New BBC Scotland headquarters - £188 million

PoloMint

£188 million - and no office for the boss
FERGUS SHEPPARD

BBC Scotland's new £188 million headquarters opened for business yesterday.

An overnight radio show was the first programme to come live from the building at Pacific Quay in Glasgow.

About 100 radio staff also moved into the building which will eventually be home to 1,320 workers. However, television news bulletins will not come live from there until the end of July.

BBC managers boast their 34,000sq m building is the last word in digital design and claim it will become "a living, breathing, creative hub".

Amid the hi-tech facilities are two bright red potting sheds - from B&Q - which the BBC says are drop-in areas for staff to "have quiet and some ideas".

An open-plan ethos means even the most senior executives will not have their own offices.

The £188 million of licence fee money means the five-storey glass-clad building now houses three fully digital TV studios. One of them, at 790sq m, is beaten in size only by studio capacity at the BBC's television centre HQ in London.

BBC executives hope the new facilities will allow them to compete for more drama and light entertainment commissions. They are also planning to rent the space to production companies such as Endemol.

Officials also claim the new building will be more accessible than the old HQ at Queen Margaret Drive.

A reception area will allow visitors to log on to computers, listen to different radio and TV output and try their hand at presenting the weather.

The BBC says it will go further with "the 21st-century classroom" - an area containing 20 computers to teach media literacy to visiting school parties.

Ken MacQuarrie, BBC Scotland controller, said the HQ would offer a "fantastic working environment which will shape the future of broadcasting and welcome our audiences to come in and see their BBC. I believe our new HQ will become a living, breathing, creative hub".

Mr MacQuarrie, who is to move to Pacific Quay on Friday, will not have his own office and will be based on the third floor next to the new media team.

The central feature of the building is a huge staircase rising through the five floors. Called "the street", it is intended to ensure staff mingle more than at the jumbled nest of offices at Queen Margaret Drive.

Viewers will see Reporting Scotland against a backdrop of a live picture from the River Clyde. It is the first time radio staff from shows like Good Morning Scotland and Reporting Scotland will have shared the same floor.

One executive said: "Jackie Bird's make-up and desk will be within ten yards of each other."

Architect David Chipperfield beat off an initial list of 70 to win the Glasgow BBC contract.

Glasgow architect Alan Dunlop, from Murray & Dunlop, said the building had been wrongly criticised as "a glass box" by some passers by.

"It is very differentiated in its detail, it is crisp and modern," he said. "It sets a very high standard for some of the other developments on the Clyde to follow."

The building is close to STV's headquarters, opened last year.

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