A waterfront is as good as a skyline

Isn't the weather just great at the moment! (Apologies for any insensitivity towards any readers from Bismarck, North Dakota). So great that I spent most of yesterday's daylight hours out of bed and out of doors, and intend on a repeat performance today, once the blog's finished.

The morning involved seeing one of these, hearing one of these singing (always a good sign of spring) and nearly falling in the canal. In the afternoon I cycled along the canal to Limehouse with Tom for a couple of drinks on the waterfront, and where Beard also joined us later. Various sights along the canal:

I like this building, but I don't think it fits in London at all. Modern looking, interestingly shaped and textured apartment buildings can work in London, but this clean, pine boarded and pastel panelled construction looks awkward in grimy Poplar. Charles keeps going on about traditional styles, and building modern structures in appropriate settings and, it turns out, I agree. I just think people focus too much on the size of buildings, and assume big ones are going to be eyesores.

The Phoenix Business Centre, which is struggling - to say the least - to rise from its East London ashes.

Some interesting shadow effects on the water.

New flats going up in Bow/Stratford, near the olympic park.

Now - on to the main point if this post. There is much talk about preserving London's historic skyline. These energies would, I feel, be much better spent campaigning for the reinstatement of a public Thames waterfront.

The Morpeth, near where I work, has numerous prints of old London scenes. One that caught my eye the other day was of Somerset House before Victoria embankment was built (similar to the picture to the right). It shows a public courtyard with steps leading down to the river.

As this article explains:

"London's roads were becoming increasingly congested and its sewers unable to cope ... The Embankment was intended to carry a new road along the edge of the Thames from Westminster to the City of London and, below ground, to accommodate large sewers and a line for the Metropolitan and District Railway.

The introduction of the Embankment had the effect of distancing the river from the buildings along its north bank, particularly significant for Somerset House, which had been designed to rise directly from the water ... The dramatic waterfront design of Sir William Chambers' Somerset House had effectively been destroyed a little more than a decade since the building of the New Wing had seen its completion."

Somerset House is a particularly striking example of how there are very few places away from the South Bank where one can sit by the river. Limehouse is one of the very few. Unfortunately the view from there is blighted by the many cod-luxury low rise apartments opposite.

London surely deserves a more accessible and better, architecturally speaking, waterfront.

Speaking of Limehouse, it has a surprising sign telling boats arriving in the marina not to disembark any animals due to rabies, which reminds you that London is still technically a port.

Finally, a nuclear bomb went off in London yesterday. I have photographic proof:

Sustainable cities

A number of disparate elements have come together to form this post.

1. I found a newspaper cutting I meant to write about ages ago. Across the road from me they were building an unusual looking block of flats. This turns out to be London's greenest block of flats - the award winning BowZED. The solar panels, tiny wind turbine, and ship funnels that look like roman centurion helmets on the roof are the most obvious green design features (not sure what gren function the funnels do though), but it was also built using re-used steel girders.
2. This article (which you can't read as the Canadian Globe and Mail don't let you read archived articles for free) was posted to me by my Auntie Eirlys, who does that sort of thing from time to time. It's about an Architect called Cameron Sinclair, who set up an organisation called architecture for humanity, which assists in the creation of sustainable homes in developing countries and disaster areas, partly through the new concept of open source architectural plans. He studied architecture in London (grew up in Peckham), but part of the reason for going off on the philanthropic tangent was due to his fellow students annoyingly trying to emulate Fran Ghery and Zaha Hadid... as if that was all architecture was about. He won the TED prize in 2006, and you can watch his prize winning talk here.

Which brings me nicely - unexpectedly smoothly really - on to TED.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Once a year they bring together leading thinkers in many fields in order to try and cross-pollenate ideas across disciplines. I've been subscribing to their feed for a few months now (they put up videos of 10-20 minute lectures (stored up for years, though most of the ideas are remarkably fresh) at a rate of about 2 or 3 per week).

The reason I'm writing about them now is because in the past couple of weeks there's a vague, perhaps unintentional thread of being aware of the possibilities of architecture in cities.

Here is a favourite - a whimsical sketched journey through Rome:



Another related to the architectural possibilities theme are sustainable cities (a bit dull, to be honest).

