the-sheet.com Your Architecture Resource » Heritage

Leaning tower of Big Ben worries MPs

The Sheet — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:23:28 +0000

House of Commons commission meets to discuss what can be done to shore up crumbling Palace of Westminster

Once again, the splits and misalignments are beginning to show in the mother of all parliaments.

This time, though, it is not a bickering coalition or a cabinet riven with discord that is causing concern but rather the state of the Palace of Westminster itself.

A committee of MPs will meet on Monday to see what can be done to stop the tower that houses Big Ben leaning any further and to shore up Pugin and Barry's neo-gothic edifice.

Subsidence has led to cracks appearing in walls around the Houses of Commons and Lords, with Big Ben's bell tower leaning 46cm (18in) at its peak.

The House of Commons commission – which is responsible for the upkeep of the parliamentary estate – will discuss a surveyor's report that suggests options for dealing with the problems, including repairs which may lead to peers and MPs temporarily moving out.

However, experts have dismissed suggestions that the palace could be reclaimed by the Thames.

According to Prof John Burland of Imperial College London, who designed the five-storey car park underneath the Palace of Westminster, the clock tower's tilt is nothing new.

"[It's] been there for years," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "When I first started work on the car park it was obvious that it was leaning.

"We made measurements on it. It was leaning at one in 250 to the vertical, which is just about visible. That's the break point between looking vertical and looking like a slight lean."

Burland said the lean had probably developed early on as there was no cracking in the cladding.

"We think it probably leant while they were building it and before they put the cladding on," he said. "That was a long time ago and buildings do lean a little bit."

Burland added that the cracking, which he said was not caused by the tube's Jubilee line or the car park, was actually good for the palace.

"They're beneficial because the building moves thermally more than is caused by the Jubilee line and the movements concentrated around the cracks and, if they didn't, there would be cracking elsewhere," he told Today.

He also said the clock tower's lean was visible to the naked eye: "If you stand in Parliament Square and look towards it, you can just see that it moves very slightly to the left – but I wouldn't put any political slant on that."

Sam Jones

Seville’s Unesco status threatened by 600ft Pelli tower

The Sheet — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:55:49 +0000

Spanish city could lose world heritage status over plans to build 40-storey skyscraper amid cluster of 13th-century buildings

Seville faces being added to a Unesco blacklist as building work on a 40-storey skyscraper begins to change the southern Spanish city's skyline.

The half-built Pelli tower is casting a growing shadow across one of the country's most-visited cities and over a cluster of 13th-century buildings which have been designated a world heritage site by Unesco.

In a report leaked to local newspapers, Unesco experts denounced the "substantial" impact on several historic buildings. "It is surrounded by historic conservation areas," it said. "There is an excessive and undoubtedly negative impact."

Among the buildings affected are the cathedral, the Alcázar, the Giralda minaretand the Archive of the Indies, which together make up the world heritage site.

"They form a remarkable monumental complex in the heart of Seville," Unesco said. "The Giralda minaret is the masterpiece of Almohad architecture. This will end the Giralda tower's unrivalled pre-eminence in the urban landscape."

At a meeting in June Unesco must decide what to do about the city's refusal to halt construction. Among the options is to place it on the "in danger" list, or to strike Seville off the list of world heritage sites.

The "in danger" list includes sites such as Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan and the earthquake-ravaged city of Bam in Iran.

The Pelli tower is being built on the site of the 1992 Expo across Guadalquivir river from Seville's historic city centre.

The 12th-century riverside Tower of Gold is another monument that will be dwarfed by the 178-metre (580ft) Pelli building.

Unesco has asked local authorities to at least reduce the height of the building, but pleas made over the past four years have been ignored. The organisation said it had asked the city "to halt the construction works and reconsider the current high-rise project".

"Attempts are made to offer help to places so that they can solve problems," one expert on world heritage sites said. "But there comes a time when there is no hope for that."

That time appears to have come for Seville, where the Pelli tower has already reached 12 storeys. "They are meant to be adding another floor each week," said the expert.

El País newspaper said the report had been leaked by city hall authorities, which it read as a sign that the new city council, which was elected last year, might try to lower the height of the building.

Giles Tremlett

Rome’s Colosseum restoration sparks inquiries into contract

The Sheet — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:06:05 +0000

Shoe firm Tod's had struck a €25m deal to fund restoration, but this is being investigated

Italy's most visited monument, the Roman Colosseum, is suffering from "about 3,000 lesions", a government minister said last year. Sometimes, bits fall off, as did a chunk dislodged by a pigeon on Christmas Eve.

But the chances of the aged patient receiving emergency surgery receded on Wednesday when it emerged that Rome prosecutors and the Italian audit court had each launched inquiries into the award of a contract for the funding of restoration. In January 2011, the luxury shoe firm Tod's announced it had struck a deal under which it would put up €25m (£21m) for the cleaning and strengthening of the arena where gladiators once grappled with wild animals – and each other.

