To students of 20th-century architecture, it remains one of the finest buildings of the era, yet it was used for only 14 years.For the past quarter of a century, St Peter's Seminary in the village of Cardross near Glasgow, where the Catholic Church once believed it would train a new generation of priests, has been allowed to slowly crumble away as vandals stripped it clean.
Today, despite years of pressure from architects and heritage groups, the modernist structure remains little more than a concrete and timber shell abandoned in a sea of weeds.
But the Archdiocese of Glasgow indicated yesterday that the building, named as one of the world's most endangered architectural sites by the World Monument Fund, might be saved after all: the archdiocese is in talks with the property developer Urban Splash, which has redeveloped a number of sites including St Peter's Church in Liverpool city centre, now the Alma de Cuba restaurant, and the art deco Midland Hotel in Morecambe.
The news was welcomed by, among others, the original architect Isi Metzstein, of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. He called for any redevelopment plans to retain the qualities of light and space which continue to draw hundreds of architectural students each year.
"We put everything we had into it. It was a great opportunity, a great client, a great site and a great project. When these things come together you can get something exceptional. But in this case it came to rack and ruin," he said. "It is difficult to be objective about it but after 50 years I think I can say it had an unusually highly developed quality of space and light."
Opened in 1966, the seminary closed its doors in 1980. Rather than falling foul of changing architectural tastes, it was hit by the fallout from the Second Vatican Council, which concluded that priests should not be trained in the quasi-medieval setting of the isolated seminary but in contact with the wider world. It also changed the rules on how priests should perform the Mass, making St Peter's traditional design largely redundant. It is estimated it could cost £11m to return the building to use.
"If the developers can raise sufficient funding and obtain the necessary permissions the archdiocese has signalled its readiness to release the seminary and estate to the developers for a nominal sum," a spokesman said. Urban Splash said it was exploring residential and commercial possibilities.
Jon Wright, of the 20th Century Society, which has campaigned to save the building, said it was vital to find out what the function would be and who would use it. "One must remember that this is a highly graded, listed building. It is going to take an awful lot of work and money to try to put it back together," he said.
St Peter's would join other famous structures which have been similarly restored including the Hoover Building in Ealing, west London, now a supermarket, and Bankside power station in central London, home to Tate Modern.
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(Source: TIUK)