Here are my other favourites:

• Michael Pollan: The omnivore's next dilemma - An awe-inspiring meditative, philosophical examination of Darwinism, humanity's place in the world and - an unlikely conclusion - sustainable farming.
• David Gallo: Underwater astonishments - The best octopus camouflage you will ever see. Possibly also the only octopus camouflage you will ever see.
• Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids - What the title says.
• Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds? - I've read a lot of his books, but never imagined he looked like Father Christmas! A very entertaining talk on self-knowledge and consciousness, with the best magician/neuroscientist analogy you will ever hear.
• Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind - very similar to Daniel Dennett's (covering, as it does, the brain's ability to fool the body) and almost as good.
• Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law - An eloquent argument for changing copyright laws, which currently make most people who use the internet (minor) criminal.
• Yossi Vardi: Help fight local warming - funny short talk about decreasing male fertility due to overzealous use of laptops.
  

The site also has the best video navigation and rating system on any site.

4.
And finally, last week I read an obituary for Hans Monderman, who believes exposing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to slightly more danger forces them to be more aware of what's around them, and they collectively will cause less road accidents. And his ideas worked! He removes road signs and crashes decrease in frequency

I know this is a lot to take in, but every link in this post is well worth following. ANd you might also feel the vague, but just tangible, theme running through them.

Newsflash: Prince Charles hates modern architecture!!!

He also makes expensive cakes and his little brother is following in his footsteps when it comes to the duty to stay out of politics.

But back to the matter in hand, Prince Charles delivered a speech last week attacking the policy of building tall buildings in London (like it hasn't all been said before).

"...will disfigure precious views and disinherit future generations of Londoners"

I didn't know I was going to inherit a Londoner! But more seriously... err, it's just the same old argument - that we somehow are fortunate to live in a golden age of the London view. One so precious that it must be preserved despite the fact that London is a living city.

"...buildings that express nothing but outdated sustainability."

What on earth does that mean???

"...retain the kind of human scale that attract so many people to them"

As I wrote the other day, even moderately big buildings - necessary in places like the city - are always going to obscure buildings on a more human scale. Unless you favour parkland or bungalows you're on a hiding to nothing here.

Also most of the popular buildings in London - St Pauls, Westminster, Tate modern, tower of london - are popular because of their grandiosity, not their intimacy. Possibly the only people who think they are quaint and intimate are American tourists.

"Parisian example of a high-rise urban quarter at La Defense effectively kept high-rise development away from central Paris."

What he forgets though is that Paris' old buildings are far more intact than London's due to the blitz. So Paris doesn't have the same option to demolish hundreds of 1960's modernist blots that we do.

"...in Berlin, too ... the city leaders have insisted upon rigorous limitations to the height of new buildings. These kinds of approaches can help to achieve a far more coherent sense of harmony and civic self-confidence."

Not sure what civic self-confidence is. Most of the top Google results are Prince Charles saying it in this speech and a previous one. The only other architectural use of it I can find is where civic self-confidence spawned town-planning, rather than the other way round (which seems a lot more feasible). If anyone knows what Charles means, and what mechanisms he thinks lead from smaller buildings to civic self-confidence, then let me know.

By the way, in a nod to the misuse of statistics, he quotes Kensington and Chelsea - a pretty low rise borough - as having the highest population density in London, which is true. But a bit of research suggests that it's probably the inner London Borough with the least parkland (Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are both in Westminster). I don't think he's being deliberately misleading. He's just a pretty average interpreter of statistics.

I could go on to criticize some of his other views, but it could go on for some time. So I'll just finish by saying that when Charles says, like many other people:

"My concern is that London will become just like everywhere else with the same homogenized buildings that express nothing but outdated unsustainability"

... has he not been to the many cities around the world that have many tall buildings (including, it has to be said, London, as it has a few). Does he think all those cities are the same? If he does, then he clearly has no appreciation for the diverse, street-level, intimate feel he claims to know so much about.

Oh, go on then, one final bit of Charlie madness:

"...how it can be considered sensible, or indeed rational, to implant such “congestors” [skyscrapers] into a network of streets which were designed to function with two to three storey buildings."

Last but not least, here's what the readers of the Telegraph think.

London - a global city (2)

I very rarely ask my readers to immediately click on an image when they visit my blog, but today is an exception. So click! (but do please come back in a second or two to finish reading).

As promised, it is the second highlight of the Global cities exhibition at the Tate Modern over the summer. Part of a larger work, (bits of which can be read here and also here), it's more of an pictorially annotated essay than fine art, but is a thought-provoking work all the same. The second link is particularly thought provoking, about how planned architecture is a thing of the past - the public sector is now less influential in developing cities, there are no grand ideological theories of architecture as there are no public purses to patronise them. 'Architects no longer write manifestos. At most they write portraits of particular cities... an absence of a utopian drive is perhaps almost as serious as an overdose of it.'

