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Danish T-Pylon wins design contest
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 14, 2011
Bystrup design can be a real improvement on existing towers, says National Grid, but pylon fans dismiss it as 'just a pole'
A spare and quietly elegant Danish design has been announced as the winner of a competition to create the next generation of electricity pylons.
National Grid engineers will now work closely with the Copenhagen-based practice Bystrup to develop the design into a production model, and the T-Pylon – or something close to the competition entry – will soon enough be stepping politely across the hills, dales, sunlit uplands and rain-drenched lowlands of Britain.
"In the T-Pylon we have a design that has the potential to be a real improvement on the steel-lattice tower", said Nick Winser, National Grid executive director. "It's shorter, lighter and the simplicity of the design means it would fit into the landscape more easily. In addition, the design of the electrical components is genuinely innovative and exciting."
It might be preferable to bury electric cables and to do away with the need for pylons as far as possible, but this is unlikely to happen even in the long-term future due to the high costs involved. The T-Pylon, however, has been designed as far as possible to be little more than a wraith in the landscape. It will be two-thirds the height and weight of existing 50-metre, 30-tonne pylons, the design of which dates from the late 1920s.
The original National Grid steel-lattice pylon was also designed by a non-British firm, the American Milliken Brothers, although with guidance from Sir Reginald Blomfield, a late-flowering classical architect, who ensured that the structure was well proportioned as well as functional and enduring. Pylons will always be loved or loathed, yet there was something inherently brilliant in a design that could be tucked away in woods or stretched to cross the widest reaches of the river Thames.
The competition, with a £5,000 prize, was organised by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the National Grid and the Royal Institute of British Architects. The energy minister, Chris Huhne, said: "We are going to need a lot more pylons over the next few years to connect new energy to our homes and businesses and it is important that we do this in the most beautiful way possible."
There are more than 88,000 pylons in Britain, including the 22,000 carrying the National Grid's main transmission network across England and Wales.
National Grid has also expressed an interest in working with the designers of the two second-place competition entries, Ian Ritchie Associates, a London firm (with consulting engineers Jane Wernick Associates), and New Town Studio, an architectural practice based in Harlow.
The competition attracted 250 entries. The designs of the six finalists were put on show at the Victoria & Albert Museum during last month's London design festival. Bystrup's design was unanimously recognised by the judges as being the simplest and least demanding in terms of the effect it would have on the landscape. The Danish architects have designed a number of prototype pylons since 2000 aiming, as Erik Bystrup has said, to "turn eyesores into art".
The membership of Britain's Pylon Appreciation Society might disagree, although there is little fear that the Milliken pylons will be replaced in the near or distant future. "The winning design is OK," said Flash Wilson Bristow, founder of the society, "but it's a pole and not a pylon. Pylons are latticed structures. They frame views of the landscape. They're special, but a pole is just a pole."
Bank of England builder goes into administration
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 11, 2011
Holloway White Allom, the construction firm that rebuilt Threadneedle Street in the 1920s, calls in administrators
The builder that remodelled the Bank of England before the second world war has gone into administration.
Holloway White Allom, which only recently completed a refurbishment of the Victoria & Albert Museum, was put in the hands of KPMG last week, it emerged on Tuesday.
Shortly prior to the administrators' appointment, 175 staff were made redundant.
As well as its rebuilding of the Bank of England – described by architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as the 20th century's "greatest architectural crime" in the City, due to its reconstruction of Sir John Soane's original structure – the firm worked on numerous London landmarks.
In a previous incarnation as Holloway Brothers, it built the Admiralty Buildings on Horse Guards Parade, the Old Bailey in the early 1900s and the fountains in Trafalgar Square. It was also active in civil engineering and constructed several bridges across the Thames, including Hampton Court bridge, Wandsworth bridge and Chelsea bridge, and helped construct the "Mulberry harbours", the floating docks used in the D-day Normandy landings in 1944.
