Posts Tagged Editorials
In praise of … leaning towers | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 11, 2011
Big Ben has joined St Walfriduskerk in the Netherlands, the temple of Huma in Orissa, India, and the campanile in Pisa. It is leaning
Big Ben, or to be more precise the clock tower housing it, has joined St Walfriduskerk in the Netherlands, the medieval steeple in Suurhusen in north-western Germany, the temple of Huma in Orissa, India, and the campanile in Pisa. It is leaning. Being British, and being built of such hardy materials as cast iron girders, stone from Yorkshire and Normandy, and Cornish granite, it is only leaning slightly. A tilt of 0.25 degrees is a bagatelle compared to the extravagant four degrees at which the tower of Pisa is tilting, and it would take 4,000 years to equal that. Leaning towers often go wrong from the start. The three-metre foundation of the white marble campanile began to sink into the soil after it had risen only to its second floor. Big Ben has been variously undermined by a sewer built in the 1860s to the District line, an underground car park for MPs and the Jubilee line extension. However, the seismic event which caused it to lurch an eighth of an inch sometime between November 2002 and August 2003 remains a mystery. The Iraq debate? Various things could be done to compensate for the 1ft 5in rightward lean. One could lessen the weight by removing the bells and the clock mechanism, and go digital, or install a counterweight. Optical illusions are cheaper still. MPs could stand in front of Big Ben and lean leftwards. Or a leaning full-size cardboard replica could be built next to it. This, too, would straighten the tower, at least in the mind's eye where Big Ben truly belongs.
In praise of… Georgian Liverpool
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 27, 2011
Blitzed, battered, bulldozed but still beautiful: the city hosting Labour this week is still worth exploring for architectural gems
Poor Liverpool: blitzed, battered, bulldozed – and yet still (in parts) beautiful. England's architectural treasure house, a city with more Georgian buildings than Bath, a great river front and yet, in too many places, ruined by neglect or urban planners who do not cherish the past as they should. Delegates at Labour's conference, held in a dreary white glass and steel modernist bubble, should flee their venue and explore. The imperial Victorian and Edwardian architecture is famous. But the greater joy lies in their less bombastic predecessors, the Georgian terraces, halls and churches which mark what one 18th-century guide to the city boasted was "the first town in the kingdom in point of size and commercial importance, the metropolis excepted". Paid for out of slavery, some will say – but not only that, and not only true of Liverpool. A terrible amount has been lost at the hands of a city council that thought the way to the future was to flatten the past. But walk down lovely Rodney Street (past the tragically ruined St Andrew's Church and the amazing triangular tomb in its graveyard) to see the house where Gladstone was born. Or stroll out to Wapping, where the Baltic Fleet pub is a reminder of nautical links. The city, says the 1797 guide, "induces a general harmony and sociability, unclouded by those ceremonies and distinctions that are met with in more polished life; hence the freedom and animation which the town has always been observed to possess". Not everything has changed.
Unthinkable? JK Rowling at Preston bus station | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on August 5, 2011
Preston's bold and uncompromising bus station deserves a high-profile campaign by a famous writer to save it
The novelist Tony Parsons has been spending a week as writer in residence at Heathrow. This will furnish him with a book, and may help to engender a warmth towards the place not always evident now in the departure halls. We might not have today's magnificent St Pancras station had the poet John Betjeman not joined the campaign to save it, and there must be a temptation for those in charge of unloved or threatened places to sign up some equally irresistible writer. One hugely deserving candidate is Preston bus station, which at little more than 40 years old is bold and uncompromising. The great topographer Ian Nairn was as awed by it as he was by the Harris Museum, its cherished Victorian neighbour. The Twentieth Century Society has fought without success for it to be listed. And though this kind of concrete epic often leaves passersby cold, a recent survey made it the city's most loved building, ahead of the Harris. Yet the council wants to sweep it away to make room for a shopping development that's unlikely to say, as the bus station does: "This is Preston, not just some random replica of everywhere else." Were JK Rowling, for instance, to take up her station there, to observe and record its 113s easing out on their evocative journeys through Wrightington Bar and Almond Brook to Pepper Lane, Standish and Wigan, its 280s embarking on their Pennine outings to Clitheroe, Barnoldswick and Skipton, could even the most flinty-hearted of culture secretaries deny its right to survive?
