At a local level, accommodating the car was eating up
land through demands for access and parking. At the wider level, increasingly personal
mobility was fuelling long-established trends towards suburban decentralisation.27
Megastructures, it was argued, had something to offer something with regard to
all these matters. They could assist ‘urban concentration’ by ‘heaping up’ urban
functions into great assemblages that, if properly planned, could still avoid conflict
between functions. They could help counter the appeal of suburbia by offering attractive
new environments within the existing city. They could accommodate the local-scale

9
impacts arising from demands for greater mobility by strict vertical segregation of
pedestrians and vehicles, thereby allowing connectivity without absorbing the much
greater amounts of land required by comparable horizontal segregation.28 Individually
and collectively, these strands of thinking would find sympathetic echoes in the design
of the pioneering scheme that would become Cumbernauld’s town centre.

‘A certain amount of turmoil’

At the outset, however, the decision to adopt a megastructural form for the centre was
also shaped by the very specific circumstances that surrounded Cumbernauld’s
designation – a New Town ‘born out of a certain amount of turmoil’.29 The original
suggestion to locate a New Town at Cumbernauld stemmed from discussions over the
1946 Clyde Valley Regional Plan, a strategy document for the modernisation of
Clydeside commissioned in 1943 by the Secretary of State for Scotland. 30 The Plan
was particularly concerned to implement decentralisation to alleviate Glasgow’s
severe housing problems and its proposals included moving 550,000 Glaswegians
from central areas to either the periphery or to new towns and communities outside
the city’s boundaries. Cumbernauld was one of four possible locations that were
considered in discussion documents as possible sites for Glasgow’s New Towns,
along with East Kilbride (north Lanarkshire) and Bishopton and Houston (both in
Renfrewshire).31
East Kilbride was designated in 1947, but more had to be done to tackle the
severe and continuing housing crisis then facing Glasgow. The initial preference was
development at Houston, 12 miles west of the city, which could also be used to tackle
housing problems in the neighbouring towns of Greenock and Renfrew. This
proposition received Cabinet approval in December 1949 and tentative plans were
prepared,32 but they encountered powerful opposition from local political interests,
backed by Hector McNeil, the Labour Member of Parliament for Greenock and
subsequently Secretary of State for Scotland. 33 The change of national Government
to a Conservative administration, itself suspicious of New Towns policy, placed a
temporary brake on matters while a policy review was carried out.34 When the New
Town proposals for Glasgow were seriously proposed again in 1954-5, the
agricultural lobby added further hostility to the Houston proposal. Sir Robert Grieve,

10
once a Senior Technical Officer in Abercrombie’s team on the Clyde Valley plan and
later Chief Planning Officer at the Scottish Office, recalled that this decisively tipped
the scales towards Cumbernauld, despite recognition that this was the least favoured
site for a New Town:

‘I was there at the designation inquiry, and I remember how we were faced, by
then, with a growing agricultural lobby – a really powerful lobby, pressing that
New Towns shouldn’t be built on the best land. This had led people’s
attention towards the Cumbernauld site, which was on an open, hilly setting.
But because of mineral subsidence between there and the city, and the
presence of coal strips all around, there was only a small area left to build
on.’35

A Draft Order by the Department of Health for Scotland in 1955 allowed for a
parcel of 8000 acres to be centred on Cumbernauld.36 This would then act as a
reception point for 50000 people, 40000 of whom would come from Glasgow’s
housing lists. Crucially, however, the proposed designated area overlapped the
county jurisdictions of Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. Although prepared to accept
industry, Lanarkshire County Council had no wish to give up land for other purposes
and opposed the New Town designation. Choosing not to delay matters further
through protracted negotiations, the Scottish Office decided to press ahead. As
designated in the New Town (Cumbernauld) Designation Order (9 December 1955),
the New Town proceeded on the segment of just 4150 acres that lay in the detached
portion of Dunbartonshire (East Dunbartonshire). The loss of the Lanarkshire land
had two implications. First, it meant that the railway line to Glasgow was now
peripheral rather than central to the designated area. Secondly, as already suggested,
the Dunbartonshire land was poor quality. Its abundant ridges, sharp slopes, deep
glens, peat bog, the remains of coal and fireclay workings, and the need to avoid
localities still set aside for coal mining provided severe constraints when planning a
New Town. As much as anything, the site was designated because the County
Council concerned had little interest in it.37
It was decided after review that development would primarily take place in an
oval-shaped area of around 930 acres. This was dominated topographically by the
hogback Cumbernauld Hill, about one mile wide and 2.5 miles long, which rose

11
approximately 260 feet above the surrounding area and presented steep gradients on
either side of the main ridge. This difficult site posed problems, but also conferred a
measure of opportunity by permitting a free hand. In particular, it allowed the
development team led by the Chief Architect and Planner Hugh Wilson (appointed in
October 1956) to break with several established practices of the Mark I New Towns.
In the first place retention of the population target, and indeed its subsequent increase
to 70000 in 1959, meant that the approach to population density from the outset was
that: ‘the new town will be built at a density higher than that of any other existing new
town’.38 This requirement, however, made it was possible to implement the
‘intermediate’ level of density for developments beyond the city boundaries of Glasgow
laid down in the Clyde Valley Regional Plan (about 60-80 persons per acre) rather than
the lower density seen at East Kilbride (roughly 32 per acre for housing areas). As
Robert Grieve commented:

‘That was the density that we, on the planning side, were all deeply interested in.
Our first big opportunity to show what we could do with this 'intermediate'
density came when the second new town, Cumbernauld, was designated in
1955.’39

In the event, the initial residential density for the town was 95 persons per acre, which
would rise to 120 persons per acre in later parts.40
Secondly, the requirements of the site provided a chance to prise the New Town
away from the neighbourhood units adopted in the Mark I schemes, which were decried
as emphasising ‘pseudo-village-greens’ and as encouraging residents ‘to look inwards to
the local centre instead of visualising the town as a whole’. This, it was said, worked ‘to
the detriment of the creation of civic pride which should be one of the advantages of a
medium-sized town’.41 ‘Urbanity’ was the key, defined as representing ‘a way of life in
which the concept of the town as a meeting place plays an important part’42 – although
the exact meaning of that idea was open to question:

