Broadgate Tower - an icon of our age

It's been a while yet again since I last wrote. But the Broadgate Tower waits for no man. It's left me behind and is mingling with the stars and mythical creatures.

I do of course mean it's allstar appearance on tonight's Dragon's den.

I've never noticed it before, despite being an avid viewer. This means that either:

1. all the other episodes (bar tonight's, which was a recap episode, 3 months on) were filmed before the tower was tall enough/respectable looking enough to be featured as a cutaway shot or (even better) as a backdrop for Evan Harris' summation speech.
2. the Dragons have moved den!

Either way I know that as well as looking like it's filmed in an East End converted warehouse studio, it is actually filmed in such a place.

But despite its new glitzy lifestyle it still lacks two things.

1. Completion. It actually seems to be going backwards as yesterday, after the Arsenal Chelsea game, the builders had blocked bishopsgate street and were in the process of - or so it seemed - erecting a new crane!
2. A name. This, I admit, is all my fault. I have been remiss in not capitalising on the, albeit limited, momentum I had. I will make up for this by printing t-shirts and selling on lulu or cafepress, where you can also buy this most interesting calendar for 2008. I have seen the back of every page of the calendar and they were most white and clean, which is what you'd expect.
   
   The Gherkin has a name and is doing well for itself. They've just illuminated an entire floor bright red (it doesn't, alas, show up too well on the photo, but it is very eye-catching). Would that ever have happened to plain old 30 St Mary's Axe? I think not.

Size is everything to a mayor consumed by edifice complex - a riposte (part 1)

Yesterday's ramble was a preamble to writing about the Guardian article by Simon Jenkins from the other week. Matt texted me asking what my take was, and I replied saying I didn't have one yet, but by golly I would!

So below it is

Originally uploaded by zakgollop.

But before I begin, did anyone see the absolutely spectacular sunset over the city last night? Clouds looking like black snakes against a red sky. Awesome. (God Bless Flickr for providing a photo).

Size is everything to a mayor consumed by edifice complex

The title is what prompted yesterday's tirade. 'Edifice complex' is code for building phallic symbols, isn't it? If not, then maybe my interpretation says more about me than I would like.

Londoners worldwide have no idea what is about to hit them. They have not been shown. They have not been told. Today they may stand on Waterloo bridge, look east and see a city that has been familiar to them all their lives. Tomorrow they will see something completely different, thanks to their mayor, Ken Livingstone.

I doubt Londoners worldwide will today be standing on Waterloo bridge as they are most probably busying themselves with being worldwide, but even if they were, the city they see won't have been familiar to them all their lives. A lot of the skyline dates from post war years, and a lot of this is unenviable: Guy's hospital, the London stock exchange (before it's almost complete facelift) to name but two.

By the way, that 'have no idea what is about to hit them' is a key line from my favourite TV programme of all time: Shooting the Past. Watch it!

On my estimate 20 towers each more than 300ft high are planned, or proposed, to rise within half a mile of the Thames in inner London, with another 20 situated at random further back. Towers will be visible from every open space and down every street. The horizontal skyline of the capital will be transformed into a series of point blocks set in piazzas, shrinking the scale of what has always been essentially a street-based, intimate urban landscape.

Towers already are visible from every open space! It's just that most of today's towers are ugly. Seeing a taller glass spire rising beyond the nearby the concrete monoliths is something, as you know, I look forward to. JOIN ME!

London intimate?! Yeah - not like the brash metropolises of the Cotswolds and the Quantocks. Let's keep London nice and quaint, the way it's always been. Our slogan: "London for the Hugh Grant's and American tourists." Does he consider St Paul's, the Tate Modern, London Eye, The Houses of Parliament to be intimate? Yes having a few intimate areas is possible in cities, but the skyline is not the place to look for intimacy!

The horizontal skyline transformation scaremongering is also molehill mountaineering. Look at most cities with skyscrapers (I haven't been to many - Boston, Toronto, Melbourne, but I can't imagine others are too different) and the skyscrapers are limited to small areas. Boston, for instance, has acres of low-rise buildings and this is the general impression you get of the city, but it is invigorating to occasionally stumble upon a taller building.

