Posts Tagged Energy
Lord Foster reveals £50bn Thames Hub project
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 3, 2011
Ambitious Thames estuary plan to include international airport, railway and housing with new freight and energy infrastructure
"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realised." These famous words are attributed to Daniel Burnham, the ebullient American architect and planner who reshaped Chicago, extended Washington DC and championed the City Beautiful movement of the late 19th century.
On Wednesday Lord Foster announced a plan so big that even Burnham would have been impressed. The Thames Hub, a £50bn project devised by architects Foster and Partners, planners and builders Halcrow and Volterra, a consultancy group of British economists, aims to revolutionise Britain's often creaking and largely inadequate national transport and energy infrastructure.
From a proposed new Thames Hub, comprising an international airport, railway terminus, freight depot and port along with a new Thames Barrier sited all together in the Thames estuary, a new four-track high-speed orbital passenger and freight railway would run around the north of London before joining main lines to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Felixstowe, Cardiff and Southampton.
Aiming to take thousand of container lorries off the roads, this radically enhanced national transport "spine" would also carry power lines and communications cables, cutting down on the need for new pylons. Built to a continental loading gauge, the railways would connect directly with high-speed passenger and freight lines in the rest of Europe.
New homes, hi-tech factories and other workplaces would be built around existing and new railway lines with tens of thousands of new homes connected directly to an ultra-modern transport network. Most new homes in Britain are currently scattered on the fringe of old towns and across the green belt with little consideration for transport and other infrastructure.
"We need to recapture the foresight and political courage of our 19th-century forebears, " said Foster on Wednesday, "if we are to establish a modern transport and energy infrastructure in Britain for this century and beyond."
The Thames Hub and the "spine" are bold plans indeed. "They're born out of necessity, enthusiasm and frustration," says Foster. "In Hong Kong, a decade ago, we were able to build a major new international airport and all the associated infrastructure including a new island reclaimed from the sea within four years. If Britain wants to compete with rapidly developing global economies, it must sort out its infrastructure and, if this is holistically planned with real political commitment it can also be a thing of beauty and environmentally friendly."
"I know it's against the national grain to come up with big plans and we'll be accused of playing Napoleon, but we have to get the debate going and show what a difference a radical new infrastructure plan could make to Britain."
"Infrastructure is the key", says David Kerr, group board director of Halcrow. "Britain ignores development and investment in infrastructure at its peril. Look around the world and you see the way in which China and Latin America are investing heavily in infrastructure. They see it as a passport to strong economic development."
Bridget Rosewell of Volterra says that, if implemented, the Thames Hub plan would generate £150bn in financial benefits alone. It has also been planned to save the green belt from rapacious commercial development, to generate hydroelectric power from the tidal Thames and to beautify transport corridors around London and along the country's main traffic arteries.
"If it went ahead, even in part," says Foster, "the very realisation of the plan would create thousands of skilled jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction alone."
Although Britain has rarely been a country of grand plans, these have existed. The building of the railways, sewers, National Grid, motorways and water supplies are all examples of how Britain has made it in the past. Huge infrastructure projects like the city of Birmingham's water supply from the Elan Valley, completed in the early 20th century, prove how such works can be breathtakingly beautiful as well as discreet and highly effective. They can also be highly controversial, politically sensitive and hugely expensive.
"The cost of not doing anything will ultimately be much higher," says Foster, an architect used to moving mountains in the far east. "We've stuck our heads up like coconuts in a funfair expecting them to be knocked down. But we need to do something soon, and this plan is national, aiming to redress the imbalance of the economies of north and south."
Could it happen? Could we soon be flying in and out of one of the greatest ports in the world where fleets of modern aircraft, ships and trains power Britain's economy into a newly competitive age? Will we live in fine new homes connected to brand new transport, energy and communications spines and hubs? Or will we decide it's business as usual in little Britain and carry on building junk housing on what were once meadows and unsustainable supermarkets and shopping malls on the land that's left and between overcrowded roads and railways? Foster and his team have offered a big-spirited vision of Britain, but do we have eyes to see it?