‘We used to debate the principle on which Cumbernauld should be based in a

pub in the old village. There was a kind of thing that was appearing in
architectural journals, almost like a holy writ. It meant that the kind of garden
city idea, which is really what East Kilbride was built on, the good old garden

12
 city idea, wasn't good enough and we had to have a higher density and more
“urbanity”. This had something to do with playing about with the two words
“urban” and “urbane”, and it was exhibited really in that little development
which looks like the little fishing village, you know tight, against the wind.’43

Given that the town was to be seen as a single entity instead of an agglomeration of
individual neighbourhoods served by their own centres, it was decided ‘to create instead
a compact urban integration whose people have to look to the town centre for virtually
all their services’.44
The location of that town centre, then, was crucial. The Preliminary Planning
Proposals, published in late May 1958, envisaged a T-shaped Central Area in the
valley immediately north of the railway station and rising to a point below the crest of
the hill. The text promised a ‘multi-storey’ town centre, with people and vehicles on
different levels and perhaps a measure of enclosure against the elements,45 although
there was as yet no specific suggestion of megastructural principles. Several of the
development team continued to press for the valley site – an option that was similarly
favoured by the planners working on the later-abandoned private New Town project
for the London County Council at Hook (Hampshire). Oliver Cox, the leader of the
group working on that project, noted that while the design for Hook was strongly
influenced by Cumbernauld, they strongly disagreed with the hilltop option:

‘Hugh Wilson called us “the boys”, Graeme (Shankland) and me, at that time,
because we were continually watching what he had been doing at
Cumbernauld and were very much guided by that. The main difference was
that we were in a valley; Cumbernauld is on a hill. We thought that it was
quite wrong to have a centre that was above the level of the ground.’46

Nevertheless Wilson remained convinced about the value of using

Cumbernauld Hill as the focus for a nucleated and compact settlement. He had
expressed that preference when originally interviewed for the post of Chief Officer in
1956 and returned to this option, which he saw an opportunity to design a settlement
with a dramatic image.47 More prosaically, using the hilltop site for the Central Area
also positioned it at a point that was geographically central to the residential areas.48
This would permit Cumbernauld to be a pedestrian town, in which no dwellings

13
would be more than three-quarters of a mile from the shops, with full separation of
pedestrians and traffic, and an advanced highway system that supplied speedy access
to the centre for deliveries and people travelling from distance. Yet it was
immediately realised that this was a problematic location for a town centre. The site
was narrow and elongated, which placed limitations on the chosen design in terms of
the disposition of roads and buildings. Any pedestrians visiting the city centre on its
hilltop would have to cope with the stiff gradients on the way there regardless of the
direction from which they approached. There were also microclimatological
problems. The southwest to northeast lineation of the central ridge coincided with the
direction of the strong and frequently rain-bearing prevailing winds. Development
along the crest of the ridge had to take into account probable wind channelling and
might require the construction of substantial windbreaks; something that would have
been unnecessary if the alternative valley site had been chosen.

Design

The earlier New Towns did not offer any specific template either to reject or from
which to draw inspiration. Some of the smaller Mark 1 New Towns, such as Hatfield
and Bracknell, had existing shopping centres that were modified or extended to suit
the new needs.49 The larger New Towns, with the exception of Hemel Hempstead,
had shopping centres planned and built on new land, and thus from scratch.50 Most
were designed around standardised shopping units in low-rise buildings, with
vehicular access for both shoppers and delivery. For example, both the previous
Scottish New Towns, East Kilbride and Glenrothes, had a principal street running
through their centres from which pedestrian ways diverged.51 Only gradually did they
and the other New Towns adopt wholesale pedestrianisation in the manner pioneered
by Stevenage, where the shopping centre was designed as traffic-free from the
outset.52 Nevertheless, even when doing so the conceptions underpinning the design
of these centres remained firmly rooted in the social conditions and commercial
environments of the late 1940s and early 1950s. By the end of that decade, the New
Town planners at Cumbernauld were already looking for something commercially
different even before deciding that it should be architecturally different.
The task of designing the town centre design devolved to a small

14
interdisciplinary group led by Geoffrey Copcutt, who arrived in 1959.53 Trained in
Edinburgh,54 Copcutt had received a degree of international attention by being
identified in the first issue of the international magazine Zodiac55 as one of Britain’s
promising young architects; an accolade thought to have been important in his
appointment to the Central Area portfolio.56 His avant-garde credentials fitted the
innovatory ethos that pervaded the Development Corporation at this time and it is
clear that he, in turn, was captivated with the scale of the scheme and the unique
properties of the hilltop location. The design work itself took roughly three years to
complete. Early priorities were to clarify what cross-section might take best
advantage of the topography and to initiate major studies of potential transport
systems and retail provision.57 The former tested the assumptions behind the initial
road proposals and led to radical alterations, whereby the principal radial roads were
redesigned as urban motorways with grade-separated interchanges linking into the
distributor or ring road systems. The latter study posed basic questions about the
nature of shops, foreseeable changes in retailing in light of rising living standards and
the growth of private car ownership, regional influence, number of workers in the
town centre, and car parking provision.58 Besides these studies, the senior officers
paid extensive visits to the USA to study regional retail centres and to developments
in Britain that addressed similar problems. For example Andrew Derbyshire, then in
charge of developing the multilevel Castle Market shopping centre in his capacity as
Assistant City Architect for Sheffield, recalled a visit by 1959 that showed that
Copcutt clearly recognised similarities with his own scheme:

‘I remember when I was at Sheffield, Geoffrey Copcutt had in mind a

megastructure with a multiplicity of functions and I had the same thing in mind
when I did Castle Market in Sheffield. I remember he came along to look at it
because I was ahead of him. He said that this is exactly what I am trying to do,
but I am on a much bigger scale than you … I have a whole town centre and you
only have this market.’59

The preference for a proto-megastructure had become clear by early 1960.