In 1960, Holloway Brothers acquired White Allom, a firm with an equally distinguished history in interior design. As well as doing work on the interior of the Waldorf Astoria, White Allom restored St Donat's castle in Wales for the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, did extensive work on Buckingham Palace, and worked on the interior of the QE2 ocean liner.
Holloway White Allom was part of the John Laing construction group from the 1960s until 2002, when its managers took it private.
KPMG has confirmed only that it has been appointed administrators.
It is unclear what pushed the firm over the brink, but the economic downturn has seen huge numbers of construction companies in difficulty.
Data from the construction intelligence firm Glenigan showed Holloway White Allom was working on a £4m upgrade of a Chelsea mansion owned by Viscount Macmillan, the great-grandson of former prime minister Harold Macmillan.
RIBA condemns ‘shameful shoe box homes’ now built in Britain
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 14, 2011
Architects' report claims new three-bedroom houses are being constructed 8% smaller than guidelines advise
The Royal Institute of British Architects has criticised the "shoe box" sized homes now being built in Britain. Ahead of its inquiry into housing needs, RIBA claims that many of the new homes being constructed are too small for the number of people expected to live in them.
The institute says the average new three-bedroom house is 8% smaller than the recently adopted standard for homes in London, with floor space of 88 sq metres (947 sq ft). That is 8 sq metres short of the recommended space, the equivalent of a single bedroom.
One-bedroom properties, at an average of 46 sq metres, are 4 sq metres short of the recommended size, it adds in its recent report The Case for Space.
RIBA suggests that potential buyers are being short-changed and fobbed off with "shameful shoe box homes".
The London Housing Design Guide, adopted in the past year or so, lays down, among other features, minimum space standards for new properties, based on factors such as the average quantity of furnishings as well as number of occupants.
The RIBA inquiry, to be conducted by Sir John Banham, a former director-general of the CBI and former chair of the Tarmac group, is expected to report by next summer and will feed into the government's proposals to alter planning rules. The inquiry will seek the views of architects, builders, planners and purchasers.
Banham said: ""There are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed to ensure we have more of the right kind of affordable homes in villages, towns and cities … new thinking and financing approaches will be needed."
Anna Scott-Marshall, RIBA's head of policy, said that the organisation's Future Homes Commission would address issues such as housing costs, building quality, design and layout, including factors such as the amount of light in a property.
"We need to look into affordability and the mechanisms that need to be in place to enable people to buy," she said.
RIBA Manser Medal contenders up in the air
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 9, 2011
Shortlist for prize honouring best new private home in the UK has revealed a common quirk among cutting-edge architects
Those suffering from vertigo should look away now. The shortlist for the prize honouring the best new private home in the UK has revealed an increasingly common quirk among cutting-edge architects to go alongside the perennial fondness for floor-to-ceiling glass: rooms suspended in mid-air.
Two of the six contenders for the 2011 Manser Medal, organised annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), display this trick, known in the trade as cantilevering. One, Ty Hedfan in Brecon – the name means "hovering house" in Welsh – cunningly circumvents planning restrictions against building along the river bank which adjoins the plot by sending out a glass-walled spur to hang above the water's edge.
More dramatic still is the self-explanatory Balancing Barn in Suffolk, pictures of which resemble on first glance an optical illusion. At least half of the long, slim structure hangs precipitously over the edge of a steep, grass incline. It looks as if an escaped railway carriage has run out of track or, thanks to the shiny silver cladding, like a floating barrage balloon.
The barn, which is available for public rent, is "completely bonkers and very playful", said Tony Chapman, head of awards at RIBA and one of the five-strong judging panel. Most alarming, he said, is the glass floor inside the far-hanging edge: "It's so potentially unnerving for some people that they provide bits of carpet you can put over it, if you want."
The appeal for the judges of Ty Hedfan's cantilever was as much practical as aesthetic, Chapman said: "They weren't allowed to build on the river bank but there's nothing in the small print which says you can't build over the river bank. We like things like that, which get one over slightly on the planners."
The other four contenders are a varied bunch, albeit within a prevailing taste for generous glazing which blurs the boundaries between home and garden, and materials which seek to blend the building with the wider landscape.