Tod's obtained the right to use the image of the Colosseum until two years after completion of the work. But the company's founder, Diego Della Valle, promised not to exploit his sponsorship for commercial purposes, saying he was happy just to give something back to his country.

The agreement has nevertheless been a subject of controversy ever since. And, on Monday, Italy's competition authority was reported to have condemned the procedures used.

According to a consumer group that lodged the original complaint with the authority, an inquiry found that Tod's should have been made to organise, and not just fund, the project; that it had been granted sponsorship rights for too long; and that rival bidders had not been given enough time to top its offer.

But the mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, warned: "If, with €25m of private cash available, we don't get work under way now, we cannot then complain if parts of the Colosseum collapse."

John Hooper

Lloyd’s building joins Grade I elite at tender age of 25

The Sheet — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:05:57 +0000

Heritage minister's decision puts Richard Rogers's hi-tech design in the top 2.5% of all listed buildings

Richard Rogers's hi-tech, postmodern Lloyd's building, with its pipes, lifts and toilets presented on the outside, has become one of only a few modern buildings to be given Grade I listed status.

The decision, by the heritage minister, John Penrose, puts the building in the top 2.5% of all listed buildings. It now has the sort of protection given to St Paul's Cathedral and Windsor Castle.

The listing was recommended by English Heritage. Its designation director, Roger Bowdler, said it was "fitting recognition of the sheer splendour of Richard Rogers's heroic design. Its dramatic scale and visual dazzle, housing a hyper-efficient commercial complex, is universally recognised as one of the key buildings of the modern epoch."

Bowdler said its listing, which provides substantial protection but did not mean it is "pickled in aspic", had been enthusiastically supported. Penrose said the Lloyd's building "stands the test of time with its awe-inspiring futuristic design, which exemplifies the hi-tech style in Britain. It clearly merits the extra protection against unsuitable alteration or development that listing provides."

The Lloyd's building was opened in 1986, built after the success Rogers, with Renzo Piano, had with that other great inside-outside building, the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Providing a headquarters for Lloyd's of London, it manages to be both head-turningly futuristic and resolutely traditional. It includes the traditions and fabric of earlier Lloyd's buildings, not least the Adam Room, which was moved from Bowood House in Wiltshire, and the Lutine Bell, which was once rang to indicate an "overdue" ship but is these days is only used for ceremonial occasions.

It is one of only a handful of postwar buildings and structures to be given Grade I listing, joining Basil Spence's Coventry Cathedral (listed in 1988) Norman Foster's Willis Corroon Building in Ipswich (listed in 1991) and the Severn Bridge (listed in 1998).

Lloyd's chief executive, Richard Ward, said: "The building remains modern, innovative and unique – it has really stood the test of time just like the market that sits within it. This listing decision will protect the building against unsuitable alteration or development while retaining its flexibility to adapt within the market's needs."

Lord Rogers's practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, said in a statement that the listing was an honour: "It is important to conserve buildings of architectural and historical significance, and the work of English Heritage is central to that. It is also of vital importance for buildings to remain flexible spaces which meet the changing needs of those who live or work in them. English Heritage has recognised this, ensuring the spirit of the original design is retained while the building remains adaptable in the future."

At the other end of the heritage timeline, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport also announced that the early Mesolithic settlement Star Carr, near Scarborough – which contains what may be the earliest building in Britain – is being made a scheduled monument because of its rarity and archeological importance. The status gives the site an extra layer of protection against unauthorised change.

Mark Brown

How we learned to love the Lloyds building

The Sheet — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:05:46 +0000

Richard Rogers' 'bowellist' creation in the heart of London has been Grade-I listed

Twenty-five years young, the Lloyd's building is still shockingly new. Yesterday it was announced that this hi-tech City of London tour-de-force, designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, has been listed Grade I by heritage minister John Penrose. The youngest to be granted that special status, it joins company with a select band of postwar buildings including the Royal Festival Hall and Coventry Cathedral.

Lloyds is also the first Grade I-listed building designed specifically for change. While listing protects historic monuments from insensitive alteration, the whole point of this late 20th-century reworking of Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, crossed with a North Sea oil-rig, is the flexible space it offers, and the promise that, one day, it might be re-arranged as easily as if it had been assembled from Meccano.

The inside-out, or "bowellist", look of the 88-metre high concrete structure, with its external wall-climbing glass lifts, exposed pipework and plug-in, stainless steel clad lavatory pods, is graphic evidence of the way this breathtaking ensemble was clipped together like a giant kit of parts.

Naturally, Lloyds has never been to everyone's taste – too much like an oil-refinery thumped down next to Wren's City churches and Neo-Classical banks clad in Portland stone – and its provocative design is all the more remarkable given that it was commissioned by and for apparently conservative, pin-striped City types.

