Visiting The Lighthouse

Today I have an interesting trip in The Lighthouse in Glasgow.

The Lighthouse in Glasgow is Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City. It was opened as part of Glasgow's status as UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999.

The Lighthouse is the renamed, conversion of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's 1895 Glasgow Herald newspaper office. The centre's vision is to develop the links between design, architecture, and the creative industries, seeing these as interconnected social, educational, economic and cultural issues of concern to everyone.

One of the stunning features of The Lighthouse is the uninterrupted view over Glasgow's cityscape from the Mackintosh Tower at the north of the building, which is accessible via a helical staircase from the third floor. The color and shape are so amazing and fascinating that I take lot of pictures in that staircase. From the top of the tower, I have seen elegant buildings around The Lighthouse which have a long history and full of Scottish features.

In the main building, there is also another modern viewing platform at the south of the building, which forms the buildings sixth floor and is only accessible via lift. Unfortunately, I did not find it. What a pity!

There are two exhibitions in that building today: one is senses of place, building excellence, the other is take away. They both give me a range of new ideas.

The exhibition of senses of place: building excellence shows the outcomes of a series of workshops, in response to the Scottish Government’s ‘Curriculum for Excellence’, in which teachers, pupils and other school users from five local authorities across Scotland have worked with leading Scottish architects and designers to influence the design of learning spaces for the future. The local authorities involved in the project are Argll & Bute, North Lanarkshire, Orkney Islands, Stiring, and West Lothian. This display gives people a good view of how should the school buildings should be designed to improve the learning experience. They use natural materials, warm colors, beautiful shapes and suitable lightings in that space in order to demonstrate their design outcomes directly and touchable to audiences.

The second exhibition named “Take away”. It displays a large number of products from the tiffin box to the lunch box, army canteen to sports bottle, stacking cup to coffee machine cup and something else. Take away looks at the culture of takeaway food and the objects associated with eating on the move. We can see tableware, cutlery, packaging and furniture, which have impacted our modern eating habits and design of objects around us. Every display has an obvious feature in its time and local.

The signs of toilets in that building give me a strong impression. These signs are different from other common ones. They give visitors a vivid and amusing view to show the location of toilet.

This trip fills in a gap in the cultural field of food and drink in my knowledge scope.