I have always had an admiration for the architects of the 50's, 60's and 70's, who built - often but not always - buildings which, by today's (and probably most eras' standards) look horrific. The reason they built those modernist buildings was because they were constructing a new utopia for all. There's an urban myth that the architect of Peckham actually hanged herself when she saw how it had turned out. I don't know whether or not it's true, but there was certainly a lot of passion that went into the new architecture.

London - a global city (1)

Has anyone else seen the fantasy piccadilly line maps? I very rarely travel on the piccadilly line, but last weekend I did and saw the map, which has a futuristic vision of what London might be like.

It's not very good, but reminded me that I need to write about the exhibition Tate Modern had in the turbine hall this summer called Global cities (alas it's now been replaced by a crack - damn my tardiness!!!). I went to see it with my Auntie Eirlys, Cousin Miklos and his toddler daughter Alessandra, all three of them visiting from Canada.

I thought it was a great exhibition. As with a lot of exhibitions I couldn't help thinking that the exhibits could be split into two categories:

• It's definitely art, but I don't think it's any good
• It's brilliant, but I'm not altogether sure it's art

The exhibition was essentially about various cities around the world that seem to exemplify the changes of globalisation, ranging from the very poor (Delhi, Cairo), to the rapidly developing (Mexico City, Beijing), to the fully developed (London, Tokyo). It compared things such as standard of living, density of population, levels of immigration... very much the kind of exhibition you'd expect in a museum, not an art gallery.

The 'it's definitely art' bits of the exhibition I thought generally fell short of the Chindia exhibition I saw a few months ago. The more borderline 'not art things' fared better though. The highlight by a long way was the population density models. They looked like man-made termite mounds. In the photo, London is in the bottom right, Mexico city top left, and delhi and cairo the other two (not sure in which order). So, if you think London is densely populated, think again! Delhi and Cairo are about 10 times more packed. (More photos)

They are art, aren't they. I know they are essentially just graphs made out of plywood, but they also cause a sense of astonishment and wonderment, and impress the meaning behind the numbers upon you far more effectively than a conventional representation could.

I noted in an earlier post that the population of the City of London (i.e. the square mile) is tiny. This model really highlights that with a deep depression right in the centre of London.

I'll write about the other piece of art in another post as this is getting quite lengthy.

Shapes

A very quick (and slightly late) post to highlight that this week and next the Guardian is giving away free poster booklets on great works of modern architecture.

A deliberate attempt to undermine Simon Jenkins' opposition to children's toy shape architecture?

I've been collecting them and so far the Guggenheim Bilbao is my fave. Mainly because it is mostly on one side of a flyover, but defiantly pops up a tower on the other side.

Why build a tower when you can build an arch

I was watching Michael Palin's New Europe on Saturday and noticed that Bucharest in Romania, as well as having the world's heaviest building, has a Marble arch type structure. Which got me thinking... Paris... London... Bucharest - these arches are everywhere!

Pyongyang - Arch of Triumph
Originally uploaded by p!ng.

After a bit of research, it turns out they really are. Wikipedia lists probably over 100 examples. The tradition began in ancient Rome to commemorate success in battle. The tradition was then resurrected - like so many other Roman traditions - during the renaissance. The largest in the world is in Pyongyang. Perhaps surprising they've saught to emulate such a western tradition, but they give the design an interesting Oriental flavour.

I wonder if any arches were ever built pre-emptively, so as to give the soldiers the opprtunity to march through it on their way back into the capital (that surely is the motivation - in thought if not in deed - behind building a symbolic or ceremonial march). Do soldiers who won the war the arch commemorates make a point of visiting it once in their lives to march through it with honour?

London has two such arches. Marble arch, obviously (which is also where the A5 - heading all the way up to North Wales - begins as Edgeware road), but also the Wellington Arch in Hyde Park. No others anywhere else in the UK.

To change the subject, i was going to blog about the recent Barclaycard/Oyster adverts, which feature reinventions of the London skyline, but Londonist beat me to it. The Battersea power station one in particular is pretty clever.

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.

