glaspaper

glaspaper was published between 2001 and 2007 by the Glasgow based architectural workers cooperative G.L.A.S. (Glasgow Letters on Architecture and Space) – a group of around 15 people who had all studied (or were at the time teaching) at Strathclyde University, Scotland.

G.L.A.S. got together to investigate the profound socio-spatial contradictions thrown up by the consequences of neo-libertarian economic regimes and the growing legitimation crisis of western democracies. The group argued that as long as the production of the built environment is controlled by private capital, there is little chance that the uneven development of the built environment and the continued massive discrepancies in the resources that are deepening social and spatial divisions locally and globally will be arrested.

In 2001, we wrote that new ways need to be found to make a critique in what appeared to be a dearth of imaginative political thinking in the popular press and media about how we might make better use of existing buildings and cities and of developing improved ways of making them. The newspaper was a contribution to that struggle.

The paper was produced in our living rooms, with numerous helping hands, with and for the people of Glasgow, it was sharp and funny, critical and meandering, visual and word-based, graphic as well as complex. Each issue had a print run of 5,000 copies, which we distributed to community centres, libraries, swimming pools and other public facilities across the city.