Oh, and a flat city with only low-rise buildings can't really be said to have a skyline, can it. It has a gently receding horizon, which you may want out in the country, but in the middle of a big city it isn't necessarily the landscape you would want. Sure, many cities, like Istanbul, are low-rise and proud, but they didn't have a great deal of their traditional architecture destroyed over the past 60 years. And they are hilly too. Low-rise buildings on

Giants Causeway HDR
Originally uploaded by DaveyD-UK.

rolling hills are reminiscent of the Giant's Causeway, but on the flat it's a little dull. The overall impression being of an extended warehouse.

Downstream of Waterloo bridge the view will be dominated by a 43-storey tower of flats opposite the Temple, approved over the summer, immediately behind the National Theatre on the South Bank. Dwarfing even the 440ft wheel of the London Eye, this building will thrust itself into every London vista from the Embankment and the Thames bridges to Trafalgar Square and St James's Park. I have yet to meet anyone aware of its coming. It is of no published architectural quality and serves no public or ceremonial purpose. It is just a block of flats.

I'll have to look into this. I think someone left a comment the other day about it. It's called '123 Bankside' I think.

Beyond it will rise a visual wall of glass skyscrapers along the river's south bank, two at Blackfriars, another behind Tate Modern, a higher King's Reach tower at London Bridge and at Bermondsey the 1,000ft "glass shard", taller even than the highest structure at Canary Wharf. Behind this wall on the curve of the river will be the new City of London. The box-like blocks of the 1980s will be overwhelmed by a forest of "shape architecture", parodies of Norman Foster's Gherkin by designers eager to impress the ever pliable City planners.

The Serpentine Pavilion
Originally uploaded by *-*-*-*-*-*.

"Parodies of Norman Foster's Gherkin" is a terrible dismissal of buildings which seek to go beyond the standard 4-walls + roof model. Is the serpentine gallery pavilion a parody of the Gherkin. Is the... damn! - out of examples! But anyway, I look forward to the days of the box-like 80's blocks being overwhelmed.

Actually, that's not quite true - you do need a balance. The Toronto skyline, with one 'shape architecture' tower (CN Tower) and lots of block towers forms a good view. Too many wacky shapes is probably a bad thing but, apart from the Walkie Talkie (which I hate) and the Helter-Skelter, there really isn't too much wackiness around. It's mostly straight lines, a lot of glass and a healthy reluctance to settle for a completely straight-laced 4-wall tower.

There will be the 1,000ft "Helter-skelter", the "Cheesegrater", the "Pinnacle" and the "Walkie-Talkie" [*edit* showing his lack of proper research here - the Pinnacle and the Helter Skelter are actually one and the same - Bishopsgate Tower]. These children's toy pastiches will be accompanied by banal Mies van der Rohe copies such as the Heron Tower. There has been no public debate or consultation on any of this. There is no vision or declared ideal of how new and old should marry in the future city. It will just happen because no authority has the guts to set individual developments in any wider context.

I agree in a way with his no public consultation statement; there was a public inquiry into the Walkie Talkie but, though I tried and tried and tried, I found no way for an actual member of the public to contribute views.

There is, however, a vision and a wider context for the individual developments. I think it's called the London plan. You can quibble about whether it really does put forward a vision (It's general gist is build in the city and at train stations, and don't impinge too much on historic areas), but do we really want a vision? We're talking aesthetics here. You can't really legislate an aesthetic vision. All you can go for are a few do's and dont's, and then hope try and be sensible and avoid instances of flagrant disregard for the landscape, surroundings and populace. And what else would the vision be if not some kind of legislative planning structure: a bland platitudinous tract about cohesiveness and respect and our ancestors' graves and so on. A PR consultancy's dream assignment. And of no use whatsoever.

I shall resume the discussion later.

My second youth

Ok - you win.

Complete strangers have used the words 'wicked' and 'mate' in the same sentence when commenting on the blog. I think it's about time I came out of retirement.