Erecting buildings

Joseph Conrad wrote lots of books about people on boats. You could say it was his thing. One of these books happens to be set in Africa, and in particular on the River Congo. This book is called Heart of darkness. Travelling up the river is, as far as I can see, a good way for Conrad to get to grips with a story set in the dense jungles of central Africa, while simultaneously sticking to what he knows best; things with keels.

Nevertheless, when I once tried out a lecture exchange with a friend of mine at uni (I went to one of her English lectures and she'd go to a maths one (she still owes me 1 maths lecture)) on the subject of Heart of Darkness, one of the girls attending the lecture felt the need to speculate that the river was actually a big phallic symbol and therefore represented the white man, quite literally, fucking Africa. The lecturer thought this was an interesting viewpoint and worth persuing.

Then a bunch of people burst through the door and proved them wrong using nothing but an axe, a chainsaw and several hockey masks.*

Phallic symbolism is rife in the arts, of course. And in architecture, it seems. Would you just look at the Gherkin! And all the other tall buildings springing up left, right and centre. Why on earth do all these men feel the need to plant huge manly cocks all over the shop?

But isn't all this, like the wayward interpretation of the river in Heart of Darkness, over-analyzing? Real estate in the City is expensive so building reasonably tall makes sense. Building very tall is attention seeking, but building an impressive and prestigious office is just about impressing clients of the company involved and showing off the company's wealth; nothing to do with the penises of the people who comission the building. What personal kudos do they get anyway. No one ever hears about them. Just the company name and the architect.

So maybe it's the architects that give the phallic-theory of towers its justification. Why do architects rush to compete for these contracts and drool at the prospect of being the winner?

Because they are some of the biggest, most visible building projects in the world, and serve to make the architect a lot of money and, possibly, a little fame. These very same architects also build stadiums, bridges and other less phallic buildings too, y'know, and make them as eyecatching as they can. The only reason they seem obsessed with building tall is that these are often the most controversial buildings, and the ones they are forced to strenuously defend.

Oh, and they have teeny tiny cocks.

*May have been a dream.

PS - I wrote this last night and it seemed coherent at the time. Oh well.

A castle under siege

English Heritage love the Tower of London.

And it's not surprising, what with it being such a pivotal place for the heritage of England, and they sure love that English heritage.

Not to mention a clear line of sight to the walls which contain that English heritage for miles around. They love the notion of that too. But they can't have it, as the building is already surrounded by blots, blights and carbuncles.

Eugh! This is undoubtedly the worst offender. It was voted London's second most hated building during architecture week 2006 (a very representative 512 people - approx 0.0064% of the London population - cast votes).

Is Prince Charles right to condemn the 60's and 70's as the worst architectural period? Probably, as very many concrete buildings built in those times are already being knocked down. 30 years is a very short life span, which indicates that something was critically wrong with them. And it's certainly not the building materials. Concrete - as the concrete society (nearly as absurd an organisation as the Egg Information Service ("Hello - I'd like to know about eggs please" "Well you've certainly come to the right place.")) would no doubt back up - revolutionised construction when discovered by the Romans due to its strength.

These two are also... well, not too bad to be honest.

But they shouldn't be there. No, no, no, no, no! Get in the way of the heritage you see. Just look at that Indian fella there; looks proper distressed he does. Some people would say he's a bit alarmed at being the apparent subject of a photo taken by a complete stranger, but I think it's unlikely. No - heritage it is. Can't concentrate on it, what with a living city going on around him.

Hang on - wasn't this supposed to be about eyesores around the Tower? Isn't that Tower Bridge, icon of the City of London, probably far more recognisable, elegant and beautiful than the Tower ever has, is or will be?

Ah yes - but it is of modern construct - Victorian era - so is a bit of an impostor. And would you just lok at the garish blue, and the quite frankly silly idealised faux-medieval turrets. It's worse than garish I tell you. Has no place next to that great bastion of British history - the Tower of London.

But... but... but... it looks nice

That's no matter - it has to go. How are people supposed to appreciate the heritage with that frilly monstrosity next door? It'll put them right off their Tudors!

(*Plays trump card*)Well - I'm English Heritage, so I'm right about everything to do with architecture even though heritage and architecture are by no means synonymous... and I say it can stay... so there!

Egos "a threat to skylines"

Using Google News I recently subscribed to be sent updates about articles containing Walkie Talkie London so that I might be the third to know the outcome of the planning inquiry for 20 Fenchurch Street. No news yet, but what is interesting is that 'Walkie Talkie' has become a byword for all argument about London architecture, in much the same way that Bin Laden is a byword for bearded terrorists, and Brian Blessed performs the same function for all other bearded people.

