Architecture Building, University Of Strathclyde, 131 Rottenrow, Glasgow

This is a three-storey and basement building of 1964-7, designed by Frank Fielden of Frank Fielden and Associates. It is a Modernist school of architecture and building science, part of a post-war university campus within an urban setting. The site slopes away to the south.

The building is arranged around twelve bays and features prominent two-storey projecting bay windows, distinctive angled rooflights, and a recessed ground floor. A single-storey, roughly square-plan lecture theatre connects to the west. The building's structure is an exposed in-situ concrete frame, creating a base course, band courses and parapet. The external walls are blue and black brick in stretcher bond, constructed as an external cavity wall. There is a cut-through entrance to the west of the plan, leading to double-leaf glazed doors.

The north elevation has the entrance on the right side. Ground floor canted bays return with a window above a black infill panel, and a glazed strip along the top of the ground floor. First-floor projecting bays have glazing over black infill panels, while the second-floor bays are clad in copperised felt on lightweight concrete ‘Suporex’ panels, sitting above glazing and a black infill panel.

The east elevation features projecting bays at the centre, with the second-floor bays clad in copperised felt. A single-storey lean-to is attached at ground level. The south elevation is similar to the north, with the entrance to the left, and projecting bays at the first floor clad with copperised felt with a horizontal light above.

The west elevation mirrors the east, with the ground floor and basement advanced to form a lecture theatre, exhibition block and offices. The end bays of the advanced section are recessed.

The windows are predominantly metal-framed pivot over fixed pane and pivot over casement styles, with pivot windows at ground floor. The roof is flat, asphalt, and features large, angled rooflights with glazing to the north. Integral rainwater goods are included.

The interior, observed in 2011, consists of open plan studios arranged around a core of seminar rooms and offices to the south. Internal walls are of brown brick and concrete, with wood block flooring set on a concrete floor slab. The entrance hall contains an in situ concrete flying staircase, with tiled treads, a metal balustrade and a deep paired timber handrail. A later suspended tubular steel truss supports the half landing. Some later partitions have been added around the staircase. A later timber pit with raked seating is located at the second floor. The lecture theatre has vertically boarded red pine walls.