The Preliminary Report on the Town Centre argued that the town centre should be the
focus for town life, that what was envisaged for the Town Centre was ‘one huge
multi-storey building, to be built in phases’,60 and that it was necessary ‘for the design

15
and structure of the town centre, the buildings and facilities they will contain, to
portray and amplify this concept’.61 Efforts to give shape to the future town centre in
three-dimensional form continued throughout, with Copcutt exploring different ideas
primarily through his favoured media of scale modelling in paper (pocher), card or
plywood.62 The early versions produced by these methods exuded a tangible
excitement for the possibilities of building on this site: one example showing
shopping and other central uses under a vast ramped canopy of housing, using the
profile of the hillside to bring the closest possible connection between residents and
the facilities of the town centre. In this arrangement, people would live in and, if
possible, over the centre.63 By stages, however, this gradually transmuted into a
multi-storey structure arranged in a series of decks; again the analogy with the neat
layered functionality of ocean liners that had resonated in modernist thought since the
1920s. People might still live over the centre, but only in penthouse flats.
By January 1962, a prototype scheme saw shopping located on three levels,
with other communal uses above, surmounted by three ranges of penthouses.64 The
layout in the centre included two squares, civic buildings, a hotel and spaces for
entertainment buildings. By this stage, any significant use of the railway down in the
valley had faded from the picture and the vision was entirely road-based. The whole
edifice would be placed over a one-way system of roads, with separate lanes for
different types of vehicles and car parks. In the words of the Buchanan Report
(Traffic in Towns), which took a special interest in Cumbernauld, the plan for the
central area was:

‘of linear form, built on a deck above the approach road. The idea of an inner
ring road encircling the central area has completely vanished. The shops and
business premises are to be built on the deck with a number of dwellings on
the top again. Thus cars, buses and service vehicles are brought very close in,
underneath the shops, but in very close proximity thereto, and complete
separation of vehicles and pedestrians is obtained. … Ground space is saved,
and the bleak parking and service areas are drawn in out of sight.’65

The passion for innovation continued, with the Central Area Group conducting
feasibility studies of various innovative methods for handling traffic and circulation.
Although none were subsequently adopted, these included tracked magnetic-levitation

16
systems, parcel pick-up schemes and gravity parking.66 Evidence gained from the
studies of regional shopping centres in the USA helped to refine the pattern for retail
provision, but brought home the uncomfortable fact that American shopping centres
were enclosed, whereas that at Cumbernauld was largely open to the weather.
Windbreaks were clearly necessary. The landscape architect’s report advocated ‘as
much shelter planting as possible’;67 another consultant recommended abandoning the
proposed 45-foot-high artificial earthen mounds at each end of the structure in favour
of long high buildings with air gaps beneath, which wind-tunnel testing suggested
might be more effective.68

Implementation

The initial intention was to build the Central Area in five phases, scheduled to fit in
with the planned expansion of the town’s population, although the precise content of
the later stages were listed as ‘provisional with regard to detail’ and in this respect
‘subject to continual modification’.69 Any development in phases inevitably faced the
problem that the whole must add up to the sum of the parts and the parts had to be
built with the complete structure in mind. By the same token, it was perfectly
possible that any initial phase of building might not make complete sense until the
megastructure was completed – something that might take 20 years. Building in this
way meant there was a basic choice for Phase 1: either to build a complete deck
horizontally across the entire site or divide it into sections, with some parts inevitably
coming to blank ends until later phases were built. After debate, the decision was
made to adopt the second strategy which, as Whitham points out, had important
implications for the image of the emerging town:

‘The decision to construct a slice, though later seeming a recipe for near-
disaster, forged the image of Cumbernauld and secured the remarkable skyline
which in some views seems a man-made extension of the hill-top.’70

Plans and models for Phase 1 (Figure 2), along with artists’ impressions of the
interior (Figure 3) and diagrams of the cross-section (Figure 4), were unveiled in late
November 1962. The scheme had been considerably simplified from the earlier

17
version, for example, with the principal shopping elements placed on one deck, at the
level of the ground on the north side, with an additional deck at one floor below on
the south side. Yet despite the manifest complexity involved in fitting the decks to
the hilltop site, Phase 1 comprised just two basic elements. As described by
Glendinning,71 the larger segment comprised the main commercial, administrative and
housing block, located to the south of the dual carriageway: in profile representing ‘a
gigantic, squat, tiered structure progressively stepping up from south to north, and
crowned by a range of penthouses’. By contrast, the second element was a spur to the
north that directly continued the main shopping concourse for a short distance across
the dual carriageway. There were also sites adjacent to the north-west, where other
agencies would be able to build a seven-storey hotel (the ‘Golden Eagle’) and the
Parish Church (St. Mungo's).

*** FIGURES 2-4 about here***

The keynote was flexibility. Copcutt described the scheme as comprising

‘demountable enclosures’.72 Where abrupt ends of the building were shown, this was
often to signify a temporary stage before the next sections were constructed and
thereby to illustrate the megastructure’s vaunted characteristics of plasticity and
extensibility. Its future managers might rearrange its interiors or expand in planned
fashion, either within the structural grid or in spaces beyond. In a remote future, if
certain central area functions declined, the centre could become ‘a giant vending
machine through which the motorised user drives to return revictualled’. In language
that would become a familiar part of megastructuralism, this was ‘a drive-in centre’,
‘a vast terminal facility’, where levels ‘interpenetrate’, forms ‘erupt’, sections are
revealed to the ‘mechanically propelled’ visitor, and advertising presents a
‘kaleidoscope’.73 Playfully, too, Geoffrey Copcutt added an illustration of a
landscape view of the future town centre with a large American car in the foreground.
Its registration plate was ‘GC 1963’.
The chosen aesthetic for the centre comprised the angular geometries and
unfaced concrete finishes then associated with the ‘New Brutalist’ movement in
British architecture. This was a departure from the appearance of the scheme that
appeared in the early models and did not receive unanimous support, as an
unpublished essay clarifies:

18
 ‘The early models of the centre showed an almost sculptural approach to
architectural form and as this plastic quality developed it was felt by some that
the underlying philosophy was more attuned as a monument to individuality
than to the production of well arranged enclosed space capable of being
manipulated in a variety of ways to accord with changing methods of retailing
and central area use. Here … changes were introduced in an attempt to
achieve a simple architectural statement with a strong framework which would
be capable of absorbing the many diverse elements of the centre contained in
what is essentially a single building structure. In the process there were many
sincerely and strongly held views and team working was stretched almost to
breaking point…’74