A particularly vituperative and entertaining read picked out of the inter-ether by its mentioning Walkie Talkie is this Guardian interview with new English Heritage Chief Simon Thurley, evocatively titled 'Egos "a threat to skylines"'. It's very short, so I recommend reading it in full, but here are a few choice nibbles.

'We have been treading a very difficult path over the past five years, trying to balance the absolute necessity to protect and preserve and conserve with...

... with the need to have a living city which provides employment for its citizens?

... with the absolute necessity to convince people that that activity is not holding the country back in some way,' he says.

Oh. So, you're more talking about the internal distribution of funds between activism and PR. What a broad perspective this new guy at English Heritage has.

'It is an expression of a small number of individuals' extraordinary ambition and desire to create a monument to themselves,' he argues,

I think not. The architects in question are generally chosen by the developers who commission the buildings as they are already world renowned, with plenty of other 'monuments to themselves' dotted around the globe. It's far more to do with London firms, and increasingly government, wanting the city to appear modern and world-class. A nebulous aim if ever there was one, but reducing it to individual egos is hardly the right outlook.

he does go on to admit that these forces were also at work when Salisbury Cathedral or St Pancras station went up. The situation in the 21st century is more hazardous though, he believes.

He is indeed a skilled rhetorician, using the immensely sophisticated 'but that was different' argument.

Do we want London to be defined by a massive residential tower belonging to a foreign national who has bought it as an investment? Is that how we want London to be defined? My answer to that is no.'

a) Lots of people live in London. Why shouldn't its most significant building be residential? Buckingham Palace is residential. Should we put a big police banner across it saying 'Move along. Nothing to see here'. OK, so Buckingham palace is inhabited by important people, but why limit grand residential buildings to just them?
b) Mmm. Foreign nationals are pretty bad aren't they, and should have no involvement in the construction of city landmarks. Take Monsieur Eiffel for instance - completely ruined the New York skyline with that big statue. And good architecture is often the result of cross-polination of differenrt architectural heritages. St Paul's - with it's strong Italian look -is a classic example.
c) Wake up Mr. Thurley, and stop being so naive. Most buildings are bought as investments, and this is no criteria for judging the worthiness of constructing them.
d) No single building - no matter how big - can define a city. As head of English Heritage he really should have more confidence in the iconic status of many of the capital's existing buildings.

Thurley hopes the work of English Heritage can 'finally slay the dragon of the so-called 'dead hand' of conservation. Conservation is not a dead hand. It is a living hand. It is not about the past, it is about the future,' he said.

And you, sir, are a buffoon!

Port of London Authority

Grand ol' building in't it.

It's the old Port of London Authority Building, a reminder of the days when the Port of London was the source of much of the city's wealth, and the regulator merited a building of such pomp.

The building was only built in 1915 though, when the Port was only 50 years from its decline (apparently 1967 was the year when supply of dock space started to outstrip demand). Technically, the Port of London includes the whole of the River thames, and there are ports along the river closer to the sea, which means that officially the Port of London is one of the 3 busiest in the country. But you can no longer walk across the Thames, hopping from deck to deck, in the Pool of London.

The Authority is now housed in a waterfront building in Gravesend. When the authority was established in 1909 it was 'obliged to provide quays, wharfs and warehouses.' Now its duties are 'ensuring navigational safety along the Tidal Thames, promoting use of the River and safeguarding the environment.'

Quite a rousing tale!

Or not, as is more the case. But an impressive building all the same. The interior's not too bad either. And before the post war reconstruction if the City, the PLA building must have been one of the tallest buildings around, as you can sort of work out from this photo (PLA building is just visible on the right).

Man alive - what an utterly dull post this has been!

A scaffold is for life, not just for construction

I was scathing in my views the other day of the eventual surface the Broadgate Tower is to have; all silky smooth transparent pale glass. I think it would look much nicer were it to be surrounded by something a bit like the cluttered cross-strutting of the cranes and lift tracks.

Bear with me.

Since Richard Rogers built the Centre Pompidou and the Lloyds Building it is no longer shameful to unabashedly include the utilitarian parts of a building as an integral part of its aesthetic design. It's not too big a flight of fancy to suppose that leaving bits of structure resembling cranes etc. when the building is complete could have similar aesthetic appeal.