There is one urban dwelling, not strictly speaking a new residence: a mid-century, brutalist home in Highgate, north London, remodelled to open the rooms out onto a secluded garden.
Another triumph against the planners is Watson House, an elegant glass-and-timber structure in the heart of the New Forest, which was only permitted on condition it was invisible from public sections of the woodland. The most modest home – a relative term within a selection with budgets starting at £500,000 – is New Mission Hall in Sussex, a pair of conjoined structures on the site of a Baptist chapel which offers a blank, brick facade from the road before opening out into a glassed rectangle at the rear.
The final contender, in the Surrey stockbroker belt of Epsom, most closely resembles the stereotypical notion of a modernist house, from its over 700 sq metres of living space and curtains of walled glass grand enough to satisfy the most demanding exhibitionist to its occupants who seemingly own little more than a few discreetly tasteful items of furniture and art, their toothbrushes presumably locked well out of view.
Inside, however, the design was clever enough to avoid severity, Chapman said, featuring touches like a cosy family TV room deep inside the interior. "You go in there and your first thought is, 'yes, this is an expensive, grand house'. But as you go round it you find lots of lovely little things that make it very intimate."
Overall, he said, the shortlist was perhaps the most diverse in the prize's 10-year history. The inclusion of the pair of cantilevered structures had not been planned. "Maybe subliminally we paired them off," he said. "But I don't think we did it deliberately."
While it would be "slightly arrogant" for RIBA to assume the prize had a direct influence on the wider design of housing, Chapman said, the hope was it might provide food for thought.
"The whole point of the medal, I think, is to try and improve the standard of all housing. We would like to think that there were things that fed into social housing in Hackney as well as the next rich person's house in Surrey.
"The standard of housebuilding in this country is not great. In fact it's pretty poor. It would be good if we could even just inspire clients to ask for things they might not have otherwise considered."
The winner will be announced at a ceremony on 10 November.
UBS threatened to abandon Broadgate HQ
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 4, 2011
Letter from Swiss bank's chief executive warned of 'serious consequences' if redevelopment of site had been prevented
The Swiss banking group UBS told the government that it would abandon plans to build a new London headquarters in Broadgate – costing 5,000 construction jobs, and raising questions over the future of 7,000 employees – if listed status was granted to the site's existing 1980s development.
A confidential letter has revealed that UBS said it would be forced to "fundamentally reconsider [its] occupation strategy in London" had the Broadgate building been listed, a move that would have prevented the planned redevelopment of numbers 4 and 6 Broadgate by British Land and Blackstone.
The plans to spend £850m demolishing the building and developing a new headquarters for UBS ran into problems on 2 June, when the government's conservation adviser, English Heritage, urged the government to list the complex, designed by Peter Foggo of Arup, as a site of special architectural interest. English Heritage said it was "a triumph of urbanism, a special place in the financial heart of the capital".
On 14 June, however, the government decided to go against this recommendation, saying that the buildings were not of "sufficient architectural or historical interest" to warrant listing.
It has emerged from a freedom of information request by the Financial Times that a letter sent from UBS's chief executive, Carsten Kengeter, to Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for culture, on 3 June set out the "serious consequences" for UBS and the City were the building to be listed. Kengeter wrote that UBS would "have to find alternative future accommodation that [it] could occupy by 2016", adding that "we do not consider this feasible given the scale and nature of the space required".
This is likely to anger conservation groups who supported plans to protect the building and previously criticised the government for letting "factors other than those that should be considered in the listing process … [decide] the fate of an important historical building."
English Heritage described the development, which is noted for its outdoor ice rink, as "one of the most important and successful developments of its period and type, possessing special architectural and historic interest, and therefore should be listed at Grade II*".
It added: "Rare for commercial developments, people enjoy Broadgate Square."
However, a spokeswoman for Hunt said that no wider economic consequences had been considered and that he stood by his decision that the building did not possess the outstanding quality needed to list a site under 30 years old. UBS declined to comment.
