I've always been fascinated by these eight monstrous buildings to the north-east of Glasgow city centre. Built in the late 1960s to rehouse 5000 folk affected by slum clearance, the Red Road flats fitted into Glasgow Corporation's obsession with high-rises (at one point in the 70s, Glasgow had the highest concentration of tower-blocks of any UK city) and were seen as the great hope of council housing but within a few years had become a byword for all that was wrong with Brutalist architecture and the misplaced (but honest) aspirations of the post-War housing boom. In a bizarre twist of fate, the eight blocks have become icons of the Glasgow skyline, and are looked on with affection by some residents; click here for a great website full of photos old and new and stories about the flats from those who lived there...

With their demolition already started time was short for me to get north to photograph them - but nothing could prepare me for seeing these things in the flesh. We spent about half-an-hour driving around getting good vantage points but I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer scale and dominance of the blocks I wasn't sorry to leave. The two slab blocks in particular were just so over-powering in their scale and enormity that it was soon time to get away...