‘A tall storey…but, a fact just the same’: The Red Road highrise as a black box

Abstract

The advent of state-sponsored mass highrise housing in the post-war period brought into view a range of issues about the role of technology in everyday life. This paper draws on approaches in the study of science and technology in order to deepen our understanding of the socio-technical aspects of such highrise housing, past and present. We elaborate this thinking empirically by examining a 1960s highrise development, Red Road, Glasgow. The paper examines the inaugural phase of development, and the most recent phase of ‘redevelopment’, the first stage of which is demolition. The paper extends existing accounts of residential highrises generally, and Red Road specifically, as well as elaborating an alternate analytical framework for understanding highrise and supertall dwellings.