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."
Constructive criticism: the week in architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 16, 2011
The design world hits high-voltage this week, with flash openings at historic houses, electric cars racing to the future and RIBA unveiling the British pylons of tomorrow
London Open House takes place this weekend, allowing us to see inside hundreds of historic buildings normally closed to the public. Some, such as the hugely popular Midland Grand Hotel (fronting St Pancras station) and Jimi Hendrix's flat in Mayfair's Brook Street are sold-out, but the choice of buildings to visit is still vast.
What about that trip to Ruislip you never promised yourself, to see 97 Park Road, an unexpected house built by Connell Ward and Lucas in 1936 in the style of Le Corbusier's white Parisian villas of the 1920s? This is the best-preserved of a row of three houses that dumbfounded its neighbours (Ruislip is awash with mock-Tudor and neo-Georgian homes) when they were built. Today, though, it is No 97 that is so very desirable.
Or how about the political and architectural drama of Wrotham Park in Barnet, a magnificent English Palladian country house designed by Isaac Ware in 1754 for Admiral John Byng. The house has featured in numerous films and TV shows including Gosford Park and Sense and Sensibility; doubtless you will spot others. Voltaire satirised poor Byng's death in 1759's Candide: "In this country [England], it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."
British design is to be encouraged in future at the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington, open to the public this weekend for the last time in its original state before John Pawson converts it into a new home for the Design Museum. With its dramatic hyperbolic paraboloid copper roof (as beautiful to look at as the words that describe it are clumsy), this "tent in the park" pavilion was designed by RMJM; it first opened in 1962.
Details of Open House, Dublin were also revealed this week. Clearly a passionate event, it offers (along with visits to many historic and new buildings) a "Destruction of Dublin" walking tour: all too much of the Georgian city has been destroyed by mindless new development over the past 50 years. Not an event, then, for those heading to Dublin for hen or stag parties and the "craic", but a time to get intelligently under the city's grey stone skin.
This Way Up: 15 Years of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council is a show opening in Hoxton, east London, as part of the London design festival. It tells the story of the Council's attempts to get British creativity noticed by people worldwide. Designs by Tom Dixon, Peter Kennard, Pearson Lloyd, Sebastian Bergne, Nigel Shafran, Michael Marriott and Anthony Burrill will be on show together with four one-off dresses by Basso and Brooke, inspired by their British Council exchange to Uzbekistan.
Designers will be on hand to recycle materials left over from British Council exhibitions. Other objects will be auctioned off, including "everything from giant rolls of Sellotape to fascinating chairs commissioned for shows in Venice," says Vicky Richardson, the British Council's director of architecture, design and fashion. "We wanted to clear out all this stuff, but we didn't want to throw anything away." The money raised will fund a new British Council scholarship giving young British designers the opportunity to work in Brazil.
Audi evoked memories of the intriguing relationship between architects and automobiles when it announced its Urban Concept car this week in time for the Frankfurt motor show. This lightweight, electric two-seater has been designed, says Audi, according to Mies van der Rohe's guiding principle "less is more". More than Mies, though, it calls to mind Le Corbusier's influential, if overlooked, 1929 design for a city car.
Even Le Corbusier never had the hard task of designing an electricity pylon. Contemporary architects, however, have been much involved in the competition organised by RIBA and the Department for Energy and Climate Change for a new standard British pylon. Models by the six pylon finalists will be on show at the V&A during the London design festival. The most convincing is Silhouette by Ian Ritchie Architects and engineers Jane Wernick Associates. It takes the form of a needle-like steel obelisk with well-resolved arms to carry the cables; seen in profile, it would be fairly unobtrusive. Other designs are a little top-heavy (T-Pylon by Bystrup Architects), too flamboyant (Flower Tower by Gustafson Porter with Atelier One and Pfisterer), or simply too dramatic for mass production (the taut, bow-like Plexus by AL_A and Arup). Whichever design wins – final judging takes place on 11 October 2011 – it may yet be back to the drawing board if the existing standard design, dating from 1928, is to be superseded, both technically and aesthetically.
