Caroline Brewer (she/her)
Caroline is a Stage 4 architecture student at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art.
She previously completed her Bachelor of Science at Washington University in St. Louis with a minor in urban design. After finishing her degree, she practiced for four years in New York City working on master planning proposals, mixed-use office and retail, and interiors with Method Design and Andrea Steele Architects. She has also worked with the Preservation Research Office in St. Louis, mapping the city to understand possibilities for preservation and reinterpretation of historic properties.
Caroline was drawn to Glasgow to pursue her masters by the latent possibilities for ecological restoration that vacancy in the post-industrial landscape presents. She has written about the striking similarities between Glasgow and St. Louis, both former industrial powerhouses that have risen from the ashes after extreme depopulation in the post-war period. She believes evolution of absence in landscape can be leveraged as a powerful tool for creating equitable urban space that simultaneously addresses infrastructural challenges such as water management and embeds cultural memory within the landscape.
In her final year at the Glasgow School of Art, she hopes to continue her approach to architecture through an infrastructural lens, incorporating landscape as a vital component of the built form.
Calton District Proposal
In the proposed Calton district, boundaries occur along the railway to the North and West, Glasgow Green to the South, and Abercrombie Road to the East. As a strategy for reconnecting this area to the city centre and responding to the high concentration of impermeable surfaces in Calton, vacant land is strategically densified along commercial zones and re-aggregated into parcels for use as blue-green infrastructure that aids the city in water management. In the northeast corner of the district, the Cattle Market site acts as a central node that will be used for capturing stormwater overflow and providing the community with trails and recreational spaces that connect Calton to Dennistoun. A series of green corridors reduce traffic lanes by adding rain gardens and cycle infrastructure, weaving together the pockets of commercial activity with proposed mixed-use developments bordering the Cattle Market site.
Proposed Square
Barras Digital Music + Arts Center
The Barras has numerous locations where artists can practice traditional studio arts, but the means for producing and recording new forms of electronic-based music or producing digital art are absent from both the Barras and central Glasgow more broadly. The tools used in producing electronic music and art are notoriously expensive and inaccessible to the average person. The building aims to make these tools highly accessible and the world of digital creation highly visible so that creators have the potential to collaborate and learn from one another in a physical space. To this end, the project includes not only spaces for creation, but also spaces to experience the music and art that is being created throughout the building in both formal and informal ways, using material as an atmospheric language.
This project ties into existing creative infrastructure on the site, The Space, where artists rent studios and exhibit their work. The Space will continue to operate while new structures are being constructed on the site. After the new portions of the building are completed, the existing building can be adaptively reused by inserting a new timber structure and its reconfiguring the interior layout to allow for an expanded program that includes a range of creative spaces including traditional artist studios, digital art stations, electronic music spaces, practice rooms and educational facilities for enhancing community knowledge in using digital resources related to audio and visual production.