The news came as British Land reported a rise in underlying pre-tax profits to £65m from £64m a year ago.
"We've had an active and positive start to the year. Our focus on high-quality retail and London offices continues to drive strong valuation and improvement in rental values," said chief executive Chris Grigg.
Occupancy across the company's portfolio of offices, predominantly located in the capital, was 97.8%, while retail premises occupancy was 98.7%.
Lloyd’s building voted London’s favourite from the 1980s
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 4, 2011
Much derided 'inside-out' insurance headquarters is praised for its external lifts and exposed ducts
The Lloyd's of London building inspired the joke that the insurance market started in a coffee house and ended up in a percolator. It has also been described as an oil rig, Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, a life support machine – and an eyesore. But the Richard Rogers-designed building, home to the world's oldest insurance market since 1986, has been voted London's favourite 1980s building.
In a survey conducted by Lloyd's comparing it with other buildings from the 1980s, the "inside-out" building in the City – staircases, lifts and pipes are on the outside leaving an uncluttered space inside – beat 1 London Bridge, Broadgate, the MI6 building and Tower 42.
Nearly 40% of people polled named the external lifts as their favourite feature, the first of their kind in Britain, closely followed by the exposed pipes and ducts which if laid out would stretch from the City to Milton Keynes.
"It's a fantastic building, and very efficient inside," said Lloyd's chief executive Richard Ward. But he added: "It's a costly building to maintain because everything is on the outside and exposed to the elements."
Lloyd's, which was built after the Centre Pompidou, designed by Renzo Piano and Rogers, in Paris, is expected to be listed in October.
Saudi Arabia to build world’s tallest skyscraper
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 2, 2011
£736m multi-purpose Kingdom Tower in Jeddah will stand 1,000 metres tall, surpassing Dubai's Burj Khalifa
They are the neighbouring gulf states battling it out for economic supremacy. And in the latest grand example of keeping up with the Joneses, Saudi Arabia has awarded a contract to build the world's tallest skyscraper, shattering the current record held by a building in Dubai.
The £736m deal for the hotel, office and residential complex reaching two-thirds of a mile into the sky makes Saudi Arabia the current frontrunner in the race between the oil-rich nations for glitzy architectural trophies. The projects are seen as status symbols to show off both economic success and cultural sophistication.
Kingdom Holding Co, the investment firm headed by the billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, said it signed the deal with the Binladen Group to build the 1,000-metre Kingdom Tower on the outskirts of the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The Saudi construction group is owned by the family of Osama bin Laden, which disowned the former al-Qaida leader years before the 9/11 attacks.
"The decision of the partners to build the world's tallest building further demonstrates their belief in investing in this nation," said Talal al-Maiman, a Kingdom Holding Co board member.
"We intend Kingdom Tower to become both an economic engine and a proud symbol of the kingdom's economic and cultural stature in the world community. We envision Kingdom Tower as a new iconic marker of Jeddah's historic importance as the traditional gateway to the holy city of Mecca."
The proposed skyscraper would break the record of Dubai's 828-metre Burj Khalifa, which opened in January 2010 as the world's tallest building with 160 livable floors and a boutique Armani hotel.
Dubai developer Nakheel had planned to build a tower more than 1,000 metres high in the city-state but shelved the plans in early 2009 as the global economic crisis soured demand.
Kingdom Tower, designed by Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, is the first phase of the planned Kingdom City, a two-square mile urban development first announced in 2008 as the financial crisis squeezed world markets.
The venture is seen as a key part of Saudi ambitions to maintain growth by diversifying its economic base away from oil. It is planning a number of economic cities, creating tens of thousands of new jobs as the country tries to ease its reliance on foreign workers.
London 2012: Olympic flame will be lit in one year’s time, but still much to do
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 26, 2011
IOC hail progress as Tom Daley dives into Aquatics Centre pool, completed on time and budget
With 366 days to go, 2012 being a leap year, until the Olympic flame is lit in east London, organisers, the government and the International Olympic Committee are queuing up to hail progress to date.