So much has happened since I last wrote. So much so that I can't even hope to write it all up, so, for the sake of brevity, I'll unfortunately have to leave out the bit about my amazing adventures in space. Here is a recap (in rough order of importance) of some of the other significant things I made a note to write about:

1. I have a new bike which, thus far, has not been stolen.
   
2. The Walkie Talkie has been given planning permission. The Times headline is "St Paul’s, meet Darth Vader cathedral", which I quite like. Ruth Kelly didn't actually get around to makinga deceision and it was left to her successor (Oh yeah - we have a new government since I last wrote!) Hazel Blears to give a couple of weeks' deliberation to the months of case files before giving the stamp of approval. Is there a stamp, I wonder? Or is it all digitised these days?
3. (such and such a number) Bishopsgate street has been cloaked in scaffold and demolition rags. Don't think the actual; knocking down has begun yet, although it's possible they've started gutting the interior. That's always a possibility.
4. I have moved house. Back to Bow, my original London haunt, but in a nicer bit next to the park and canal.
5. Broadgate Tower is now nearly fully glazed, though I don't have a photo to prove it as yet (but cycle past there daily, so who knows what could happen!)
6. I missed yet another chance to go inside the Gherkin.

That's all for now. My blogging stamina is waning.

Unlike my cycling stamina. I rode all the way to Enfield yesterday, where the canal smells of dog biscuits.

*edit* Blogger thinks I've turned German:

Blog anzeigen (in einem neuen Fenster)

That's what happens; you go away for a while and it's like your friends don't even know who you are any more.

Keyword of the week - london sky line egg

Couldn't find sensible results for london sky line egg? You might be looking for information on The Gherkin (official name of 30 St Mary Axe), which is a slightly egg-shaped building in London. As its name suggests, though, it's actually shaped a lot more like a pickled cucumber (although a pine cone is probably the best approximation mother nature has to offer).

Or you might mean City Hall, aka The Mayor's office.

I feel sorry for whoever typed london sky line egg into Google.

Other people have done it before, with variations such as 'Liverpool Street Egg'. It seems they're looking for information about that egg shaped building on the London skyline.

I've never seen an egg shaped building on the London skyline, so I presume they mean The Gherkin, aka 30 St Mary Axe. So I've performed the public service above of linking to some comprehensive information about it. Here also are my posts tagged with Gherkin.

Betrayal... by tortoises

Disturbing news today.

I had the day off work, but left the house not too much later than on a normal work day to go and buy a screwdriver and hammer to put up shelves (it's not the first screwdriver I've ever owned, but it is the first hammer).

I got back to find the scene in the picture: The brightly coloured tortoises with bobbing heads I bought at the peace festival in Leamington all those years ago have started worshipping the gherkin from my London in a Bag in some sort of phallic god cultish ritual.

How long this has been going on for I don't know. I was lucky to catch them out this time; they probably thought I'd gone for the day. All I can say for sure is that I feel cheap, dirty and betrayed.

In other disturbing news, the bus stop on Bishopsgate outside Liverpool Street station has disappeared.

Rendering the artist's impression obsolete

I came across this just now, in a BBC article dating from when the Gherkin was given planning permission. It looks a bit odd doesn't it - the black bits look like they've been coloured in hurriedly with permanent marker. It's the courtroom artist sketch of the skyscraper depictions world (I briefly thought then that there was a word for 'courtroom artist', but no - that's stenographer, the courtroom secretary.)

I can't say I've seen anything of quality as poor as this in relation to the new batch of skyscrapers. They possibly exist somewhere, just not in the public domain. It's all about 'renders' these days, such as that to the right, which also dates from the same time. Back in those pioneering days they were known more descriptively as 'virtual' images (the BBC's ' ', not mine). Lots of clouds in the image - you won't get that these days. I'm pretty confident of that statement and will now pick a random 5 current renders to see if my point is borne out.

See - completely random, and not a cloud in site.

Turns out I was wrong, although Leadenhall Tower has chosen to have blue skies in all their renders, which I think is indicative (I love the rhythm of that word... particularly if you put on a South African accent) of a lack of confidence in the quality of the architecture. On the other hand, Peano (who I believe is responsible for the Shard of Glass) is so confident of his building's ability to carry itself that in the promotional picture it's shrouded in smog.