Well, I think the mixture of clutter and regularity is pleasing to the eye anyway. Almost like a Jackson Pollock.

There is a recent precedent to a London City Building having a wireframe type structure around its exterior, namely 1Plantation Place (pictured. The building to the right is the "will they/won't they replace it with an oversized communication device 20 Fenchurch Street). The outer layer of glass - set a good metre or 2 out of reach of the inner one - is designed to stop rain getting in through the inner windows, which open to allow air to circulate. The end result is something that looks a bit like pinhead from hellraiser... but I like it. There's a recent upstart to the mechano/lego throne called k'nex, and it looks almost as if it's built out of the stuff, which is a good thing.

As demonstrated in this photo (click for much bigger) 1 Plantation place does tower above most of its riverside neighbours. It also only finished construction in 2004, but went unnoticed by me, even though in 2004 I did walk regularly home from work along the More London side of the river.

The point being, I should be a bit more liberal about my 100m minimum for buildings covered in this blog. I see plenty of cranes around and I really should show a lot more verve in investigating them.

The white tower

As you can probably already tell from your aching cheeks and sides, and from having co-workers give you uncomfortable stares which can only mean 'Why are you laughing?', I have turned my hand to what is popularly known as comic photography, but for which I have coined the term wittography (derived from the roots 'wit' and 'graph' in the original English and Greek, which literally mean 'funny picture').

The Broadgate Tower, as I have pointed out before, dwarfs all the buildings around it. In fact, you could say it's upstairs of everything.

But as I also pointed out the gradual increase in height is only half the story. The glaziers started work months ago, and are still going strong. Since mid April they have covered over another half-diamond with glass (the half-diamond being the standard unit of measurement for the Broadgate Tower).

I'm afraid I'm going to have to be critical of the glazing though. Not just the glazing, but the cladding on the structural elements. As the glass is just clear glass, and the cladding on the beams is virtually white the end result is going to be a very pale tower (unless they fill it with very dark things - millions of undertakers' offices - in which case the effect will be like a negative of a tudor building). Pale glazed tall buildings are relatively rare; the only one I can think of is HSBC Tower in Docklands, but that is in very glitzy metallic surroundings. I'm not sure how well a squeaky clean Broadgate Tower will harmonize with grimy Shoreditch. Even if, as London Lite claims, Shoreditch is virtually the West End now, the area will continue to look grubby unless the buildings are knocked down. Or sand-blasted, like St. Paul's. And that ain't gonna happen. Unless I launch a campaign. I'll make spurious claims that unsandblasted buildings are carcinogenic. People will believe me. I'm well-trusted about town.

Also, the fire escape is being put together at an impressive rate. But for some reason the sticky back plastic at the bottom is yet to be removed. A minor criticism, but my Mum always told me to clear up one mess before starting to make another, and ignoring that advice has left me in the many messes (mostly bedroom floor based) I find myself in today.

Church theft

One area I've been meaning to investigate is whether the London Skyline of yore... the Wren skyline... the one that everybody seeks to preserve, received much opposition when it was constructed.

Slightly different kettle of fish given that the whole city had just been incinerated, and the idea that there were many people concerned about preserving the view when there were fish and spices to sell is a bit of a whimsy to be honest. But I do know there was opposition to St Paul's Cathedral as it was considered to be too catholic looking. I wonder if his other churches were similarly opposed by traditionalists?

In doing some preliminary googling I have the following to report:

Church theft

The Church of St Mary, Aldermanbury now resides in Fulton, Missouri (satellite picture). It was bombed during the blitz and rather than rebuild it all themselves the canny Cockneys thought they'd ship it off to America where 'visitors from around the world may enter Wren's beautiful, light-filled sanctuary.' But why Fulton?

'The structure would be rebuilt on the campus of Westminster College as a permanent reminder of Churchill's visit to the college and his prophetic speech.'

The speech was in fact the one where he became the first Western leader to openly accuse the Soviet Union of being... well... sorta evil, and coined the term 'Iron Curtain'. Bit of an odd way to permanently remind yourselves of Churchill; import (at huge cost) a church which he had nothing to do with. I dunno - Americans.