Wednesday's events to mark the milestone, which will see the £269m Zaha Hadid designed Aquatics Centre formally handed over to organisers by the Olympic Delivery Authority and Tom Daley diving into the pool, will have an air of celebration.
"Marking one year to go, by diving in the Aquatics Centre is an incredible honour. Only a few years ago, this was a distant dream," said Daley, who finished fifth at the world championships in Shanghai on Sunday. "I can't wait for next year and the honour of representing Team GB." But although world class athletes are beginning to test the venues, there remains much to do.
Venues
The Aquatics Centre is the sixth and final permanent venue to be handed over to organisers by the ODA, which has spent £7.25bn of public money building them. Chairman John Armitt said the successful completion of the venues had helped boost the image of British contractors around the world.
"It's very satisfying to be handing it over on time and keeping within the budget. It's a great tribute to everybody that has played a part in this," he told the Guardian. "It is something that as a country and an industry we should be proud of and we should try to maximise opportunities in other parts of the world while memories are still fresh about what the industry can do."
Some venues, especially the velodrome that has already been nominated for the Stirling Prize, have garnered more plaudits than others. The clean lines and simplicity of the stadium have also been praised but there has been criticism of the ugly temporary "water wings" that have been attached to the aquatics centre to boost the capacity to 17,500 for the Games. When it was designed, the high cost was justified by the signature design, which will be obscured by the temporary stands. "When you're inside it, it's fabulous," says Armitt, diplomatically.
Despite outward appearances, the London organising committee still has a huge task. Each venue must be "fitted out", a task that includes the laying of the track in the main stadium, and several major temporary venues must be built from scratch. They include a 15,000 capacity hockey stadium, a 23,000 capacity arena for the equestrian events at Greenwich Park and a 15,000 seat bowl on Horseguard's Parade for the beach volleyball.
Tickets
London organising committee chief executive Paul Deighton has confirmed the last batch of 1.2m tickets that will go on sale from December will first be made available exclusively to those who took part in the initial ballot in April and have yet to get a ticket. Around 6m tickets have already been sold, considered unprecedented with a year to go, with only around 1.5m for football matches around the country and those final 1.2m across all sports – to be made available when the final seating configurations are decided – remaining. Next year, Locog also plans to sell "non-event tickets" which will allow entry to the park but not the venues.
Later this year, millions of free tickets for the live sites, with big screens and concerts in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and Potter's Fields will also be made available on a first come, first served basis. The mantra from Locog chairman Lord Coe and other organisers has been that while they understand the "disappointment" created by the huge demand, which saw 22m applications in the initial rush for tickets, they stand by the controversial process.
Transport
Ever since London was awarded the Games in 2005, transport has been considered a potential achilles heel. The ODA passed responsibility for operational matters to Transport for London last year, but retains an overall co-ordination role. The first stirrings of a backlash have already been felt about the so-called "Olympic lanes" that will whisk 18,000 athletes and officials around the capital during the Games.
They make up roughly a third of the 109-mile Olympic Route Network and have already sparked loud protests from London's black cab drivers. Meanwhile, much will rest on the ability of organisers to persuade businesses and individuals to modify their behaviour during the Games.
"The message must be business as unusual," said Armitt. They take some comfort from the variety of routes into Stratford, including the Jubilee Line and the new Javelin train from St Pancras, but will be desperate to avoid a millennium eve style meltdown.
On the nine busiest days of the Games there will be more than 1m Olympics-related journeys, with a report earlier this year warning of "extreme" conditions on a system already "creaking at the seams".
Security
Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said that security plans needed rethinking when the coalition came to power. Before she quit, Lady Neville-Jones led a government review that resulted in the government predicting security at Games time could be delivered for £475m, though the overall £600m envelope will be retained.
Ministers and organisers have sought to play down the significance of the resignation of Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, but he said in his own statement that a key reason for it was to allow time to get someone new in place for the Olympics. Locog will spend £282m on security within the venues, chiefly through contractor G4S, but there will also need to call on several thousand non-uniformed military personnel.