Back to the Gherkin for a moment, English Heritage were, as I mentioned earlier, opposed to its construction, somewhat undermining their moral authority when it comes to being the nation's guardian against eyesores. Turns out I was wrong about that too.

English Heritage's recommended that: "the old Baltic Exchange could not be properly preserved and that it could, in the unique circumstances of this case, be replaced by a new high quality building".

But there was a lot of controversy then too, as many thought that the historic Baltic Exchange Building, badly damaged by the 1992 IRA bomb, could be reconstructed fully, and shouldn't be flattened to make was for the Swiss Re Tower. (Talking of flattening, they've made Flatland: the Movie with Martin Sheen voicing Square (on the official website the menu items issue a satisfying ping as you hover over them)).

From wikipedia

English Heritage ... insisted that any redevelopment must restore the building's old facade onto St Mary Axe ... later discovered that the damage was far more severe than they had previously thought, so they stopped insisting on a full restoration — over the objections of the architectural conservationists who favoured reconstruction.

Anyway, here's this:

When it forced a public inquiry into the Heron Tower at Bishopsgate in 2002, its objections were effectively dismissed by the planning inspector who pointed out that, given its support for the Gherkin, opposition to Heron was "inconsistent". It then lost the inquiry over the "Shard of Glass" at London Bridge in late 2003, when the inspector cited the quality of the Renzo Piano design as the overriding consideration. As EH had used this very argument in support of its shameful decision to allowing the loss of the Baltic Exchange in favour of the Gherkin, it could not win.

... which is written by an Evening Standard journalist, so has no authority, but is a pretty good point.

I really hope people have bothered to read this far down as what follows is far and away the best twist in the tale.

The Baltic Exchange now sits in pieces in a great many wooden crates in a barn near Canterbury ... Perfect for phenomenally wealthy jigsaw enthusiasts

To arrange a viewing of the bits [Hahaha] please contact

Pavilions of Splendour
22 Mount View Road Winchester Hampshire
N4 4HX
020 8348 1234

Broadgate tower nickname competition results

We have a winner to the Broadgate Tower nickname competition. By de fault (the two finest words...).

It will from now on be known as the Rubik's magic:

I've tried very hard to find a vertical picture of the magic, but no luck. I have actually just searched Google and Google images for about 5 minutes, but in this day and age, with information on more than a twinkle of an eye away I think that counts as very hard.

Many thanks to Kate, my sister, for the initial observation, and to Walter for clarifying the name of the particular Rubik thing it looked like. Unfortunately there wasn't much, or indeed any, heated debate about the relative merits of various names. In hindsight I should have drawn up a shortlist. One candidate I've thought of since is "the razor", but it's too late for that now.

Trouble is though that the "Magic" Tower is one of the less magical of the new designs. If the name does catch on visitors to the city, unfamiliar with the historical origins of the name, will undoubtedly make erroneous use of it, like Fergie does with London Bridge in her video. It'll probably end up migrating over to be being a supplementary nickname for the Gherkin or Bishopsgate Tower, given that they look rather more magical. Ah well.

In the same post on Londonist that linked to the competition there was a link to a blog by someone who goes by the name of Diamond Geezer. He took the number 42 bus from opposite the tower to see if it could give him the answers to life, the universe and all that. He begins:

This lowly sideroad marks the precise boundary between the wealthy City of London and the rather needier borough of Hackney. On the rich side is one of London's biggest building sites, upon which the 35 storey Broadgate Tower is being constructed.

I think I pointed out once before that the city limits sign just to the North of the tower was damaged in the wind a while back. Well, now it's completely gone! I know it doesn't mean anything, other than perhaps the throwaway culture has spread to markers of permanent boundaries, but it does now mean that Broadgate Tower is effectively a signpost - the only signpost - to let people know they've reached the city. Perhaps best illustrated by the photo below. The landscape toddles along at a stately pace, and then, all of a sudden, there's a great big monolith in front of you.

Having said that the city limit sign being removed doesn't mean anything, the Light Bar - where I haven't been for ages come to think of it - on the right of the photo, is apparently under constant threat of being knocked down to make way for offices. It's a refurbished mini power station, and they still have lots of the industrial fittings hanging from the roof. In 2000 a plan to "raft it over", whatever that means, was blocked. On the front page of their website they have a permanent petition email form for clientelle to register their support.