Latching on to New Brutalism,75 with its characteristic blend of design preference and
sociological presumption, would bring new ideas to the table. New Brutalism offered
a variant of the Modern Movement’s hallowed maxim of ‘truth to materials’, with its
proponents asserting, amongst other things, the moral value of having materials
displayed in their untrammelled form, with concrete bearing the marks of its timber
shuttering, brickwork left unplastered and steel frames exposed. New Brutalism stood
for an attempt to face up to what were regarded as the new realities of ‘mass-
production society’, ‘drag a rough poetry out of the confused and powerful forces
which are at work’ and provide an aesthetic that is that society’s ‘visual equivalent’.76
Although use of concrete at Cumbernauld may have been seen by some as a cheap
way of providing texture,77 there was an image inseparably linked to New Brutalist
buildings that designers found irresistible – uncompromising, pioneering, forward-
looking and expressing modernity. Those values seemed eminently suitable for the
megastructure that was due to appear regardless of the tensions that using this
aesthetic might have aroused within the design team.
Construction of Phase 1 progressed relatively smoothly, notwithstanding the
bankruptcy of the contractors Duncan Logan and the early departure of the key staff –
Hugh Wilson having left in October 1962, although remaining as consultant, and
Geoffrey Copcutt in February 1963. The British Government, although still
Conservative, had abandoned the ambivalence of its predecessors towards the New
Towns. Indeed the Scottish Office now gave both financial and moral support to what

19
was regarded as a showpiece to kick off a second generation of New Towns. Phase 1
of the Central Area was built between 1963 and 1967, by which time the town’s
population had reached 27000 people.78 The scheme proceeded according to
Copcutt’s plan and chosen aesthetic, but was implemented by his successors Philip
Aitken and Neil Dadge. Although the Cumbernauld staff contributed working
diagrams, the contractors, who had been hired on a ‘design and build’ basis, handled
the detailing.
The opening of phase 1 attracted worldwide interest. Articles appeared in the
professional press in many countries.79 The Institute of American Architects chose
the opening of the Central Area for the inaugural presentation of its R.H. Reynolds
Memorial Award for Community Architecture, which Cumbernauld had won against
competition from a short-list that also included Vällingby (Sweden) and Tapiola
(Finland). The commendation contained a citation of the Central Area as a ‘town
centre designed for the millennium’.80 The Times’ correspondent spoke of the
centre’s ‘ambitious scope and scale’, although that it was ‘almost too imposing for the
relatively scattered groups of housing surrounding it and separated from it by open
space still to be built on.’81 Frank Schaffer compared the ‘£15 million multi-deck
building’ to a luxury liner, even if it had with ‘long ramps… rough grey concrete and
lack of trees and grass’ and threatened high costs of building and maintenance.82 Osborn
and Whittick were willing to pass a preliminary judgment that the centre promised
‘much that is unusual and impressive’, while suggesting that ‘more warmth and less
wind will be common wishes’.83 The reviewer for the Architects’ Journal concluded
that, ‘its final worth and justification exists in the powerful identity it gives to those
who live in Cumbernauld. They do not believe, not even the critical, that they have
been given something which is second rate’.84 Furthermore, ‘it has, already, a
bookshop’ – clearly an index of worthiness. Whatever the problems of microclimate,
detailing and construction workmanship: ‘all this is nothing against the positive
contribution it will make to those who live in Cumbernauld new town and to those of
us whose concern is making new environment fit for this century’.85 Against this, the
historian Patrick Nuttgens gave a guarded response that tempered qualified approval
with a carefully worded catalogue of reservations. For all the positive talk, such as
the centre being ‘one of the most impressive sights in town planning today’, it is the
criticisms that catch the eye, for example:

20
 ‘it is sometimes coarse and verging on the megalomaniac; here and there it
ignores simple needs in favour of some private aesthetic. And yet with ironic
justice it is the occasional pieces of pure architecture that in the end are the
most irritating aesthetically, communicating a lively sense of the
unnecessary. … The next phase … must inevitably correct what appear at a
superficial glance to be major faults.’86

His comments presaged an uncomfortable future. Phase 2 (1968-72) was the

last part built integrally to the Copcutt’s original design and with similar aesthetics,
albeit with a ‘marked dilution of the visual ferocity of the previous phase’.87 This
phase almost completely swallowed up the previous phase’s northern spur across the
dual carriageway. It was built up against the side of a sharp slope at the north and
consisted of a single block, aligned north-south, and between 3-4 storeys high. Its
lowest levels were occupied by what was once the north car park of Phase 1. Its
upper storeys provided additional office space and shop units. The sense of being a
town centre was addressed by including a small market hall. This contained ‘gaily
cluttered kiosks and signs, set beneath the original coffered ceiling’88 – a reminder of
the urbanity that was one of the megastructure’s initial selling points.
Understandably, this relatively small addition was opened without fanfare or
attracting much interest in the wider world, but its completion focused attention on
future strategy. It was clear by 1972 that the town required a larger store, but ‘the
unorthodox layout of the Centre, with both ends unfinished, and awaiting further
development did not encourage developers.’89 The decision was made to allow the
major retailing chain F.W. Woolworth to build their own Woolco store, but a cinema
intended to be built as part of the same phase was postponed due to ‘rising building
costs’.90 The Woolco store was constructed between 1972 and 1974, officially as Phase
3, comprising a shed-like building enclosing 9750 square feet of space with two levels of
car parking underneath. Although some efforts were made to tie the addition into the
circulation system of the town centre, with a stairway connection with Phase 1, the store
was effectively a discrete project. Phase 4 was announced in 1975, but with
‘modifications made necessary by current financial limitations’ and recognition that:
‘development and economic circumstances ruled out a number of socially desirable
projects where work could not initiated from the public purse’.91 While retaining the
terminology of ‘phases’, thereafter the expansion of the town centre took place

21
incrementally rather than in discrete phases, with gradual infill of the previously empty
expanses of land around phases 1 and 2. The buildings themselves were also finished in
a wide variety of styles, with such scant physical or design connection with the original
scheme that the initial conception had effectively been abandoned. In reality, therefore,
the completion of Phase 2 marked the end of that experiment.