Another stolen church feature I came across in Perth, Australia a few years ago. The original bells from St Martin-in-the-Fields are there in a striking bell tower (satellite image) which looks a bit like the maelstrom boat from the forgettable 'Pirates of dark water' cartoon from the early nineties. It is appartently one of the largest musical instruments in the world (if you can call that racket music. Honestly - it's just noise! Give me some punk over bell-ringing any day). I've seen (but not heard) the largest musical instrument in the world. It's some disused grain silos in Montreal which I believe work a bit like mammoth organ pipes. They call it the silophone. Maybe they should aim for a similar thing for Battersea power station. I could then nip down there in my lunch hour to tinkle the old turbine halls.

Hawksmoor's seven

Found this fact about Hawksmoor's contribution to church-building in London:

All seven were constructed under the Act of 1711 which proposed to build '50 new churches of stone and other [1]proper materials with towers or steeples'. This scheme was put forward by the Tories, [2]partly to celebrate the [3]fall of the Whigs after 22 years but also because [4] law and order in the suburbs was thought to be suffering for want of churches.

What an excellent act of parliament! It's got the lot: [1] vague, almost mystical terminology, [2] the bizarre practice of splashing out by indulging in a bout of piety, [3] inter-party pettiness, and [4] the almost childlike naivety we know, love and expect in politicians.

Keyword of the week

london skyline explained

Quite innocuous, this week's. But I just like the idea that somebody thinks it needs explaining. I have this image of Hugh Laurie doing his best upper middle class twit gesticulation and saying 'Well, this won't do. I demand an explanation!'

Tell you one thing that does need an explanation though. The strange protrusion in the photo. Aside from looking a bit like a shark, and maybe having some use as a deterrent to passing tuna, I can't think what its purpose is.

Any ideas?

Wrexham police station

I am, at heart, a boring sod. I set up Google Analytics for the blog, and like nothing better than to see how people have got here. I intend to have a weekly 'keyword of the week' for my favourite combination of words which have inadvertently lead someone here (You may recall that 1800's Erotica has been a popular one).

Imagine my delight today when I see that someone has come to the blog by typing in 'Wrexham police station architect.'

Wrexham is my home town, and the police station is the only building taller than about 5 storeys in the whole place. It's the first tall building I ever came across (I used to walk past it every time I went swimming, at Wrexham swimming baths, which is also a very distinctive building - one of only 2 hyperbolic paraboloid roofs in Europe, so I'm told). It quite likely inspired my lifelong casual interest in skyscrapers and the like.

I don't think I've ever specifically mentioned the police station on the blog, so it's really quite serendipitous that somebody, looking for information I don't have, inadvertently prompted me to talk about the first 'skyscraper' of my life.

Battersea power stationary

How current do blogs have to be?

It depends what they're about I suppose.

In a world as slow moving as that of the London Skyline (barring the Broadgate Tower, which is glazing over at a rate of knotts) I could be forgiven for not following things up immediately. Today's post will be about possibly the slowest advancing development saga in London. If you recognise the Towers to the left, you'll know I mean Battersea Power Station.

The photo to the left dates from sometime in the autumn. I visited the power station with Tom and Karen as they had an exhibition of Chinese art there (including piles of rotting apples, a video of thousands of laughing chinese men, and a pormographic slideshow which an upper middle class family let their 5-ish year old child watch).

Part of the exhibition was a model of the planned Battersea developments. Karen Tom and myself all agree that they looked hideous. There's a real conflict around the power station and it's surroundings' redevelopment. No one wants to surround it with forgettable apartment blocks, as this is hardly befitting an iconic building. And yet, surrounding it with eyecatching developments is just garish. Like putting Bono in the same room as Fred Dibnah (You can buy a DVD of Fred's funeral here. You can't buy a DVD of Bono's though. He's not dead yet. But members of U2 are dying every day - please give kindly).

The Power station is a rare example of an old building on a monumental scale. I am generally in favour of putting big modern buildings around smaller old ones; they don't clash as they're not competing on the same level. A small building doesn't demand that you look at it awestruck, and a skyscraper doesn't demand that you look at the intricate stonework. At Battersea it's difficult to get the balance right. The power station is awe-inspiring, but also has the quaint atmosphere of older buildings - what do you put next to that.

I have an idea - how about a skyscraper?

I've been thinking about it, the length of this post, and the more I consider it the more it seems like a good idea. Smallish modern buildings will just look silly next to it. Something like the Shard of Glass wouldn't though. Putting a huge modern edifice there will perhaps concentrate visitors' eyes on the ancientness of the power station. And after all, the power station was once a n icon of modernity. Putting something similarly striking there would be wholly in keeping with the heritage of the site. Or maybe something a bit like the new Tate Modern extension. God knows what you'd put in it though. Some sort of people I suppose. Maybe freemasons.

