Don't fence me in

The hoarding around the base of the Leadenhall building used to be a drab, grey, wooden affair. Not any more!

Mahatma Ghandi said "Be the change you want to be in the world," and it appears that one thing this has inspired (a slightly smaller change than gaining independence for India) is the replacement of the Leadenhall Building's hoarding with something a little more glitzy.

It's an aluminium composite panel (the best in quality and service (can an inanimate object provide a service?)) in silver and yellow, and is the perfect surface on which to emblazon details of the skyscraper construction project. They have even broken with the horizontal lines at one point to include a metalworkers' impression of the finished tower.

Now - I know what you're thinking: Who said they could put up this flashy new fencing, and I come equipped with an answer: the Corporation of London (aka City of London Council). As evidenced here, and also on the boards surrounding two smaller building sites in the city. Th

But there is one anomaly; the green fencing surrounding the Bishopsgate Tower (now officially called The Pinnacle, it seems) building site stands there under the auspices of Transport for London. Not only that, but as well as being allowed hoarding or scaffolding, a gantry is also permitted. The only reason I can think of TfL getting involved is that the tower will be on a main thoroughfare... but then again, so is the Broadgate Tower. Hmm - I'm confused!

Things move fast

You know those signs which are rigged up to a speed detector and light up, telling you, personally, to slow down if you're going too fast; one of them just flashed at me... on my bike. Cool as!

I'm not the only things to come and go in the blink of an eye though. Take a look at this:

And now this:

Aside from one photo being zoomed in far closer, you will notice that the second is far less cluttered with sheet clad building owing to the clearing of the site to build the Heron Tower. And these photos were taken, what, 2 and a half months apart.

The upshot of this is there are now - for a limited period - pleasant vistas across to St Botolph's without Bishopsgate Church. This view has been obscured for probably the last 30 years at least by a bland concrete building and, if all goes according to plan, will be obscured once more within the next year. So get in fast!

It's a very pretty church and i'm glad it's now revealed to the world. Does this mean I wish Heron Tower wasn't being built?

It's a tricky one. If the Heron Tower wasn't going to be built then I suppose the plot of land would be a great location for a small park. I think it'd get plenty of sun and, as illustrated here, the views would be pretty.

But that's never gonna happen. That land is destined to play host to an office block of some description. A view obscuring office block. But the question remains; what sort of building should it be? Preserving the view can't be an argument against or in favour of any building higher than 1 storey. Realistically, any new building in the city is going to be at leats 5 storeys high (even the old ones tend to have at least 4 floors).

So it does make me sad to know that the view of St Botolph's from the south East will be short-lived one, at least I know the building that gets in the way has an architectural ambition that might just soften the blow a little.

All work and no play

More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts. More frequent, shorter posts.

If I repeat it enough it may just become a reality.

I've not been busy exactly, but writing the blog hasn't seemed like an attractive proposition somehow. It hasn't put in an appearance near near or at the top of the leader-board of my diverse lifestyle choice options.

Until, that is, I saw that they have now removed the scaffolding from Cornhill Exchange at Bank and replaced it with pinkness.

Worth noting, I thought.

If I don't leave a post about the Channel 4 offices in the next few days please leave me lots of abusive comments.

Better safe than sorry

Not so long ago I mentioned a safety sign at the Leadenhall Building site, which informed you about what you were and weren't allowed to do, and was critical of the fact it warns you about so many things that it all becomes a jumbled message and you're not sure what's dangerous and what's not by the time you get to the end.

I also came across a construction site proudly proclaiming their safety record of 757520 manhours without an accident.

Today I shall continue my review of safety signs.

This one is for a demolition site near Cannon Street Station, where they are demolishing fire station. It's a classic example of the "No smoking: Got that... Always wear a hard hat: Check!... Wear boots: Okey doke... High visibility jackets must be worn at all times: What was the first thing again?" style of safety sign.

One element, which may well be present on all safety signs is the phrase:

Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 all persons entering this site must comply with all regulations under this act.

Which raises 2 questions:

1. What is the "etc."? "...and egg!" ?
   
2. Can an act contain within it instructions that it must be obeyed? Surely not, else we'd have a strange loop of an act on our hands.
   

Quite a boring functional one, this. Only point of interest is the grammatical typo: "Warning sites are hazardous places."

Sorry, did I call that a point of interest? I'm getting slack.

Here is a link to something more interesting.

Here is a much better attempt at a useful sign, inspired by the first world war posters, I think.

It's a very clear design, enabling the casual labourer to systematically go over his body checking for compliance. Might I suggest that they put a full size mirror next to the sign as then it'd simply be a case of checking that the image on the left matches the one on the right.

