By recognising dominant models of land ownership, exchange and their social support structures that underpin the construction and development of the Forth & Clyde Canal and its hinterlands, the project seeks out anomalies of land registration, unrecognised or contested ownership. These proposals are sited in the Sighthill area of Port Dundas, Glasgow, delineated by the M8 motorway, railway and looping canal. It is an area that has been subject to major infrastructural changes with a complex history of trading, development and demolition, and subsequent overwritten claims on land. Strategies of defining and building on, over and with unclear boundaries are activated in design testings. The project occupies the gaps, between words and maps, dialogue and cartography.
The proposal houses the original Sasine Register for Glasgow and creates a space for its digitisation along with the associated administration of land negotiation and settlement. An urban cartography and surveying office looks to correlate the Sasine data with urban sites which are under processes of exchange. Positioning itself in-between the empirical and the abstract, the program makes a workplace for the management of land mediation services and the agents on the ground; path-builders, surveyors and fencers. The proposal attempts to unmask these activities and engages with local people.
Making the land register and this knowledge public raises questions around who can state a claim or have right of access on, across and through spaces in the city? Born from past and present divisions in land claims on the site, the building acts as a piece of cartography and creates spaces for learning, arbitration and dialogue in recognition that multiple voices and perspectives are essential for strategic urban planning.