'Look and feel'
For all the operational challenges Coe's organising committee will face, in many ways the bigger challenge is building public enthusiasm for the Games to reach a crescendo around 27 July next year when the flame is lit. Coe has talked of Britain being a "slow burn" nation. He hopes the torch relay, which will begin at Land's End on 19 May and visit 74 locations in 70 days via 8,000 runners, will be the point at which cynicism is cast aside and enthusiasm ignites.
Part of the task will be to keep those without tickets engaged, through the big screens planned for cities throughout the country and cultural events that will culminate in Festival 2012. London mayor Boris Johnson has a budget to "dress" key areas of the city, including placing Olympic rings on the capital's landmarks. The BBC, which has promised to broadcast every event from every venue live, will also have a big role to play.
Legacy
Given the relatively smooth progress of organisers to date, much of the controversy has centred on the legacy claims that helped secure the Games in the first place. The Olympic Park Legacy Company has taken on responsibility for the park after the Games and must prove it can make a commercial success of it while meeting the needs of local residents.
The fate of the stadium, the object of a furious row between Spurs and West Ham, is mired in high court litigation and it will face searching scrutiny over the affordability of thousands of homes that will be left behind, partly the athletes village.
One of the biggest challenges for the OPLC will be finding a tenant for the cavernous media centre, although there are renewed hopes that a major broadcaster may take an interest.
But even more of a challenge is the "soft legacy", with figures showing that the number of people playing sport is resolutely refusing to budge and ongoing debate about whether the predicted opportunity to get more young people engaged in sport, build links between clubs and schools and raise the profile and quality of coaching, is really being seized. They were famously planting the trees in Athens the day before the opening ceremony, but the landscaping on the Olympic Park is starting to take shape.
More than 4,000 new trees are planned, with 1,500 already planted. Over 300,000 wetland plants have been planted and there are bold claims for the Park that will be left behind. Eventually, there will be up to 11,000 new homes on the site, in the heart of an area that the Olympic Park Legacy Company hopes will be resurgent. Westfield, the giant shopping mall at the entrance to the Park and on which politicians are relying for many of their legacy claims about jobs and regeneration, opens for business in September.
Broadgate centre not worth listing, says culture secretary
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 15, 2011
Jeremy Hunt refuses to protect 1980s complex in City of London, enabling British Land to build new HQ for investment bank UBS
British Land and the City of London were celebrating on Wednesday after culture secretary Jeremy Hunt brushed aside a recommendation from English Heritage that Broadgate estate in the Square Mile should be listed, paving the way for an £850m European headquarters for UBS.
Hunt's controversial decision not to protect Broadgate, a symbol of the brash 1980s City culture, from demolition came much earlier than expected, after furious lobbying by the City, and angered heritage groups.
A Grade II listing for the 80s complex, designed by Peter Foggo of Arup, would have derailed plans by British Land and private equity group Blackstone to knock down 4 and 6 Broadgate and build a 700,000 sq ft "groundscraper".
The proposed building has pitted financiers against conservationists, architects against developers.
Construction of the UBS headquarters can now start as planned this summer, with the Swiss investment bank due to move in the second half of 2014.
British Land's chief executive, Chris Grigg, said: "I am delighted by [the] decision as it allows Broadgate to continue to evolve as a sustainable and flexible office location that will meet the future needs of occupiers whilst maintaining the sense of space and place for which it is rightly renowned around the globe. With the decision made today by Jeremy Hunt, the government has also sent out a message loud and clear to the world that the UK is open for business."
English Heritage had described Broadgate as a "triumph of urbanism" and argued that it represented "outstanding quality" in terms of its architectural and historical interest. In his first listing decision, Hunt disagreed with his official adviser.
In a letter to English Heritage, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: "[The Secretary of State] has concluded that Broadgate phases 1-4 is not of sufficient architectural or historical interest to merit listing protection under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990." Hunt said the estate was impressive but fell short of the outstanding quality needed to list buildings less than 30 years old.