Well done Skanska (more on them later).

Back in the saddle

Well, today (Sunday) has seen my first skyscraper seeking jaunt for a while. As I don't have internet at home at present (I'll be uploading this to the blog at work on Monday) I can't double check when exactly the last one was, but I think it was roughly at the end of May.

Since then a lot has changed:

• The Willis Building has been finished, more or less. I took one last photo of the uncompleted spine of the building in May/June, and that's now been glazed over. But the hoarding is still up and the artist's impressions of people milling around the entrances in the sunlight look like being a distant dream. Also an improbable one; my photographing of the building has been an ongoing challenge as it's pretty much permanently in the shade.
• There are several new buildings shooting up, or having builings knocked down to make way for them, including:
  
  • One behind the Broadgate centre
  • One by the old stock exchange (which itself is almost completely reclad in glass)
  • Demolition of the building where the Bishopsgate tower will go
  • Ditto for the Heron Tower
  • Reglazing and extending upwards of a building by St Botolph's without Bishopsgate Church. (Karen tells me that St. Botolph is patron saint of travellers, hence his presence near each of the old gates to the City)
    
• There is now a tower crane where the Shard of Glass is to be built.
• Monument and The Royal Exchange are both surrounded by scaffolding for cleaning.

And finally, skyscraper chasing is a tiring old business, so I bought some cakes for sustenance. The cakes I opted for were Tesco's finest carrot cakes with a cream cheese icing (very nice indeed). It has become something of a cliche in this day and age to mock serving suggestion pictures on packaging for being obvious (eg. the words 'serving suggestion' emblazoned across a picture of jelly in a bowl on the packaging for some jelly), but the carrot cake packaging has truly excelled itself.

It gets the obviousness down to a tee - put the cakes on something - but then, looking at the picture more carefully, it appears to suggest that you take a bite out of the cake then spit it back out on the plate before offering the cakes up for serving.

I am of the fairly strong opinion that this is a crap serving suggestion.

PS - thanks for the welcome back messages.

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!

How the Willis was

Not that it matters any more as I'm out of touch with the whole London skyscraper 'scene', but here are a few several week old photos of the last remaining incomplete parts of the Willis Building exterior.

Cunningly located at the rear (which looks rather like a 500ml beer can) is the external service lift. I may already be too late to take photos of it being dismantled, but I imagine it would have to be dismantled from the top down, which will mean that glass is added to the building from the top down. In conclusion, it seems likely that the last floor to be completed will be the ground floor. How topsy-turvy!

Here's another topsy-turvy feature. I can't work out if either a) the facade isn't quite finished, and there is still a pane of glass to be added once the need for a drainage pipe no longer exists; or b) it's a permanent feature, and the architects have developed a clever method of expelling air from the Lloyds Building's ventilation ducts via its reflection in the Willis Building. They both seem pretty likely to me.

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.

I don't see enough dead people

I mentioned before that I ended up at the Tower of London on Sunday. To get there from the City you pretty much have to go via Tower Hill, where I popped into Trinity gardens, where there are 2 memorials.

The first is for sailors in the merchant navy killed in the second world war. This is because Trinity gardens are overlooked by the Port of London Authority building (which I will write about some other time as it's an impressive edifice). This memorial is fairly big, and purports to list the names of every seaman lost in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The second memorial (pictured below) is a more subdued affair. A small square of Land holds about 6 plaques with the names of a few of the people who were beheaded or hanged at Tower Hill. As the plaque says, many of the 125 executed died a martyr's death, but curiously it only names some of the people.

Now, given that thousands of dead sailors are listed nearby, would it have killed the authorities to give a comprehensive list of the 125 martyrs of Tower Hill? Would it? I don't begrudge the merchant navy their full inventory (my godfather was in the merchant navy during he war, and he died*.), but I think we should end the iniquity here!


*long after retiring admittedly, but I'm sure he'd still back me 100%. He was a very down to earth man, with no airs and graces. The sort of person who never threw a piece of wood away.

Transport problems

Well, what a great day! I woke up fairly early and, on looking out of the window to see the bright blue sky, decided to pack a large bottle of water and a salami salad sandwich, and then head off on the bike; first to the City, then to Docklands, then maybe back along the south side of the Thames.

Except that's not what really happened because last night some little fucker nicked my bike. Which means I have to take public transport for a while. The omen's are good though; I've just seen a bus on fire, and earlier in the day I passed two friendly bus drivers arguing about whose fault it was they nearly crashed. On the bright side Ken Livingstone has -finally - got around to passing legislation which exempts bendy buses from the standard 'no-bending' traffic bylaws in the capital, so bus journeys should be quicker now.