Possibly not argued very convincingly, but picture the scene and I think you'll agree it's a good one. There will be puppies lolloping. Puppies!

Anyway, the reason for raking all this up now is that the This is Hertfordshire website of all places announced that Rafael Vinoly, of Walkie Talkie fame, will from now on be in charge of the redevelopment as the old plans have fallen through.

'His brief will include designing a completely new master plan for the site, effectively taking development there back to square one. The previous master plan took three years to create and was followed by a decade of inaction.'

So perhaps a huge modern tower isn't out of the question. Although, it has to be said, even here the Walkie Talkie would look like an over-sized shopping trolley wrapped in cling film.

The official website says 'This site is currently under construction', which is more than can be said for the real world site. Fingers crosse dsomething will happen soon though, or the power station itself may fall into such a bad state that it will be demolished entirely.

Low flying planes

Would you believe that the Civil Aviation Authority has a policy on tall buildings. On the surface of it, it seems sensible. Planes fly in the sky... tall buildings reach up into the sky... MY GOD!!! WE MUST HAVE A POLICY ON THIS. The national height limit is 242m, but a special one for the City is 1,000ft (those crazy CAA people just won't standardise their measurements!). 'Any proposal approved for buildings above that height will be refered to the Secretary of State at the DETR as dangerous.'

City of London Airport is a safeguarded airport, which means that:

'it must be consulted on proposals that may lead to an increased chance of aircraft flying into a flock of birds (bird hazard) or involve tall structures that could affect aircraft movements.'

The CAA have been consulted on the construction of a few London buildings (can't remember which - Bishopsgate Tower I think is the one I read about, but I think we can assume they've been consulted on others of a similar height too). Now, I'm no expert on the height aircraft fly at as they approach an airport (and Google and Yahoo haven't helped either, although Wikipedia does have an entire article on landing, which touches on aircraft and swans), but I've seen airplanes fly over the city, and they fly significantly higher than the existing buildings. As I see it nothing but a complete catastrophe i.e. plane plummeting unexpectedly to earth would cause it to crash into one of the towers, even if they were a fair bit taller. I really don't know how buildings in the City could 'affect aircraft movements' without being at least double or treble their current height.

I'm trying to think of things which could cause an 'increased chance of aircraft flying into a flock of birds.'

• Building an airport in Trafalgar Square
• Hanging bird feeders from the wings
• Building a skyscraper in the shape of a huge bird feeder, and giving all employees an unlimited supply of peanut snacks
  
• Carrying the subject of the Carpenters' 'Close to you' on board

A closer look at Docklands

I cooked using red wine tonight. It didn't need too much red wine, so there was rather a lot left to consume, so I apologise for any bad typing.

The photo to the right has very little to do with this post. I meant to put it in last time but couldn't remember why. I do remember now: it was to point out that people on the lower floors of some of the Canary Wharf skyscrapers will have their views of Greenwich blocked by the Pan Peninsula Tower. To rectify this they could either:

1. establish the view as a strategic viewing corridor post-haste
2. buy a flat in the tower
3. build wings out of all the money they make and fly, fly, fly...

The connection with this post is the zooming in of the camera. To the left you will see the blindingly shiny Canary Wharf Tower, which I imagine could blind a pilot, so maybe the CAA have a point. The entire tower is covered in sheet metal, which accounts for the glare. ot only that, but also, as illustrated here, even the blinds have a metallic finish. If - God forbid - every blind were to be pulled at the same time I think we could have an aviation disaster on our hands.

A curiosity atop one of the towers is this scaffolding. The scaffolding looks temporary, but the things they're supporting - glass honeycomb structures - don't look at all like a transient part of constructing something else. My best guess is that they're building a penthouse greenhouse. I shall take another look in a few weeks to see if there's any change.

Now here's a peculiar feature. These striking formations, reminiscent of the posters of penrose triangles that every secondary school maths class is legally compelled to have on their walls, are right at the top of an otherwise bland building. Why put them all the way up there, where nobody can appreciate them? May as well not have them at all.

Last close-up now. Docklands is reviled as a cluster of 80's grandiose glass block buildings with no imagination. I think this photo demonstrates that, although the style of the time was perhaps to build rather conservatively shaped structures, this doesn't mean that the architects didn't put at least some thought into providing variety; the differences in texture between the buildings certainly add interest.