The Hotel

We came to 129 Bath Street as listeners, not authors, and let the building set the brief.

We stripped back the layers created by years of alterations to reveal what was already there, the plasterwork and cornicing, the leaded glass, the timber and joinery, changing as little as possible to preserve the original character and function.

The building has lived many lives: a nineteenth-century townhouse and the childhood home of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the first man formally styled Prime Minister; the Glasgow School Board offices from 1911; and the founding home of ENABLE Scotland in 1954.

What we have added is life, and a place woven into the creative life of the city, its art, music and makers drawn from Glasgow itself. Arthouse opens the building back up, a neighbour rather than a tenant, built with Glasgow, not for it.