A TASTE of time travel is being offered by a new walking tour of Glasgow that explores the strange beauty and hidden promise of forgotten buildings.

A Brisk Walk: Buildings at Risk, an audio tour for smartphone and tablet, is a collaboration between Architecture and Design Scotland and Walking Heads and was specially made for the Festival of Architecture Scotland 2016.

The aim is to show that although silent and empty, derelict buildings are often full of potential and deserve a second look.

With a commentary provided by Johnny Rodger, professor of urban literature at Glasgow School of Art, the audio trail looks at the past, present and future of six very different buildings in Glasgow city centre. Their style ranges from ornate Victorian to minimalist 1960s modernism and every one has a story to tell.

The tour covers the optimism of piano seller Thomas Ewing’s shop at 520 Sauchiehall Street, the extraordinary Lion Chambers, an early 20th-century neo-modern concrete castle in Hope Street, and the “gap-toothed beauty” of Clyde Street on Glasgow’s waterfront.

WHY ARE THEY VACANT?

VIBRANT, violent, volatile – Glasgow has been described in many different ways but what is not so commonly recognised is that it is actually a shrinking city, at least in terms of population.

A total of 1.1 million people called it home in 1939 and now there are just 600,000. “We are clearly living in a city catering for almost twice the number of people, as there were 80 years ago,” Rodger said.

“Glasgow was a Victorian powerhouse but what happens to the buildings that were part of the infrastructure for the second city of the Empire? Over recent decades Glasgow has been shrinking and we’re left with a load of structures that cannot be used for their original purpose so we need to ask what we want to do about that.

“For example the pipe factory is now an art gallery run by a co-operative so there are different things we can do.”

During the audio tour, Rodger is joined by Shona Simpson, built heritage officer of Glasgow City Council, to discuss what it means to be a “building at risk” and the significance of A, B and C listings.

WHAT ELSE IS ON THE TOUR?

FIRST up is 520 Sauchiehall Street, the oldest and perhaps the most eccentric of all the buildings featured. It’s hard to imagine this end of Sauchiehall Street as it might have been at the end of the 19th century but at that time horse-drawn trams would have clattered past new shops, showrooms and theatres colonising sites once occupied by wealthy merchants in grand villas.

Number 520 is an intriguing symbol of the rapidly changing times of Sauchiehall Street over the past 120 years from the shopping area of choice for middle class women to the fast foods and clubs of Glasgow’s night-time economy.

At the same time this B-listed curiosity on the Buildings at Risk Register evolved from a genteel piano showroom to a throbbing nightclub via cinemas of sometimes dubious status.

Clues of its past identities can be found in the Greek details of sculpted torch-bearers and Ionic columns round the entrance. Although it can’t be seen from the front, sharp-eyed clubbers might have spotted the bust of Beethoven looming over the back entrance in Renfrew Street.

ANY MORE?

NEXT on the walk are the A-listed Lion Chambers in Hope Street designed by the famous architects John Gaff Gillespie and James Salmon at the beginning of the

20th century.

A blend of skyscraper and Scottish castle, the building originally housed lawyers’ offices and the architects were the first in this country to use the Hennebique technique, an innovative use of concrete and a steel frame. “It’s a very important building in Glasgow as it is a proto-modernist building,” said Rodger.

“It’s very tall and slender with big glass windows at the top for an artists’ studio. It now has a structural problem and is covered in netting so the question is whether it can be repaired or not.”

Also covered by the tour are the former Peacock Tearooms in the Trongate.

“In Victorian times, tearooms were a social phenomenon and were very much in fashion as an alternative to the pubs which were drinking dens for men,” said Rodger. “Could it be used again as a coffee house? The problem is that the area is very run-down. Selfridges was supposed to come and regenerate the area but after waiting for around a decade for Selfridges to make up their minds they decided not to come.

“That whole area suffered because it was in limbo.”

A heartening example of a building being brought back into use is the former pipe factory at the Barras which has been transformed into a successful artists’ co-operative.

A Brisk Walk: Buildings at Risk is free to download to smartphones and tablets or browse with streetview function on guidigo.com.