The City of London Corporation's policy chairman, Stuart Fraser, was jubilant. He said the City was opposed to the listing from the start, "not only on architectural grounds but also because of the impact it would have had on the City's international competitiveness. The City is – and always has been – first and foremost a place of business and it must be allowed to adapt to meet the long-term business needs of current and potential future occupiers.
"Time and again, the government has emphasised the importance of demonstrating that the UK is open for business; by refusing to list Broadgate, Jeremy Hunt has sent a positive message to the international business community. Post big bang, Broadgate helped facilitate the growth of the Square Mile into the world's leading financial centre and, as a result of today's decision, I have no doubt that it will play a leading role in helping the City to retain this status for many years to come."
The culture secretary's decision was a slap in the face for English Heritage, which said: "There has been some suggestion that listing stunts investment or creates 'streetscape museums'. This is to entirely misinterpret the purpose and effect of listing ... Every year, consent is given for change and adaptation to thousands of listed buildings. It would have been entirely possible to consider significant alteration to the inherently flexible Broadgate Square buildings while enabling the original scheme's intrinsic qualities to shine as an exemplar of commercial development in the City."
It added: "Broadgate Square may not be everyone's idea of heritage, but every decade has its architectural high points, and the 1980s are no different."
The Twentieth Century Society heritage group also deplored the decision. The group's Jon Wright said: "We believe that the ongoing vitality of the City rests on it retaining and valuing the best buildings of all periods of its construction. This is the latest in a line of recent cases where the C20 Society believes factors other than those that should be considered in the listing process have decided the fate of an important historic building. Only architectural or historic significance should be taken into account.
"London may be open for business," he said, "but the loss of Broadgate's best buildings will send another clear message, that the process by which we have assessed and designated our collective built heritage since 1945 has broken down."
In most cases, ministers accept English Heritage's recommendations, although they recently ignored its advice to list the 1970s Commonwealth War Graves Commission headquarters building in Maidenhead, and in March overruled English Heritage on ABK's 1970s Redcar library.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, had described English Heritage's plans for listing the Broadgate site as "ludicrous". The new UBS building, which has been designed by Ken Shuttleworth, of Make Architects, will include four floors that can each hold 750 traders. At the moment, the Swiss bank's 6,840 workers are spread across five buildings at Broadgate, occupying just over 1m sq ft. UBS declined to comment on whether it would need more space beyond the new building, saying it was too early to say.
Broadgate arena, which houses an ice rink in the winter, sculptures and open spaces, will be retained.
The developers of the original complex, Sir Stuart Lipton and Peter Rogers, have described Shuttleworth's design as "the worst large building in the City for 20 years" and "an environmental disaster". The dispute had turned personal when the City of London's chief planner, Peter Rees, claimed that Foggo was unhappy with the original buildings because he was made to redesign them. This was strongly denied by Foggo's widow, who described the claims as "scurrilous".
The Shard is a broken society’s towering achievement | Jonathan Jones
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 26, 2011
London's new skyscraper is a monument to wealth and power run way out of control, a flashing warning sign of disease
London has suffered an attack. The damage is ugly, and it is permanent. Most of all it tells us more than we would like to know about the kind of society we are and the moral anarchy that shapes our culture. The riots were bad enough. But the Shard is shattering.
This year has seen the rise and rise of Renzo Piano's new skyscraper by the Thames. When finished it will be over 1,000ft high and the tallest building in Europe. As it has grown, remarkably fast, its appearance has become clear. If it seemed wiser to give the Shard the benefit of the doubt when all that could be seen was a T-shaped concrete spine – ah, but it will be beautiful when it is a skyborne sliver of glass, said defenders – now most of the shining transparent skin has been added a fair assessment can be made. And that assessment has to be damning.