In praise of… gasometers | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 20, 2011
Large iron tanks filled with gas floated up during the day, then sank back down
Something has gone missing in the view from the Guardian's King's Cross offices: a developing wasteland of trucks, cranes and railway tracks. The last of the great gasometers which cast their shadows over this bit of north London for a century and a half has been taken down. A neoclassical Victorian circus in cast iron, caught between King's Cross and St Pancras stations, it was an unquestionably beautiful industrial relic. Listed by English Heritage, which is insisting on their reconstruction nearby, the King's Cross gasometers were the finest examples of a very simple piece of technology. Large iron tanks filled with gas floated up during the day, then sank back down as they released it to homes in the evening. Of course if anyone proposed building something as huge and potentially explosive in the middle of cities today there would be outrage; but some gasholders lasted long enough to be loved. It would be hard to imagine the Oval cricket ground without them. Very few of those that survive are in use; some, such as the King's Cross gasometers, are set to be converted into flats or (in the case of the last to come down) a park. The modern gas system doesn't need them – but it does need more storage. On average the country has only two weeks' gas in reserve; in a cold winter that can come down to less than a week. By contrast, Germany has 99 days' worth in reserve. Perhaps those King's Cross museum pieces will one day be returned to their old use.
In praise of … tin tabernacles | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 3, 2011
When a building constructed of corrugated iron is awarded Grade II status, something unusual has happened
For a church built by, say, William Butterfield or JL Pearson, let alone Pugin or one of the Gilbert Scotts, to be listed by English Heritage as of special architectural or historic interest would occasion little surprise. When a building constructed of corrugated iron, bought off the shelf from a supplier in Croydon, is awarded Grade II status, something unusual has happened. But that is the honour deservedly bestowed on the church of St Michael and All Angels in Hythe, Kent, created in 1893 for the benefit of working‑class families who arrived in the town towards the end of the century, but also a boon for those too infirm to labour uphill to the parish church, St Leonard's. No one knows how many such manufactured places of worship still exist, though the number is diminishing. Some were at best rudimentary; too many have grown rusty, shabby, even offensively derelict. Yet the best have an aura and grace you would hardly expect from the work of jobbing construction companies like Dixons of Liverpool, or Humphries of Croydon, to whom we owe the church of St Michael. Sometimes suppliers put them up on site; others reduced the price by leaving it to a congregation to erect the church themselves. There's a wonderful array of them in a book called Tin Tabernacles: Corrugated Iron Mission Halls, Churches and Chapels of Britain, by Ian Smith, published in 2004. Those who flock to the churches of Romney Marsh should stop to admire St Michael's, inside and outside, as well.
Memo to Prince Charles: London belongs to us all | editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 26, 2010
The Chelsea Barracks case highlights how important it is that we have open and clear laws on building
The Qatari royal family is not alone in being baffled by UK planning regulations. But while for most people bafflement is delivered in an elliptical note from a local authority, Qatari Diar, an Emirate developer, was perplexed by a higher authority: HRH the Prince of Wales.
Qatari Diar is involved in the construction of on the site of the old Chelsea Barracks in central London. It is a controversial development that will change the profile of a swanky part of the capital. The original plan was crudely modern. Prince Charles hated it and told the Qataris so in writing and in person. The plan was changed, triggering a legal action between different parties involved in the project. A court declared the royal intervention "unwelcome".
Prince Charles's views on the perils of modern architecture, and his preference for chocolate-box retro, are well known. His tastes are shared by many of his future subjects, as is his suspicion of the swaggering cosmopolitan vanity behind many modernist experiments on our cityscapes. Likewise, the heir to the throne is not alone in feeling frustrated by the decision-making process.
Many Londoners, for example, are refused permission for modest extensions to their homes, apparently on aesthetic grounds, only to see skyscrapers shoot up, seemingly overnight, outside their windows. The office of the London mayor, whether occupied by Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson, seems to enjoy the ability to change the skyline by fiat.
But while much is obscure in our planning system, it is clear that the House of Windsor has no right of veto anywhere in it. Prince Charles can easily stimulate top-level debate around his pet issues. Transparently deployed, that power need not test the boundaries of constitutional propriety. Secret lobbying crosses the line.
Our opaque planning system is a problem to be addressed by democratic politicians, not meddlesome princes.
The Orbit: £19m for a ‘piece of string’? It could turn out to be a bargain
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on April 3, 2010
Anish Kapoor's Olympic tower will be a draw during the Games. But after that?
The success of Britain's best-loved piece of modern public art, the Angel of the North, has been a boon to the nation's sculptors. In every district, especially those scarred by an industrial past, councillors point towards Gateshead and ask: "Can we have one of those?"
Certainly, this question seems to have driven London's mayor, Boris Johnson, to celebrate the 2012 London Olympics with "something to arouse curiosity and wonder". Or perhaps he is looking beyond Antony Gormley's Angel, at the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty. The result is the £19m, 115-metre, ArcelorMittal Orbit by Anish Kapoor, "a loop of string arrested in mid-fall", in the words of our architecture critic Rowan Moore.
So will it achieve Johnson's dreams? Our willingness to invest in public art is hugely attractive. So is our love for it. The last two decades have seen great improvements to our public spaces and the Olympic Park in Stratford should add further magic. Public art, despite sponsors' attempts to brand it, can stand as symbol to our beliefs and ambitions.
