The Ashby Building at Queen’s University provided the filming location for Laing’s School of Physiology in the film High-Rise.
The drive to the physiology department of the medical school took him five minutes, and apart from this single excursion Laing’s life in the high-rise was as self contained as the building itself.
Once Laing had been appointed senior lecturer in physiology at the new medical school, the purchase of an apartment nearby made sense.
Sometimes, when he returned home in the evening from the medical school, he was convinced that the high-rise had managed to extend itself during the day.
During the morning, from his office on the top floor of the medical school, Laing would watch their shadows swing across the parking-lots and empty plazas of the project, sluice-gates opening to admit the day. For all his reservations, Laing was the first to concede that these huge buildings had won their attempt to colonize the sky.
When he reached the medical school he walked through the empty corridors of the building, with an effort re-establishing the identity of the offices and lecture theatres. He let himself into the dissecting rooms of the
anatomy department and walked down the lines of glass-topped tables, staring at the partially
dissected cadavers.