Conclusion

Any present-day visitor to Cumbernauld wishing to look at the megastructural

portions of the Town Centre, drawn perhaps by the somewhat belated attempt by the
heritage lobby to have it recognised as a site of international significance,92 faces two
problems. In the first place, it is difficult to discern where these Phases are located
given the accretion of other modern buildings around them, especially in what should
have been the open spaces left around the Central Area. Secondly, substantial parts
are no longer there (Figure 5). The Golden Eagle Hotel, which had proven
unprofitable and had stood empty for some years, was quickly demolished when
constructional faults in the panelling appeared. The North Car Park and adjacent
sections of Phase 1 were pulled down in 2002-3. The penthouse deck, long since
converted from flats to offices, narrowly avoided the same fate after major flaws
developed in one of the massive concrete supporting beams. Here demolition was
rejected not because of any particular attachment to the integrity of the design but
mainly because of the virtual impossibility of it being done on top of an active town
centre.

***FIGURE 5 about here***

These, however, were only part of a raft of constructional and functional

problems. Dudley Leaker, Hugh Wilson’s replacement as Chief Architect and
Planner, had noted that ‘the climate of high hope and financial backing changed
before the second stage had a chance to get started and before the right quality of
materials and finishes could be applied.’93 Cost cutting had left a legacy of poor
quality work and finishes. The contractor, Logan, had left no records of major
elements of design, such as with regard to the steel reinforcement in the main concrete

22
structures.94 The concrete finishes were unable to cope with water percolation. The
microclimate proved every bit as inclement for users as forecast, requiring enclosure
to make conditions more hospitable. Considerable sums, therefore, had to be spent on
glazed roofing and side enclosure to rectify the wind tunnel effects along the semi-
open malls.95 Lifts and escalators broke down. Vandalism created problems until
surfaces were re-finished with graffiti-proof materials and the main areas were
enclosed and fully patrolled. Potential developers found the centre unattractive
internally and externally. As Opher and Bird noted, this ‘aggressive style of
architecture’ made additions difficult and the later buildings look weak by
comparison.96 Even the much heralded extensibility turned out to be a myth, with any
significant change to the centre’s concrete carapace proving uneconomic and
disruptive.97
In any assessment, the balance sheet of where responsibility for these
problems lay is bound to begin with the designers. Whatever else is said, substantial
parts of this expensive and experimental town centre failed to have a useful life-span
of more than 25-30 years before demolition. Certainly, Copcutt and his Central Area
group relished the opportunity ‘to forge an urban morphology’98 for what they
conceived as the emerging society and undoubtedly drew on their own values, as
much as their studies of functional need, to design the town centre. Their wish to
have the freedom to implement their creativity rather than build in more conventional
ways created problems, as did their naïve faith in technology to solve problems.
Moreover, in the final analysis there were other ways in which the centre could have
been built besides devising a megastructure.
Yet there were always countervailing influences that worked against the
scheme that were not specifically related to it being a megastructure. These included
the initial locational choice (Cumbernauld not Houston); the amount and quality of
land left after the loss of the Lanarkshire portion; choosing the hilltop site; failing to
tackle its inherent problems adequately (especially the decision not to construct
proper windbreaks); and the inability of the construction industry to deliver results of
sufficient quality.99 To these should be added the problems of undertaking a project
with a 20-year or greater time horizon in the light of changing economic and cultural
circumstances. Official willingness to back the town centre scheme evaporated, with
a commensurate diminution on resources. This was particularly so after the financial
crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s placed general pressures on major capital

23
projects in the public sector. The resulting cost-cutting adversely affected
constructional work across the sector, but was particularly serious for unconventional
buildings using materials like concrete, which demanded exacting standards of
workmanship if they were to function effectively. The net result was that, iconic
though Phase 1 and the reduced phase 2 might have been, they were not the full
megastructure but just “a tiny wee bit of it”.100
A similar message applies when relating the experience of Cumbernauld to
wider narratives about megastructures and about modernist planning. At one level, the
economic and constructional failings of the town centre, combined with the repeated
necessity to correct design faults in order to improve conditions for its users, make this
seem a transparent example of the problems of modernism. If this was the ‘most
comprehensive paradigm of what an urban megastructure should be’,101 then it might
also be taken as a paradigm of the folies de grandeur to which architectural modernism
was undoubtedly prone – vastly ambitious, fraught with problems and ultimately
unachievable. Yet, at another level, there was also much in the case-study of
Cumbernauld that points to the importance of recognising the underlying complexity that
surrounded the convergence between modernism and town planning. The planning of
Cumbernauld’s town centre, as was noted earlier, was consciously rooted in an
alternative reading of the implications of modern technology and design from that
generally associated with CIAM urbanism. This reading recognised that existing
modernist approaches had failed to produce formulae for attractive town centres and
turned to using a megastructure as a means of improving on matters. Its design took
and implemented a radical segregated approach to the problem of traffic in towns
several years before publication of the findings of the Buchanan Report. Its planners’
wish to pursue greater concentration of population as the basis for ‘urbanity’
envisaged the town centre as a meeting place; to which the local population walked
rather than drove, met by chance as well as by design, enjoyed the benefits of social
as well as commercial facilities in the same locality, and gained the opportunity to
develop and consolidate warm communal relations.
The extent to which these ideals were achieved may be debatable, but the
underlying ideas have other, more contemporary resonances. It would, of course, be
fanciful to see the adoption of megastructural principles as having any direct input
into contemporary discourse on ‘urban intensification’ or ‘new urbanism’,102 for the
literature reveals no such links. Nevertheless, the making of the megastructure was a

24
response to kindred concerns about the quality of urban life, about the need for a more
‘intense’ urban experience and the wish to foster the formation of community. As
such, its design clearly signifies recognition that there existed a body of thought
within the Modern Movement that challenged the orthodoxies with which that
movement is normally associated and that looked to find other, more socially
responsive living environments. At a time when there remains a prevalent tendency
to treat modernism as being monolithic – often as a convenient prelude to defining
supposedly more pluralistic schools of thought – the saga of Cumbernauld’s town
centre is a salutary reminder of the pluralism of modernism itself.

Acknowledgements

This research on which this paper is based was undertaken while on sabbatical leave

funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I would like to acknowledge this

support as well as the wholehearted assistance of David Whitham and Miles

Glendinning, who generously loaned me unpublished materials.