It is out of all proportion to its surroundings. On the Tate Modern bridge the other day I stopped, transfixed. This is an architectural catastrophe for London. Forget what this ethereal spike would look like in a city of towers, a financial district already soaring. Stabbed into the historic fabric of a city that has never built especially tall, dwarfing Southwark Cathedral and such nearby landmarks as Tower Bridge, the Monument and even Tate's converted power station, it seems a lunatic attack on London.
A photograph taken when it still showed its concrete heart, ironically romantic in misty light with a dog posed as if wanting to be immortalised in a Doisneau urban scene, reveals how minuscule it makes the mighty dome of St Paul's Cathedral. The meaning of this new building's monstrous size is blatant. The Shard is self-evidently a monument to wealth and power run way out of control. It screams with dazzling arrogance that money rules this city and says money inhabits a realm way above our heads. It is a vision of the financial sector floating above the proletarian streets, living by different rules and shaping events below it with icy ease.
I am sorry if my allusion to the riots earlier seemed facetious. It is deadly serious. This summer has seen London riven by attacks on property and people. The national soul-searching has been exhaustive. But if you are really looking for clues to how Britain got broken, if you really want to see, with your own eyes, a manifest symptom of a society gone wrong, just take a good long look at the Shard. Anyone who criticises modern architecture risks sounding like Prince Charles with his talk of "monstrous carbuncles." So instead of waiting for others to predictably make the comparison I shall invite it: this growth on the body of London, this carbuncle, is a flashing warning sign of disease. But the madness and disorder it manifests come from above, not from below.
Only architecture can express social history in solid, permanent signs that are carved in the very life of a city. The Shard may be doing us a favour, for it makes visible what is otherwise artfully hidden. We can see the damage done by rioters, in broken glass and burned-out buildings. We can't see, in that tangible, in-your-face way, the nature of the modern British economy. We can't see the staggering inequalities between a small financial elite and everyone else, can't easily visualise the brutality of investment capital that runs rampant while social mobility declines and unemployment grows in the real world far below wealth's abstract sphere. But this building makes all that grotesquely visible.
The Shard's lack of all proportion to its surroundings is a physical demonstration of the completely disproportionate distribution of resources and potential in our society.
Throughout the early years of this century in Britain social mobility was declining and the poor were being marginalised. These problems were ignored as New Labour presided over a credit boom, and it was in those heady days that the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, gave permission in 2003 for the Shard to go ahead. English Heritage objected, but who cared about the complaints of culturally conservative fuddy-duddies? The mood of the time was glibly modernist, the proposed tower not far from the wildly successful new museum Tate Modern.
In retrospect, this undiscriminating reverence for the new in early 21st-century Britain may come to look like a culture that bonded the credit-guzzling middle classes with the super-rich and the cynical City. As hedge fund tycoons bought pickled sharks, the bourgeoisie applauded their taste and cheered on the rise of the Shard.
Even today, plenty of people will defend this transparently misconceived and prodigiously cocksure colossus, in the misguided belief that it advances modern design. But it merely represents the most corporate and unenlightened traditions of high-level business architecture, superficially dressed in a symmetrical glass skin. Funded, since 2008, mainly by a consortium of Qatari investors, The Shard is not an avant-garde revelation of new possibilities for London. It is quite obviously and even gleefully the imposition of a style of architecture that is banal, moneyed, and grimly businesslike. It would fit into any financial district on earth. And anywhere on earth it would say the same thing, that finance is king.
But finance has proved a feckless, shallow, and heartless ruler of the world. The disproportion the Shard makes visible in Britain, the licence we in particular, more than most, have given to what Margaret Thatcher called the "wealth creators", has been allowed to shape British society since the 1980s.
By the end of that decade most people accepted that unfettered financial capitalism did indeed seem to liberate society and let creativity flow. This summer we have started to see the monstrous results, a society atomised and shattered. Like a shard raised from the windows of this summer and made permanent, the tower that now dominates the capital's skyline is a terrible vision of the future we have been building.
It has come to us from a dystopia where the rulers of the world pass their lives in glass towers way above the mean streets. Down there the excluded loot and burn, and the sky-dwellers profess to be shocked by their lack of morality.
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