Without the bike I feel .
I just feel like I suddenly have a huge burden to bear .
It's just a shame the world's such a .

But as my mate Rimmsy would say: "Hey ho." And how about listening to this cheery summer song by Karl Blau.

As you can tell from the photos I did get out and about despite the de-wheeling. Quite an epic journey, all the way to the river. Your reward for reading through my sob story is to play a great new game I invented at the Tower of London called 'Achilles Heel'. The way it works is: I show you a picture of a building (most likely a castle or a disused fort), and you have to work out where the achilles heel of the fortifications is. (I am preoccupied with chinks in armour at the moment given that my bike lock was evidently not as impervious as advertised.)

A tricky one to start:

Can you tell what it is yet?

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?

If still in doubt, draw another diagram

Yesterday's foray into diagrams and their use in guiding London planning policy (Re Walkie Talkie in particular) has inspired some further research into the area.

If you've been following Adam Curtis' so-so new documentary series castigating the UK and American governments for turning everything into targets and management speak, you may not be surprised to hear that there are such entities as "Strategic Viewing Corridors" and the "London View Management Framework." With diagrams to accompany them.

These are the strategic viewing corridors. All roads lead to Rome, but all strategic viewing corridors lead to St Paul's cathedral (well, nearly all. A handful lead to westminster and Buckingham Palace). There are 26 in all listed in the framework document. I also found a consultation document. Interesting snippets in it include:

New views in river prospects and townscape views were welcomed by heritage bodies in particular. The creation of new views does however create extra work for some of the central London boroughs.

You'll be glad to know that the London Boroughs don't have to build the new views from scratch; they just have to regulate existing ones.

Geometric definition for some views was opposed by some developers who prefer a system of qualitative visual assessment.

I bet they do.

To give an example (detailed in full in this document, which is but one from a selection looking at all the viewing corridors in equal detail), the strategic viewing corridor from Alexandra palace impacts on planning in 4 London Boroughs - including 1 which lies on the other side of the river (As it forms the backdrop). The document contains this unlikely sentence:

The view of St Paul’s Cathedral from the car park will be managed through geometric definition.

The picture above illustrates exactly what is to be preserved. If you ask me, they should have left out the real photo as it looks naff. Pink and yellow planes streaking out across London however - I'm convinced! They also have a table with lots of angles noted down in it - very proper.

Anyway, I plan to visit every single one of the viewpoints to compare the managed views and maybe pick a winner.

On to the second map. In the blue area you're not allowed to build anything more than 57 metres tall as it will interfere with the view of St Paul's (a similar area is in place for the monument). You could get by these planning regulations by building a 57m tall wall in the middle of the Thames, but I doubt that will happen. Although, who knows - maybe I've just planted a seed in the mind of some Montgomery Burns tycoon developer. Hope not.

What started yesterday as a quick round up of the Walkie Talkie trial has become a farce. I now have 30 tabs open in firefox with no end in site.

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.

Why you shouldn't buy an Apple Mac

Bit of an obtuse title that, given the content-to-be of this post, but all will become clear towards the end.

First, here's a nice photo of the Lloyds Building from the other week:

The tree is blue too!

The Lloyds Building is a deliberate sprawl set in the midst of densely packed office blocks, and therefore impossible to photograph in its entirety. Except from above. I also have this problem with the emerging skyscrapers; as they grow bigger it becomes increasingly difficult to fit them in the frame.

Enter autostitch.

First it was developed by Matt Brown who, among other things:

• deems it necessary to include Vitamin I in his medical kit for mountaineering expeditions. I wanted to know what Vitamin I does, and answers.com just told me it's athletics slang for ibuprofen. It can also refer to vitamin B-7. Vitamin i is also "currently Ithaca's only club team". Google doesn't know enough about vitamin i yet.
• in his spare time can be found on his bike, in the mountains, or playing jazz.
• applies user specified trimaps to Llamas.

Most significantly for me though is the autostitch thingummy. Ina nutshell, you put this in:

and get this out:

And all you have to do is tell it which folder the photos are in. It's one of the most amazing pieces of software I've ever seen. Just think what it has to do: It has to work out which images overlap which others. The images could overlap to any degree, at any degree of rotation, so it then has to find where one photo's edge lies and at what angle in the photo it overlaps. It then has to warp the pictures to exactly the right degree to match up all the other photos it overlaps. And then it adjusts the colours so that the edges look OK. Good work Dr. Brown of the University of British Columbia, formerly of Cambridge!

But the demo is only available for Windows. And that is why you shouldn't buy an Apple Mac.

*edit* - It can even do this!!! The most amazing example of which is this.