25
ILLUSTRATION CAPTIONS

Figure 1 Photograph of Cumbernauld Central Area, Stage 1, c.1980

Source: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Reproduced with permission

Figure 2 Model of first phase from the north-west. The main spine carriageway at
ground level can be seen beyond the hotel and bank buildings.

Source: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Reproduced with permission

Figure 3 Main retail food stores from terraces on the south-east side, with maisonettes
beyond. Drawing by Michael Evans.

Source: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Reproduced with permission

Figure 4 Partial cross section of the Central Area

Source: Michael Webb, Architecture in Britain Today. London: Country Life, 1969,
pp. 150-1.

Figure 5 Demolitions on north side

Source: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Reproduced with permission

26
Notes and References

1
Cumbernauld: Town for Tomorrow, dir. R. Crichton, Edinburgh Films Production
for Films of Scotland/Cumbernauld Development Corporation, 1970.
2
ibid.
3
For example, see the cross-cultural analyses found in Clarkson H. Oglesby and
Lawrence I. Hughes, Highway Engineering, second edition. New York and London:
John Wiley and Son, 1963; Paul Ritter, Planning for Man and Motor. Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 1964.
4
W. Houghton-Evans, Planning Cities; legacy and portent. London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1975, p. 106.
5
For example, see Ulrich Conrads and Hans G. Sperlich, Fantastic Architecture.
London: Architectural Press, 1963.
6
John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, Cities of Culture: Staging International
Festivals and the Urban Agenda, 1851-2000. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2005.
7
Patricia Pierce, Old London Bridge. London: Hodder Headline, 2001.
8
Esther da Costa Meyer, The Work of Antonio Sant’Elia: retreat into the future. New
Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1995.
9
Lars Olof Larsson, ‘Metropolitan Architecture’. In Anthony Sutcliffe, ed.
Metropolis, 1890-1940, London: Mansell, 1984, pp. 191-220; K.M. Hays, Modernism
and the Posthumanist Subject: the Architecture of Hannes Mayer and Ludwig
Hilberseimer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.
10
Le Corbusier, La Ville Radieuse. Boulogne-sur-Seine: Vincent, Freal and Cie, 1935;
translated as The Radiant City, London: Faber and Faber, 1966, pp. 233-61.
11
See, for example, Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture.
London: Allen Lane, pp. 136-48.
12
Sergei Kadleigh, assisted by Patrick Horsbrugh, High Paddington: a town for 8000
people. London: The Architect and Building News, 1952.
13
Peter Collymore, The Architecture of Ralph Erskine. London: Academy Editions,
1995, pp. 22-4.
14
See, for example, Paolo Riani, ed. Kenzo Tange. London: Hamlyn, 1969, pp. 26-34.
15
Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form. St, Louis, MO: School of

27
Architecture, Washington University, 1964. The term gradually ousted rivals such as
‘omnibuilding’ or ‘megabuilding’ to describe the apparently modern trend towards
huge multi-function structures.
16
The best single guide remains: P. Reyner Banham, Megastructure: urban futures of
the recent past. London: Thames and Hudson. Other guides to the extraordinary
range of schemes suggested can be found in Vittorio M. Lampugnani, Visionary
Architecture of the 20th Century: master drawings from Frank Lloyd Wright to Aldo
Rossi. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982; Martin Pawley, Theory and Design in the
Second Machine Age. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, pp. 102-11; C.W. Thomsen,
Visionary Architecture: from Babylon to virtual reality. Munich: Prestel, 1994; S.
Sadler, The Situationist City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998; Mark Wigley,
Constant's New Babylon: the hyper-architecture of desire. Witte-de-With: 010
Publishers, 1998; E. Burden, Visionary Architecture: unbuilt works of the
imagination. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000; Ruth Eaton, Ideal Cities: utopianism
and the (un)built environment. London: Thames and Hudson 2001, pp. 216-35; and
Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 208-29.
17
The information is from an interview with Rodney Gordon, 11 November 2004.
See also Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom. London: Hamish Hamilton, pp. 63-4.
18
For earlier studies, see Christopher Booker, The Seventies. London: Allen Lane,
1980, p.294; Alice Coleman, Utopia on Trial. London: Hilary Shipman, 1985; Peter
Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: an Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the
Twentieth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, chap.7.
19
e.g. Robert A. Beauregard, ‘Between modernity and postmodernity: the ambiguous
position of US planning’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 7, 1989,
pp. 381-95; Leonie Sandercock, ‘The death of modernist planning: radical praxis for a
postmodern age’. In Michael Douglass and John Friedmann, eds. Cities for Citizens,
Chichester: Wiley, 1998, pp. 163-184; Philip Allmendinger, Planning in Postmodern
Times. London, E. & F.N. Spon, 2000.
20
e.g. Eric Mumford, ‘CIAM urbanism after the Athens Charter’, Planning
Perspectives, 7, 1992, pp. 391-417; Jane Hobson, New Towns, the Modernist
Planning Project and Social Justice. Working Paper 108, Development Planning Unit,
University College London, 1999; Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism,
1928-1960. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000; Emily Talen, New Urbanism and

28
American Planning: the conflict of cultures. New York: Routledge, 2005.
21
It is not possible to provide a full discussion of the nature and derivation of these
concepts here. For an overview of these notions, see John R. Gold, The Practice of
Modernism: modern architects and urban transformation, 1954-72. London:
Routledge, 2006, chap 2
22
James Holston, ‘Spaces of insurgent citizenship’. In Leonie Sandercock, ed.
Making the Invisible Visible: a multicultural planning history. Berkeley: University
of California Press, p. 43.
23
Talen, New Urbanism and American Planning, p. 51 (see footnote 20).
24
William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900, third edition. London:
Phaidon, 1996, p. 442.
25
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Jose-Luis Sert, and Ernesto N. Rogers, eds. The Heart of the
City: Towards the Humanisation of Urban Life. London: Lund Humphries.
26
This school of thought is particularly linked to the writings of Peter and Alison
Smithson. For contemporary writings, see Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson,
‘Cluster city: a new shape for the community’, Architectural Review, 122 (730), 1957,
pp. 333-36; and Alison Smithson, Team 10 Primer. London, Studio Vista, 1969. For
commentary, see: D. van den Heuvel and M. Risselada, eds. Alison and Peter
Smithson: from the House of the Future to a House of Today. Rotterdam: 010
Publishers, 2004; Architectural Association, “Architecture is not made with the
Brain”: the labour of Alison and Peter Smithson. Architecture Landscape Urbanism
9, London: Architectural Association.
27
Gold, The Practice of Modernism, chap 8 (see footnote 21).
28
Miles Glendinning, ‘Cluster Citadel: the Architecture and Planning of Cumbernauld
Town Centre’. Unpublished manuscript, 1991.
29
Interview with Alex Kerr, 2 December 2004.
30
Patrick Abercrombie and Robert H. Matthew, The Clyde Valley Regional Plan,
1946. Edinburgh: HMSO. The plan itself was prepared from 1943 onwards and
implemented from 1946, but not finally published until 1949.
31
J. Barry Cullingworth, Environmental Planning, vol. 3 ‘New Towns Policy’.
London: HMSO, 1979, pp, 33, 39.
32
Information from an unpublished aide-memoire written by Alex Kerr, December
2004.