The connection between architecture and engineering is realised memorably in the design of Norman Foster's 1978 Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. This week the Twentieth Century Society announced it was putting forward the building for listing. Expect Grade I status. Unlike Wrotham Park, 97 Park Road or the Commonwealth Institute, this hi-tech masterpiece is open to the public throughout the year.
Stirling prize shortlist reflects new austerity in architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 21, 2011
Two buildings on the Riba shortlist have been retrofitted to save money and energy, rather than built from scratch
A 1980s office block and a 1930s theatre are in the running to be named best new building of the year, as architects turn to retrofitting to save money and energy.
The Angel building in Islington, London, which BT vacated before the financial crash, has been shortlisted for the Stirling prize after a £72m refit. The 1932 Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which has been overhauled at a cost of £60m, has also been nominated.
The Royal Institute of British Architects' (Riba) annual £20,000 award has never been won by a refurbished building but the presence on the shortlist of two refit projects represents the emergence of austerity architecture.
New buildings commissioned before the public spending squeeze also made the shortlist, including the sweeping velodrome for the 2012 Olympics designed by Hopkins Architects, and one of the most expensive city academy schools ever built, the £38m Evelyn Grace Academy in Lambeth by Zaha Hadid Architects.
The velodrome is the first major Olympic venue to be completed and is favourite to win with odds of 2/1 at William Hill.
The Royal Shakespeare Company originally planned to demolish its 1932 listed home in Stratford-upon-Avon, designed by Elisabeth Scott, and replace it with a futuristic building by the Dutch architect Erick van Egerat.
The plan was revised amid cost concerns and local objections. Instead the RSC hired Bennetts Associates to slot a new thrust stage into the main auditorium, redesign the public areas and erect a viewing tower.
As well as saving money and reducing emissions, the refurb "captured the spirits and ghosts of the theatre", said Rab Bennetts, the architect.
The Angel building was stripped back to its concrete frame and reclad as a speculative office block, shaving almost 15% off the cost of a new building and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about a third, the designer said.
"Refurbishment saves money and reduces the environmental impact of construction," said Simon Allford. "It also shows that we should be paying more attention when we design new buildings to ensuring they are capable of being adapted for future uses which we can't yet imagine."
This month Peter Rees, chief planner for the City of London, claimed there would be fewer new skyscrapers in the current economic climate and that applications to refurbish existing office blocks had increased. He said refurbishment projects were often cheaper, more environmentally friendly and provoked fewer objections than new buildings.
"My prognosis is there will be fewer towers and that's no bad thing," he told Building magazine. "There's a lot of late- [19]80s buildings that we shouldn't be throwing away."
Also on the Stirling shortlist is An Gaelaras, an Irish language arts and cultural centre in Derry, designed by O'Donnell and Tuomey Architects. It is the first publicly funded facility of its kind since the Anglo-Irish agreement.
The Folkwang art gallery in Essen, Germany, designed by former Stirling prize winner David Chipperfield, completes the line-up."Creative redevelopment is a strong theme in this year's list, with a major museum extension, a remodelled theatre complex and the innovative retrofit of an old office building featured, showing how even with tight planning and building constraints, talent and imagination can totally transform existing structures and sites," said Ruth Reed, president of the RIBA.
The selection of Hadid's academy highlights an ongoing row between architects and the education secretary, Michael Gove, who scrapped a major schools building programme and complained that architects were "creaming off cash" from contracts.
Architects reacted angrily to the claim, saying the high cost of the £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was down to wasteful procurement rather than their fees. In February Gove renewed his attack, telling a conference on free schools: "We won't be getting Richard Rogers to design your school, we won't be getting any award-winning architects to design it, because no one in this room is here to make architects richer."