I do often wonder at what rate the economy is expected to grow in order to fill up allo this office space. And will we in the near future be living in a world where the location of the office becomes less important due to t'internet, travel restrictions and all that. It'd be great if some of these towers struggled to get filled and were converted into flats.

Reflections on reflections

I don't know what I'm going to write tonight. I have a shed load of photos but no theme. I think maybe... yes. Yes! - reflections, that's what it shall revolve around. Or reflect upon.

See there on the right.............

Sunlight reflecting off the Gherkin forms little stars of David on the side of an adjacent building. There are also shapes that look a bit like grails and like fish (well, diamond shaped anyway), so I think we can surmise that 30 St Mary's Axe reflects light is a judeo-christian orthodox way. And, to be honest, I'd expect nothing less from Norman Foster. I did rty and find some crescents so that we might have complete inter-religious harmony, but Norman obviously didn't care to factor that into the design, for reasons best known to himself... the feckin' bigot!

Here's one of my panoramic shots, finally capturing what this ( --> ) could not, but with more distortion than I'd like... but I don't know what can be done about that. Although, as evidenced below, the whole tower does get reflected in the Exchange Square building. If it wasn't for the railway running underneath it might be less obscured. But without the railway coming in to London there'd be no real need for the big office blocks. It's a highly skewed catch-22.

The last remaining reflection to be discussed is that in Spital Square. Spital square is the North side of Brushfield Street, which leads to Spitalfields Market. The view of Broadgate Tower from there is pretty impressive From this angle, when it's finished it'll look like a massive glass wellington boot, looking at it from just below the toe.

And it is reflected in the new-ish buildings opposite, as shown below.

Sorry about today's uninspiring post. Ended up being heavilly dependent on photos after all. As a treat, I suggest you all follow this link instead of wasting any more reading this post... which is a pretty empty thing to say given you've already reached the end.

Dirty Erotic Gherkin on verge of breakdown

Say hello to Mr. Peabody. he was big in the 1800's. It's quite rare these days for the top result in Google for a historical figure or place to not be wikipedia, but good old George manages it. That would be an interesting exercise, come to think of it; working out the average ranking of wikipedia for all things which you'd expect to have an encyclopaedia entry.

I took this photo the day after his 212th birthday. I noted the occasion by stroking his foot. I would've patted him on the back or given him a playful light-hearted punch, but I could only reach his foot. Patricia, who worked for the Peabody Trust when I worked at LSBU does his philanthropical nature proud. I think the persistance of the organisation's having likeable staff is probably testament to his stern yet even-handed guidance back in the early days.

Man , I talk such drivel sometimes. How can I possibly justify wasting my and your time with that nonsense. I'd go back and delete it only that would mean devoting even more time to those ill-fated paragraphs. JesusMaryHolyMotherofGod!

The Peabody statue is in The City, not too far from the building to the right, which will soon be making way for the Leadenhall Building, aka the Cheese Grater (far right). You'll notice two things:

1. A bit of the newsletter (they have a construction of the Leadenhall Building newsletter!) is flared out: "From the period January to March 2007 we will start to decommission the building, draining down the systems, disconnecting electrical supplies..." I have marked in red those bits I'm unsure about
2. "Should you have any queries or concerns please call 020 7553 5950 and ask for Julian Bates or Cliff Wynn who will be pleased to assist"

I'm glad they'll be pleased to assist as I really would like to confirm that I've guessed the missing bits of the newsletter correctly. I'd also like to subscribe to the newsletter if possible.

As Matt pointed out, the building they're knocking down isn't all that bad. You could say people have had it too good these past few years, what with the Gherkin and its strip-lights spiralling upwards like stairs in Top of the Pops in the 80's.

But even the Gherkin isn't invincible to the architectural ageing process:

DIRTY EROTIC GHERKIN
In these shocking images we can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that the Gherkin has the skyscraper equivalent of cellulite. Yes - it's grime. It's a dirty word, for a dirty thing. And it's got it. It's got grime, alright. No mistaking, that's grime.