29
33
Cullingworth, ‘New Towns Policy’, (see footnote 31), p. 89. McNeil’s tenure as
Secretary of State for Scotland, however, was only between February-October 1951.
34
Cullingworth, ‘New Towns Policy’, (see footnote 31), pp. 116-63.
35
Sir Robert Grieve (in conversation with Kirsteen Borland), ‘The Clyde Valley Plan
and its legacy’. Unpublished transcript of RFACS seminar, Edinburgh, 1994.
36
Interview with Alex Kerr, 2 December 2004.
37
Interview with Dr Derek Lyddon, 3 December 2004.
38
Cumbernauld New Town Development Corporation (henceforth CNTDC), First
Report, 1956. In A. Burton and J. Hartley, eds. New Towns Record, 1946-1996
(henceforth NTR), Glasgow: Planning Exchange Glasgow: Planning Exchange CD-
ROM 1, 1997.
39
Sir Robert Grieve, ‘The Clyde Valley Plan and its legacy’ (see footnote 35). For
more on the density calculations see: Elspeth Farmer and Roger Smith, ‘Overspill
theory: a metropolitan case study’, Urban Studies, 12, 1975, pp. 151-68.
40
Miles Glendinning and David Page, Clone City: crisis and renewal in
contemporary Scottish architecture. Edinburgh: Polygon, p. 180.
41
Hugh Wilson, Cumbernauld New Town: Preliminary Planning Proposals,
Cumbernauld: CNTDC, 1958. See also Houghton-Evans, Planning Cities, (footnote
4), p. 103. Wilson’s plan for Cumbernauld was described in a 1966 New Society article
by Peter Hall as ‘epoch-making’ for its willingness to face up to the challenge of the car.
This information comes from the reprint of the article: Peter Hall ‘The pattern of cities to
come’. In Paul Barker, ed. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy: ten years of New Society.
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972, pp. 183-92.
42
CNTDC, Cumbernauld Technical Brochure, n.d.; cited in Jim Johnson and
Krystyna Johnson, ‘Cumbernauld revisited’, Architects' Journal, 166 (40), 1977, p.
639.
43
Interview with Sir Robert (Bob) Grieve by Dr Derek Lyddon, December 1994,
NTR CD-ROM 1 (see footnote 38).
44
F.J. Osborn and Arnold Whittick, New Towns: their origins, achievements and
progress, third edition. London: Leonard Hill, 1977, p. 419.
45
Anon, ‘Cumbernauld New Town: preliminary planning proposals.’ Architects'
Journal 127, 1958, pp. 858-9.
46
Interview between Oliver Cox and Neil Bingham, 1 March 2000, Tape F15579

30
Side A, National Sound Archive. For more on the plans for Hook, see London
County Council, The Planning of a New Town. London: London County Council,
1961.
47
The information is from an unpublished aide-memoire written by Alex Kerr,
December 2004.
48
CNTDC, Preliminary Planning Proposals, Cumbernauld: CNTDC, 1958.
49
Frank Schaffer, The New Town Story. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1970, p. 64.
50
F.J. Osborn and Arnold Whittick, New Towns: their origins, achievements and
progress, third edition. London: Leonard Hill, 1977, p. 159.
51
ibid, pp. 398-400, 411-12
52
Peter Hall and Colin Ward, Sociable Cities: the legacy of Ebenezer Howard.
London: John Wiley, p. 56.
53
Initially it simply comprised Copcutt, Alex Kerr and Ronald Simpson.
54
It may be speculated that the Edinburgh, especially the Old Town, supplied
exemplars of how to fit buildings to awkward topography. Interview with Alex Kerr,
2 December 2004.
55
Anon, ‘Garage at Loughborough: Copcutt, Hancock and Hawkes’, Zodiac, 1, 1958,
pp. 169-72. Maxwell Fry, in particular, commented how the work of Copcutt’s
practice and that of Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, with their Cooper Taber factory at
Witham, gave a ‘rather clear idea about some trends of contemporary architecture in
Great Britain’. See E. Maxwell Fry, ‘Factory at Hemel Hempstead’, Zodiac, 1, 1958,
p. 182.
56
Copcutt seems to dispute this and stated that the reason that he received this
portfolio rather than Derek Lyddon was by tossing a coin. See Geoffrey Copcutt,
‘Reflections on Cumbernauld Town Centre’, in A. Burton and J. Hartley, NTR, CD-
ROM 1, 1997 (footnote 38). Derek Lyddon, however, has no recollection of this and
suggests it was highly unlikely: interview with Dr Derek Lyddon, 3 December 2004.
57
Johnson and Johnson, ‘Cumbernauld revisited’, (footnote 42), p. 639.
58
It is impossible to go into the detail of these reports here. Material relating to this
subject here and in the ensuing paragraph come from the manuscript draft of chapter 6
of Rod Hardy, ed. ‘Building a New Town’, an unpublished edited collection of essays
compiled in 1963-4. The chapter bears the initials of Hugh Wilson.
59
Interview with Sir Andrew Derbyshire, 16 December 2004.