In June the Conservatives claimed architects and landscape architects had received £98m in fees to build 113 schools under BSF, with the biggest single fee being £2.7m. The Department for Education said it wanted to see more standardisation in school design to cut costs, sparking fresh concern at Riba.
The winner of the Stirling prize will be announced on 2 October.
Bjarke Ingels designs incinerator that doubles as ski slope in Copenhagen
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 4, 2011
Architect's latest project to transform an incinerator in heart of Copenhagen shows the playful side of sustainability
How do you turn a 100-metre-tall incinerator in the heart of Copenhagen into a social and cultural hub? By building a ski slope on the roof, of course.
The unlikely combination of green energy and alpine sport was the winning bid in a competition to design a new waste-to-energy plant which aims to be one of the cleanest in the world when it opens in 2016. For the winning architect, Bjarke Ingels, it made perfect sense to inject a bit of fun into the proceedings.
"When you spend 3.5bn kroner [£424m] creating an energy plant in the middle of Copenhagen you make sure it doesn't become an ugly box that the neighbours will protest against and clutters the cityscape," he said.
"You have to make sure it becomes a public park, an attraction. And when the kids come to go skiing on top of the plant they will probably be curious to find out what's going on inside the mountain."
Ingels grew up wanting to become a graphic novelist, but the 36-year-old Dane is now hailed as one of the most exciting architects of his generation.
For the 2010 Shanghai Expo he gave visitors a sense of sustainable life in Copenhagen by moving the city's most famous landmark, the Little Mermaid statue, to China, complete with her own pool of water from the city's harbour. Visitors on bikes viewed it from spiralling cycle lanes inside the Danish pavilion.
"I work with the idea of hedonistic sustainability, which is sustainability that improves the quality of life and human enjoyment," said Ingels. "The fact that Copenhagen is so clean you can actually jump in the harbour [water] in the city centre is almost a miracle. The city is sustainable but doesn't become synonymous with making lots of sacrifices.
"People are willing to make sacrifices from time to time but they are not going to stop driving their kids to football. People don't drive cars because they want to pollute; they drive cars because they want to visit their friends. It's not about changing our behaviour – it's about designing our society in a smarter way. For example instead of dumping our waste we start to see it is a resource – one tonne of waste almost equates to two barrels of oil."
The waste-to-energy plant, which will be Copenhagen's tallest building, will replace a 40-year-old incinerator located in an industrial area on the fringes of the city centre. More than 50% of waste in Denmark is already used to create energy and the new power plant will be 20% more effective than its predecessor. The building will be wrapped in a green facade created from planters and a lift inside will guide visitors to the top of the "ski mountain" while offering them views of the machinery inside.
To remind visitors of the city's carbon footprint, the smokestack on top of the plant will eject a 30-metre smoke ring every time a tonne of CO2 is released.
"One of the problems with emissions is that they are so abstract and intangible," Ingels said. "You can see there is smoke coming out of the chimney but you don't really know whether this is a significant amount. In Copenhagen in 2016 you will simply have to count the smoke rings.
"You are turning a factory into a public park and the chimney, which traditionally is a symbol of the problem, is now becoming something playful."
Ingels's studio, BIG, made its name designing a string of innovative residential buildings in Copenhagen, including the award-winning Mountain Dwellings, where flats were stacked on a multi-storey car park and furnished with individual roof gardens. The firm has won several international commissions in recent years, including an apartment building on Manhattan's west side and a new town hall in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
For the town hall project, Ingels plans to add a huge mirror to the slanted roof of the tower that houses the city council's meeting hall. He calls this the "democratic periscope".
"When the politicians need to make a tough decision they can look up to the roof, which will work like a giant periscope, reflecting views of the city," he said.
"When citizens gather to protest the periscope will work the other way so they can see whether some of the politicians are absent or if they are asleep – and if people have binoculars they can even read the meeting notes.
