page_title: Red Road Flats
section_title: Demolition
hierarchical_section_title: Red Road Flats / Demolition
caption_attribution_description: English: Demolition site at Red Road flats The front "slab"-styled flat is in the process of being demolished.
context_page_description: The Red Road Flats were a mid-twentieth-century high-rise housing complex located between the districts of Balornock and Barmulloch in the northeast of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The estate originally consisted of eight multi-storey blocks of steel frame construction. All were demolished by 2015. Two were "slabs", much wider in cross-section than they are deep. Six were "points", more of a traditional tower block shape. The slabs had 28 floors, the point blocks 31, and taken together, they were designed for a population of 4,700 people. The point blocks were among the tallest buildings in Glasgow at 89 metres, second in overall height behind the former Bluevale and Whitevale Towers in Camlachie. The 30th floor of the point blocks were the highest inhabitable floor level of any building in Glasgow.
  Views from the upper floors drew the eye along the Campsie Fells to Ben Lomond and the Arrochar Alps, then west past the Erskine Bridge and out to Goat Fell on the Isle of Arran continuing south over Glasgow and East towards Edinburgh. On a clear day, the buildings were visible on the Glasgow skyline from up to 10 miles away.
context_section_description: Soon the new landlords as well as the council insisted that repairs were costing more than receipts in rent, and that big changes therefore had to be made. In 2005 Glasgow Housing Association announced its intention to demolish one of the tallest blocks as part of a regeneration of the area.
  Defend Council Housing, a pro-council housing campaign group, set up a local campaign against the demolition, seeking to ensure the scheme's continued existence. However, all the eight buildings were planned for phased demolition beginning in the spring of 2010 and expected to be accomplished within a decade.
  On 7 March 2010, the Serykh family, three asylum seekers, jumped to their deaths from one of the towers. These deaths galvanised much in the way of action in and around the Red Road. Various projects now exist to document the end of the flats positively, with the hope that everyone with memories of the flats will contribute actively to the projects as best they can.
  The first block, the 28-floor slab block, was demolished by controlled explosion on 10 June 2012. The steel structured tower took just six seconds to fall after a series of carefully timed explosions, using 275 kilograms (606 pounds) of explosive, ripped along the building around the sixth to eighth floors. The second block, the 31-floor point block on Birnie Court was demolished on 5 May 2013, at 11:46 a.m., taking about four seconds to fall.
  In April 2014, it was announced that five of the remaining towers would be given a dramatic explosive demolition as part of the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony.  The spectacle would have the five towers simultaneously felled by controlled explosion, with the footage being broadcast live to large screens in Celtic Park.
  Former MSP Carolyn Leckie criticised the demolition plans and called for the five flats to be "demolished with dignity, not for entertainment". She has said "the image of tower blocks coming down is not a positive international spectacle" and suggests it also conveys disregard for the asylum seekers living in the sixth tower, which would remain standing. The demolition plan for the Commonwealth Games was cancelled for safety reasons, but the flats were demolished the following year.
  In August 2015, Glasgow Housing Association announced that all six remaining high-rise blocks would be brought down in a one-off demolition later in 2015.  The six remaining towers were demolished on 11 October 2015, after Sheriff Court interdicts (the Scottish law equivalent of an injunction) were obtained against a group of residents who refused to leave their nearby homes during the explosions. Two of the six blocks failed to completely collapse and remained partially standing. The contractors, Safedem, are to carry out a review to determine the best way of completing the demolition. The partial remains of the two flats were eventually demolished using a high reach excavator.
caption: Demolition site at the Red Road flats
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