Of course, not all attempts have had happy endings. While Mark Wallinger's Ebbsfleet horse is eagerly awaited, Manchester's B of the Bang, its steel shards falling at disconcertingly inopportune moments, failed.
It is almost impossible to predict what will work, but something that speaks to our shared sense of culture seems a good bet. That the Orbit is part of that great shared endeavour of the Olympics gets it speedily from the starting blocks. It is clearly designed as a spectacle to draw people. It will achieve that, at least during the Games themselves. And after that? Too often, these sites fall into disrepair. Johnson will need to ensure the new park matches his ambitions.
And if not? Well, Kapoor's Orbit will still be worth a visit, for it will allow us to climb to the top and look away.
In praise of … the banks of England | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 29, 2010
The seriousness with which the bank took the design of its buildings is something to be grateful for
Times may be hard, but the City of London continues to churn out multi-storey monuments to money: Heron Tower on Bishopsgate, due to top out in April, is the latest. But there was a time when our financial institutions were more granite and sandstone than steel, plastic and glass. The Bank of England, better known for its fine-tuning of interest rates than its fine architecture, was, for much of its history, a great patron. Its headquarters on Threadneedle street are a case in point. Designed by John Soane, it was a physical expression of all the bank was supposed to stand for – stability, safety, imperial power (there were plenty of Greek and Roman flourishes). Then, as now, things were not as stable as they appeared. After the infamous panic of 1825, it was decided that the bank should set up outposts in major regional centres. These magnificent columned halls, in Liverpool, Manchester, Plymouth and Bristol, were designed by Charles Robert Cockerell. Of these, all but the Plymouth branch survive. Liverpool's, on Castle street, was described by Pevsner as "combining Greek, Roman and Renaissance in a remarkably vigorous and inventive way. Only three bays wide, but overwhelmingly massive and powerful". Architectural gravitas was not enough to prevent financial crises, of course, but the seriousness with which the bank took the design of its buildings is something to be grateful for. It's hard to imagine the City's recent crop of plate-glass clones winning similar accolades.
In praise of… Battersea | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on February 25, 2010
Battersea, which is to play host to the new US embassy, is already famous for many things
There is room for divided views about the Kieran Timberlake glass cube design for the new US embassy building in London. There is less room for argument about its site. Battersea is famous for many things – the dogs' home, the funfair and the power station among them – but its riverside proximity to central London remained a well-kept secret until 1980s house-hunters realised it is only 200 yards from Chelsea across the river. Battersea's MP, Martin Linton (a former Guardian journalist), says if he stands on the House of Commons terrace and leans out a bit he can see the top end of his constituency where the embassy will one day be. The MP bridles at the notion, promoted by the late George Melly, that "transpontine London" has nothing to offer its new residents. South London is simply a north London concept, Mr Linton retorts. The new embassy in Nine Elms, he reckons, will be closer to Westminster and Whitehall than the existing one in Grosvenor Square. Washington's choice is interesting in other ways too. It will be built close to an area once known as the Island, a small enclave of Victorian slum terraces that once housed one of the most economically deprived communities in the capital, one reason why Battersea is one of a handful of places in Britain to have ever elected a Communist to parliament. And can the state department have been aware that Battersea is the last resting place of their nation's revolutionary war turncoat, Benedict Arnold, who is buried in Battersea parish church?
In praise of … Temple Mill | Editorial
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 12, 2011
In its heyday, Temple Mill was like William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience set in stone
In its heyday, Temple Mill was like William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience set in stone. A thousand workers, many under 13, toiled 72 hours a week inside this two-acre flax mill. Above them, a flock of sheep grazed on the turfed roof, an unlikely rural scene especially in Holbeck, an industrial Leeds suburb and a notorious slum. Designed by James Combe, a local engineer, and Joseph Bonomi Junior, and completed in 1843, this industrial-era Egyptian temple, with a 396ft by 216ft factory floor attached, is Grade I-listed today. It is also, as the Victorian Society has revealed, one of the 10 most endangered Victorian buildings in the country. It does seem extraordinary that such a wonder should be largely unused and neglected. In 2008, one of its exotic lotus columns collapsed. Here is a monument of the industrial revolution marrying an obsession with Egyptology to what was then the very latest in structural design. While the mill office pays homage to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the factory floor is set under a vaulted and top-lit roof supported by a forest of cast-iron columns doubling up as drainpipes. These vaults were realised in the style of the breakfast room of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, where Bonomi, an Egyptologist who lived at The Camels, an Egyptian house in Wimbledon (demolished), was curator. Temple Mill is privately owned today. It is surely time for this compelling building to be restored to new and innocent life for everyone to experience.
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