TRAUMA
We asked for an interview but the gherkin declined to confirm whether or not the lapse in personal hygiene was caused by its very public split with Swiss Re earlier this month.
**********************************************
This photo didn't work - blurry blurry - but I liked the very small house with country cottage utensils in the shadow of St Mary's Axe.

And one final thing - here's a beautiful song by the Handsome Family I haven't listened to in ages. How about this for a beautifully sad lyric:

"I saw a deer limp across
A supermarket parking lot"

Poor deer. Poor Gherkin.

Parliament hill

The trains were not bolloxed today, so I did go up parliament hill. On Hampstead Heath everyone dresses like extras from Lovejoy (lets not forget that Lovejoy was the lone ruffian amongst the well-to-do country antique folk).Y'know those new rugged all-terrain prams... well, I saw two parents carrying theirs over some fairly tame mud. I walked past Juliet Stevenson. It's a fairly prissy area of London, this we can gather.

Here's a couple of illuminating episodes highlighting that Hampstead and Hackney are different:

• A dog fetched a ball, and obligingly dropped it when its owner said "drop"
  
• A youth was walking his dog. The dog started to wonder off and he called after it "Yo!" He was resolutely ignored.

Not much to report skyscraper-wise. Bit too hazy for photography. I could, I suppose, draw some dodgy parallels between kite-flying and skyscraper building... man's insatiable need to reach up to the gods in the heavens. But that would be laughable.

Someone on the skyscraper forums once commented on how narrow Broadgate Tower is, and how it may be uneconomical to build as half the floor-space will be taken up by lifts. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that the number of lifts is proportional to the number of people, which is in turn proportional to the floorspace (so less floorspace means fewer lifts), and that I'm sure the investors did consider this issue... But the tower is actually very wide, only the difference between depth and width is about 3:1. Don't have a photo to demonstrate, but in one direction it is significantly wider than the Gherkin and Tower 42. So I think it will have office space galore, without the curved walls problem of the Gherkin.

For an interior designer, the Gherkin's floor plates are euphemistically known as a "challenge."

There must be some mathematical theories determining the optimal number of lifts. I imagine it increases at a rate greater than linearly as the number of floors increases. There is actually a well-known paradox called the elevator paradox which is quite interesting.

Light up London

Last week - Thursday I think - I read in the Metro, or London Paper (but not the London Lite - give me some credit!) that some people have been busy installing lightbulbs all along the Pool of London.

Looking at this photo you'd think that they overdid it a bit, what with the buildings looking like they're mid-extermination. The more astute among you will of course know all about apertures and shutter speeds and tripods and that and will be insulted in the intelligence by my explaining that it's overexposed. On purpose.

The night (Sunday) was one of those times when - like when you go to Ayers Rock, or the Eiffel Tower, or Wrexham police station - ... when everyone is stood around taking the same photo. Exactly the same photo. There were hundreds of photographers armed with tripods out living it up with film. Given that I've mentioned my trusty tripod (long gone are the days when you could say 'pod' and only face confusion with peas rather than mp3 payers too) a few times, here's a picture. Cheekily, the camera is not too scale. Manipulative bastards.

Millions of photographers there wuz. All taking the same photos. It reminded me of my birdwatching days. You'd have a row of people with telescopes staring out to sea looking for a shearwater (which reminds me of the most boring blog Ive ever come across ... Nope - can't find it. Fitting that it's so dull as it was a pioneer of blogging - read it about 3 years ago). It was like that. But with cameras and lightbulbs. The only person who wasn't taking photos was Laura, who had a lie down on a bench.

The thing is that, in these modern times of Flickr and photobook and freely available pornographic images, is there really any need to photograph your own testicles experiences anymore?

So I decided to deliberately overexpose everything (no mean feat in the dark), just so as to avoid being an online clutterance (new word - TM R.Evans 2007). I will be an online varietal!

I hate blogs which contain billions of photos in one tall meaningless column, so here's some thumbnails followed by the best of the bunch. It's also the lowest lying London skyline feature I've photographed.

Gherkins

This is the sort of thing I should be writing about, but haven't as the internet is dead on Brownlow road.

http://www.londonist.com/archives/2006/11/gherkin_all_ove.php