St Peters Seminary

Many of you may know of St. Peters Seminary in Cardross. I first became aware of it a few years back when I was in my first year studying Architecture and we had Izi Metzstein, one of the architects of the 1966 project come speak to us in class. If you are unaware of this building, it was originally designed as a Priests College, and is now considered to be one of the most significant modernist buildings in the U.K. This said, it now lies in a particularly awful state of disrepair as a 'modernist ruin'. Personally, in it's original splendor it was pretty standard Corbusien modernism... ugly, limited - but in it's desolate state it's rather amazing, and I love it.

Of course, its fenced off and kind of in the middle of nowhere so not the easiest to get to HOWEVER, it is well worth a visit if you're into Architecture (and ugly things in general) but certainly if you are into your Graffiti as it's COVERED in the stuff! Some really amazing work, some... not so amazing, but varied to say the least!

This place is kind of old news for a lot of people, but hit the headlines today as the NVA plan to finally resurrect the place! Loving the way it is (despite how dangerous it has become) I was always a sceptic about anyone 'doing it up', however this new description does sound quite interesting -


"A new form of generative public art that develops work from a long term creative dialogue with the users and radically accepts the value of the building in its current form expanding an ’unfinished’ narrative that will change over time."

Click HERE to read a little more about this, and check out the video below -

Delegates discuss St Peter's Seminary, Venice Architectural Biennale 2010 from Cara Connolly on Vimeo.

Katie