"It's a type of radical architectural realisation of political transparency."
• This article was amended on 3 July 2011. In the original 3.5bn kroner was converted to £364m. This has been corrected.
Eco-friendly mosque planned for Germany
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on June 13, 2011
Norderstedt's Muslim community to build a £2m mosque with wind turbines in its minarets
A small Muslim community in northern Germany is pioneering renewable energy sources by planning to build a mosque with wind turbines in its minarets.
The €2.5m (£2.2m) project would see the mosque in Norderstedt, near Hamburg, become one of the first to turn the minaret, the place from which the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, into a wind-fuelled power source.
The eco-friendly building is the brainchild of the Hamburg architect Selcuk Ünyilmaz, who has long incorporated energy efficiency into his work. "I thought about how we could give sacral architecture an ecological focus," he said. "My design combines the modern with the traditional, so I wanted to give the minarets a contemporary function."
The wind turbines will be housed in two 22-metre-high minarets and Ünyilmaz plans to install a pair of 1.5-metre glass rotor blades in each tower. At certain times of the day light will be beamed at the blades to create a kind of light show.
Until now the 200-strong congregation, part of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, has made do with a 100-year-old building ill-equipped to house a religious community. But last month local authorities approved plans for the project, which will measure about 1,300 sq metres and comprise two parts, the mosque and a larger building containing shops, travel agents, a cafe, hairdresser and offices.
"We want to create a meeting place for people from all religions and nationalities," Ugur Sütcü, the chairman of the Norderstedt congregation, told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. "There will be advisory services on offer, as well as social, cultural and sporting activities."
In order to persuade some of the more sceptical members of the congregation of the merits of his the design, Ünyilmaz looked for other mosques with similar wind turbines. But he could not find any other examples that had already been built.
The German mosque will not be the first of its kind, however, as the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat is also planning to build an environmentally friendly mosque with wind turbines in its minarets in time for the London 2012 Olympics.
Ünyilmaz's scheme has come at a fortuitous time. Germany has approved a 2022 exit from nuclear energy and there is pressure to make up the shortfall by boosting the renewable energy sector.
The community in Norderstedt might be in tune with the energy zeitgeist but is does not yet have funds for the project. However this is not something Sütcü is too worried about. "We are confident that we can raise the money," he said.
The coastal town is perfectly situated for wind energy production, and the minarets will help cover the building's overheads, providing about a third of its energy. Ünyilmaz said that was one of the reasons he opted for turbines instead of solar panels, which would not produce electricity at night. "We are in the north and I don't think there's a day here that isn't windy," he said.
The stratospheric Strata
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 19, 2010
Elephant and Castle's Strata has dramatically changed the south London skyline – and the integrated turbines are a world first
Spin city: London’s Strata tower
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on July 19, 2010
It is the world's first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines. But is London's Strata a green gimmick – or the future? Jonathan Glancey takes to the skies
I am standing on the wind-buffeted tip of the Strata tower, looking out through the blades of what appear to be an enormous propeller, at the London skyline and the green basin beyond. St Paul's cathedral, across the river, seems close enough to touch. It's the kind of view, and the kind of heroically stylised building, you would expect to see in some 1930s sci-fi movie: the perfect place for a hero and a villain to have a rooftop showdown.
At 147 metres, the newly opened Strata is London's tallest residential building. The nine-metre blades I'm standing beneath are housed in one of three wind turbines that crown this new tower soaring above Elephant and Castle, an area of the city not known for flashy penthouses. But Elephant and Castle is undergoing a massive, if slow, transition from a rundown miasma of noisy road intersections, underpasses and vast housing estates into what the Borough of Southwark hopes will be a £1.5bn model of inner-city regeneration.
