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Anna Campbell-Jones talks about designing Glasgow Subway interior

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Travel
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 [MUSIC]
00:20 I'm Alistair Dalton, transport correspondent for The Scotsman.
00:35 We're on the Glasgow subway today.
00:38 I'm with Anna Campbell-Jones, an interior designer and
00:43 one of the BBC's Scotland's Home of the Year presenters.
00:48 But we're in a carriage today,
00:49 one of the ones that has been in service for decades.
00:52 It's about to go out of service, but
00:55 the design takes Anna right back to the beginning of her career.
00:59 So Anna, we're on one of the Glasgow subway carriages,
01:03 which I think takes you right back to the beginning of your career as
01:07 a designer.
01:08 >> That's right, when I graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1991,
01:12 I went down to London and worked for a company that designed trains.
01:17 >> And tell me about the fabric, the moquette that you helped design.
01:23 >> Well, we actually did the whole interior fit out of these carriages,
01:28 sometime in the early 90s.
01:30 The moquette, yeah, we got designed, we worked with a textile designer to
01:36 create various different options to put to our clients.
01:40 It's made of 100% mohair, which I don't think a lot of people know, and
01:44 that's why it's lasted so well.
01:46 >> And what was the thinking behind the colors and the design?
01:51 >> Well, obviously it was very important to include orange in the color palette.
01:57 But this being the early 90s, gray was a very fashionable color, so
02:01 we wanted to have something that made it feel a little bit more up to date with
02:05 the gray that was introduced.
02:07 And the dark red leather, the wavy shape on the back,
02:14 that is actually made from Andrew Muirhead leather, then no longer in
02:18 business, but it is Scottish leather.
02:20 And the idea is that the wave gently indicates where you should sit without
02:24 there being too rigid a pattern for the seating.
02:27 I think a lot of people are going to have a little bit of sadness about
02:34 these carriages going out of service.
02:36 Everybody who lives in Glasgow or visits Glasgow has such fond memories of
02:40 fun times, whether it's going out, going into town to the shops on these
02:46 iconic trains.
02:47 So even though it's more than 30 years ago, I can still remember the paint
02:51 reference color for all this, everything that's cream,
02:55 because we had it all re-sprayed, RAL 9001.
02:59 The company that I work for, I worked on designs for London Underground
03:04 trains, quite a few of them, District Line, Victoria Line, Piccadilly Line,
03:10 amongst others.
03:11 And also we worked on the Eurostar, the original Eurostar.
03:15 And I also designed the head office of Eurostar at Waterloo.
03:20 [MUSIC]

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