31
60
ibid., p. 4, emphasis added
61
CNTDC, Cumbernauld Town Centre: Preliminary Report, Cumbernauld: CNTDC,
c. 1960, p. 3.
62
The information is from an unpublished handwritten note by Alex Kerr, December
2004. Copcutt was a compulsive visualiser but worked primarily through scale
modelling as he was a relatively poor draughtsman, tending to work by supplying
ideas from which others produced line drawings. Kerr noted: ‘Copcutt was always
accompanied by a 10 inch roll of tracing paper, 20 yards long. On this, he produced
loads of ideas and basic sketches which could be taken forward by others more able to
execute line drawings with the type of attention to detail that this demands’.
63
An example is shown in Geoffrey Copcutt, ‘Cumbernauld New Town Central Area’,
Architectural Design, 33, 1963, p. 210. A description is found in Hardy, ‘Building a
New Town’, chapter 6, (footnote 58), p. 7.
64
Hardy, ‘Building a New Town’, chapter 6 (footnote 58). This point also draws on
CNTDC, Planning Proposals – Second Revision: Second Addendum Report to the
Preliminary Planning Proposals, Cumbernauld: CNTDC, 1962.
65
Ministry of Transport, Traffic in Towns: a study of the long term problems of traffic
in urban areas (the Buchanan Report). London: HMSO, 1963, p. 166 (emphases as in
original).
66
Interview with Alex Kerr, 2 December 2004. Each was ruled out on grounds of
cost.
67
Peter Youngman; cited in Johnson and Johnson, ‘Cumbernauld revisited’, (footnote
42), p. 640.
68
By Professor A. Hendry (Liverpool University)
69
Anon, ‘Cumbernauld New Town Central Area’, Architectural Design, 33, 1963, p.
229.
70
David Whitham, ‘Coming of age: Scottish new towns in the 21st century’, paper
presented to the Sixth International DOCOMOMO Conference, Brasilia, Brazil,
September 2000.
71
Glendinning, Cluster Citadel (footnote 28).
72
Copcutt, ‘Cumbernauld New Town Central Area’, (footnote 63), p. 210.
73
ibid; see also Miles Glendinning, ‘Megastructure and genius loci: the architecture
of Cumbernauld New Town’, in Proceedings Fourth DOCOMOMO International

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Conference, Bratislava: DOCOMOMO, 1996, p. 125.
74
Rod Hardy, ‘Building a New Town’, (footnote 58) p. 10.
75
Originally coined in 1950 as a joke by the Swedish architect Hans Asplund, the
word `Brutalism' had been appropriated with enthusiasm by younger British architects,
such as Peter and Alison Smithson, to describe their work.
76
Reyner Banham, quoted in Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, p. 257.
77
Interview with Alex Kerr, 2 December 2004
78
CNTDC, Annual Report, 1963. NTR, CD-ROM 2.
79
Schaffer, The New Town Story, (footnote 49), p. 124. For a flavour of the
international reaction see: Anon, 'Une importante experience anglaise: la nouvelle
ville de Cumbernauld', Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, January-February 1963: H.
Stumme, 'Das Zentrum der "Neuen Stadt" Cumbernauld in Schottland', Bauwelt, 54,
(1963), pp. 995ff.
80
Anon, ‘Town Centre: Cumbernauld’ Architectural Review, 142 (439), 1967, 445-
51.
81
Our Architectural Correspondent, ‘Scope of New Town begins to show’, The Times,
16 September 1966.
82
Schaffer, The New Town Story, (footnote 49), pp. 124-5.
83
F.J. Osborn and Arnold Whittick, New Towns: their origins, achievements and
progress, revised edition. London: Leonard Hill, 1969, p. 386.
84
Anon, ‘Town centre: phase 1’, Architects' Journal, 147 (5), 1968, p 304.
85
ibid, p. 307.
86
Patrick Nuttgens, ‘Criticism: Cumbernauld Town Centre’, Architectural Review,
142 (850), 1967, p. 444.
87
Glendinning, ‘Cluster Citadel’ (footnote 28)
88
ibid.
89
Quoted in an unpublished memorandum written in April 1995 by Brigadier Colin H.
Cowan entitled ‘Individual thoughts on Cumbernauld Town Centre’. Cowan was the
General Manager/Chief Executive of Cumbernauld Development Corporation, 1970-
1985.
90
CNTDC, Annual Report, 1973. NTR, CD-ROM 2 (footnote 28).
91
CNTDC, Annual Report, 1975. NTR, CD-ROM 2 (footnote 28)

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92
It is not possible to go into details of the way in which ICOMOS-UK, the British
branch of the United Nations organisation that lists and monitors World Heritage Sites,
has placed the Town Centre on their listing of buildings expressing Britain’s twentieth
century heritage. For more information: Maev Kennedy, ‘20th century buildings win
heritage mark of respect’, The Guardian, 17 June 2002 and, for a counter-view,
George Kerevan, ‘So how did we get from classical to carbuncle?’, The Scotsman, 21
February 2005.
93
Cowan, ‘Individual thoughts on Cumbernauld Town Centre’ (footnote 89).
94
ibid.
95
David Cowling, An Essay for Today: the Scottish New Towns, 1947 to 1997.
Edinburgh: Rutland Press, 1997, p. 59.
96
Philip Opher and Clinton Bird, British New Towns: architecture and urban design.
Oxford: Joint Centre for Urban Design, Oxford Polytechnic, p. 9.
97
Cowan, ‘Individual thoughts on Cumbernauld Town Centre’ (footnote 89).
98
See footnote 1.
99
Interview with Alex Kerr, 2 December 2004
100
This comes from an anecdote told by Alex Kerr (ibid). He recalled visiting
Cumbernauld with Copcutt in the mid-1960s, after he had moved to the Scottish
Office and Copcutt had moved to Dublin. Inspecting the scene when Phase 1 was
being constructed, Copcutt noted wistfully that “at least we got a tiny wee bit of it”.
101
Banham, Megastructure, p. 170.
102
e.g. Peter Katz, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community. New
York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 1993; Katie Williams, ‘Urban intensification
policies in England: problems and contradictions’, Land Use Policy, 16, 1999, 167-78;
Richard Rogers and Richard Burdett, ‘Let’s cram more into the city’, New Statesman,
13 (606), 2000, pp. 25-27; Talen, New Urbanism and American Planning (footnote
20).

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