The plan was first made public six years ago and work is unlikely to be completed before 2020. It's a colossal challenge, as well as an opportunity, and the £113.5m Strata, the first of three skyscrapers planned for here, is a symbol of the dynamism and energy the project demands. And that energy must, of course, be seen to be green. It's early days, but if the turbines work as planned, and aren't too noisy for residents in the pricey penthouses beneath them, they should generate 8% of this 43-storey building's energy needs. This is roughly enough to run its electrical and mechanical services (including three express lifts and automated window-cleaning rigs) as well as the lighting, heating and ventilation of its public spaces, which include an underground car and cycle park.
Strata is the first building in the world to incorporate wind turbines into its structure. Yes, the new Bahrain World Trade Centre in Manama, by the firm Atkins, also boasts three giant turbines, but these are set on steel struts connecting its twin towers, not part of the actual towers themselves. While I can vouch for the strength of the south-westerlies that will turn Strata's blades, whether its turbines will set a precedent for future British towers is less clear: this rooftop was exceedingly hard to construct, almost prohibitively so, every part of it having to be hauled up.
However, what the three fans do, without a doubt, is give Strata a striking profile. Whether you find this exciting, disturbing or simply over-the-top will be down to personal taste, yet it's no surprise the tower has been dubbed the Electric Razor, not just because of its whirling blades but also because of its black and silver lines that seem to pixellate upwards; Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, has called it the Lipstick.
So what do green experts think? "You've got to take your hat off to the design team for delivering a building that captures the imagination," says Paul King, head of the UK Green Building Council. "I doubt wind power will become a common feature in high-rise inner city projects, but without this type of bold innovation, how would we ever know? Developments like this show that sustainability is increasingly becoming mainstream. That's something everyone should celebrate."
Including the 1,000 or so people who have already moved into – or bought into – Strata's 408 flats (each boasting floor-to-ceiling windows). And there is a difference between the two. Nearly every flat was bought off-plan, before construction began, 50-75% of them by investors. This is a shame: the whole idea of the tower is that it should be a guiding light for new inner-city residential development. This is meant to be a home for local people, not a machine for property market profiteering.
Indeed, 25% of the flats, on floors two to 10, are "affordable homes", for those on incomes of less than £60,000 (in central London that kind of money won't guarantee a home of your own); meanwhile, a three-floor pavilion to the side of the tower has been given to council residents leaving the soon-to-be-demolished Aylesbury Estate, a 1960s housing complex seen by most as an enormous failure. Tony Blair made his first speech as prime minister at this estate, in a bid to show his government would care for the poorest elements in society.
To my mind, Strata's big propellers give the building the feel of an airship holding aloft the passenger cabins (or flats) below. Or perhaps it's more like an old-fashioned transatlantic liner with its complement of first-, second-and third-class passengers. I think of this as architect Ian Bogle, of London-based BFLS (formerly Hamiltons Architects), leads me through the tall, narrow lobby to the lifts that shoot silently up to the residential floors.
'You feel like you own the city'
The views are spectacular. Most front doors open directly onto gaping vistas of London, framed by giant windows. They are not for the faint-hearted. Bogle goes to open what looks like a door at the side of a window and I think he might vanish into the ether. As it happens, he's simply opening a perforated screen designed to let fresh air in. "We've tried to get as much daylight and fresh air as possible into the flats," says Bogle. "You certainly feel as if you own the entire city from up here."
Indeed you do. There are magic moments, too: way below, trains race in and out of buildings and seem to pass through the tower itself. It reminds me of the super-modern city drawn by Antonio Sant'Elia, the Italian futurist architect, shortly before the first world war. His Città Nuova was a dynamic, machine-like metropolis through which cars and even aircraft would pass, via openings in the buildings. His imaginings inspired film-makers, from William Cameron Menzie's Things to Come in 1936, to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner in 1982; they also resonated in city developments as dramatic and diverse as the Barbican, the Pompidou and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. And they echo today in these views from the Strata tower, and in its mighty turbines.
But are they just a tokenistic green gimmick? Or will they propel us towards a new urban architecture, one that's cinematically thrilling and ecologically sound? Until its sibling towers rise and the redevelopment of Elephant and Castle is complete, it will be hard to properly judge Strata. Right now, it stands alone, a sleek silver sentinel, towering over the follies of the recent past.
Scientists to rebuild ‘Coronation Street’ house in lab to study energy use
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 28, 2010
Salford University staff to simulate life in terraced two-up, two-down in effort to make UK's housing stock greener
Energy-efficiency scientists are to study how people live by rebuilding an entire, redbrick Manchester terraced house inside a university laboratory's sealed testing chamber.
The two-up, two-down dwelling is identical to those portrayed in Coronation Street, television's oldest surviving soap, and to more than two million real-life homes.
It will be used for power-saving experiments in simulated climates featuring high winds, snow and Manchester's notorious rain.
The pre-first world war house is to be salvaged from a nearby demolition scheme. It will be dismantled within the next fortnight and rebuilt in the Energy Hub at Salford University.
Gas, water and electricity will be piped in and furniture installed, with staff from 13 academic departments taking turns to play the part of residents.
Life in this "Energy House" will be as busy as in any of the terraces which sprang up across the North of England to house those working in mines and mills, but focused on entirely modern concepts such as carbon-reduction equipment and smart-meter tests.
Psychologists will join engineers in a series of experiments to see if particular wall or carpet colours make people feel warmer and reduce the demand for heat. Home energy use accounts for 30% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions.
"It's a house from the past, working for the future," said Dr Nigel Mellors, associate dean of science, engineering and technology at Salford and one of the team running a project aimed to last 20 years or more.
"But this one is only the beginning'" he said. "We reckon we'll know everything we need to about how to improve a terrace like this after about three years. Then we'll knock it down and build something different. Perhaps a typical 1960s house, to see how that can be improved."
The project is designed to parallel work on new-build energy-saving homes, recognising that many housebuyers prefer older properties for other reasons.
Dave Ritter, sustainability director at BDP architects, who are also involved with the scheme, said the sheer number of surviving terraces was proof of their appeal.
"They are in many ways an extremely successful design, with a particularly good sense of community and neighbourly links," he said.
"They are on a nice scale and sensibly laid-out inside. But energy-saving was not an issue at the time they were built, and this project is an imaginative and very practical way of putting that right."
Remodelled terraces have already proved a success in the Lancashire Pennine towns of Nelson and Colne and also in Salford, notably at Chimney Pot Park where the developers Urban Splash have "upended" the old model, giving 19th century terraces sleeping quarters downstairs and living rooms on the first floor.
Leeds has found a huge market as starter homes for its 40,000-plus back-to-back terraces, once condemned as slums for having inadequate ventilation but now, with three of their four walls comfortably sandwiched by other homes, praised for saving heat and economical use of space.
Green variations also include some Northern towns' policy of "alternate demolition", where the clearing of every other row of barrack-like terraces has doubled the gardens and open space of those left.
Larger scale demolition of traditional terraces by government housing renewal projects has caused anger in Liverpool, Manchester and Lancashire's former milltowns.
Professor Steve Donnelly from Salford's faculty of science said terraced houses had won their case for reprieve but now needed "ways of being more efficient, as they are going to house people for generations to come. That requires detailed and robust research, which the Energy House will provide".
Tony Juniper, former director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Domestic energy use accounts for a huge proportion of emissions which we have to reduce. The millions of real-life terrace houses like this one are going to play an important part."
John Alker, policy director at the UK Green Building Council, said: "This looks like a great piece of research and it will be particularly interesting to see the results on behaviour, where less has been done to date.
"But let's not forget that there is a hell of lot that we know already – the biggest barrier to low carbon home refurbishment going mainstream has tended to be the upfront cost to consumers, and that is set to be tackled by the Energy Bill in the form of 'Pay As You Save schemes'."
Eneropa: our energy future?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 10, 2010
Rem Koolhaas's brave renewable world: how a new power network could solve Europe's carbon crisis