With its soaring central atrium, the radical, open-plan interior is nothing short of sensational. Even then, it abounds in surprises. High up in the building, a door opens to reveal a complete Robert Adam boardroom of the 1760s, representing most people's idea of what Grade I listed buildings look like. Attitudes to modern architecture have clearly changed.

The biggest change of all since then, however, has been among conservationists themselves: in the 1980s, they tended to see Lloyds as a modern monstrosity. Now they love it.

Jonathan Glancey

Apollo relaunch: Peterlee’s brutalist blast is given a Grade II* listing

The Sheet — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:08:07 +0000

Victor Pasmore's piece of concrete art situated on County Durham housing estate joins UK's most protected structures

It has had graffiti sprayed on it more times than it's possible to mention, been a hangout for troublesome youths and faced numerous calls for it to be simply pulled down.

But now a piece of concrete art in the middle of a new town housing estate finds itself among the most protected structures in the UK.

The heritage minister John Penrose announced Grade II* listing for the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, County Durham, a love it or loathe it piece of brutalist art designed by the artist Victor Pasmore.

Grade II* status now puts the pavilion in the top 5% of all listed buildings, joining the likes of Middlesbrough's Transporter bridge, the London Coliseum and Eastbourne pier.

David Taylor-Gooby, chairman of the Apollo Pavilion community association, said it was a very pleasing day. "It is the end of a long road. Whether you like it or don't like it, the pavilion is something we should be proud of and benefits the whole community."

The pavilion was built in 1969, the year of the Apollo XI mission to the moon, as the centrepiece of the optimistically named Sunny Blunts housing estate. For 10 years it was well maintained, before going into serious decay and decline when Easington district council took over in 1979.

"It was fenced off and kids regarded that as a challenge and it had graffiti sprayed on it," said Taylor-Gooby. "It became a rather miserable thing and a lot of people wanted rid of it and to some extent I understood them. It did look pretty horrible."

Taylor-Gooby began the battle to put the pavilion right rather than knock it down and the restoration it deserved took place two years ago.

The late Tony Banks turned the pavilion down for listing in 1998 while sports minister and Taylor-Gooby said that refusal turned out to be a blessing. "When the application was made before it was in an awful mess but it has now been restored, due largely to community effort."

Taylor-Gooby believes the younger generation is interested in and supportive of the pavilion. He said: "I'm not sure I'd say it's a thing of beauty, I would say a thing of interest and an icon of modernism. It symbolises the philosophy behind Peterlee, which was modernist and trying to create something good and progressive. The pavilion is part of our heritage."

English Heritage and now ministers agree. Penrose said: "This is a striking example of how abstract art and 'brutalist' architecture can come together to make a building that is quite unique, and all the more so now that it has been rescued from dereliction in a highly successful project supported by Lottery funding and driven by the commitment of local people."

The pavilion also highlights the involvement of Pasmore, one of Britain's leading post-war artists, in Peterlee. He was brought in as consultant head of design for the new town in 1954 when the architect Berthold Lubetkin, who was famous for London zoo's penguin pool, left because he was not allowed by the National Coal Board to build towers.

Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire

Mark Brown

After Liverpool, the capital’s heritage site is being investigated

The Sheet — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:11:12 +0000

Unesco's inspectors are in London following a similar visit to the north west last month over concerns about tall buildings

Liverpool is not the only UK city under threat of losing a world heritage designation, it emerged on Monday

Unesco inspectors will visit London this week to check out developments around the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster.

In a move that is reminiscent of the Liverpool world heritage debate, Unesco is concerned their status as prized buildings of world importance is being damaged by the building of skyscrapers.

Liverpool was warned it will be stripped of its World Heritage Site status if a £5.5bn skyscraper plan goes ahead without "radical" changes, when inspectors visited in November.

The three-day Unesco inspection, led by Ron van Oers, had left Liverpool with clear guidance "100%" that, unless Peel's Liverpool Waters project was radically changed, they will recommend the city be stripped of the World Heritage accolade.

The official inspectors' report will be completed by December 23 and will then be sent to Liverpool council and Peel within two to four weeks.

Peel, having already dramatically reduced the number of skyscrapers, has indicated it is not willing to compromise its Liverpool Waters scheme further. It also reduced the height of the tallest planned building – the Shanghai tower – to 55 storeys.

Ultimate responsibility for the UK's 28 World Heritage Sites falls to the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.

Heritage campaigner Wayne Colquhoun, who was instrumental in bringing the inspectors to Liverpool, said the fact Unesco were now visiting the capital would reinforce the importance of local heritage concerns.

"If London is threatened, then hopefully people in positions of power that think Liverpool is just a provincial outpost may sit up and take the matter seriously," he told the Liverpool Daily Post.

Unesco has a number of specific concerns about London.

It has warned that the Tower of London could be downgraded because of the negative impact of the Shard of Glass on its panorama.

The 1,020ft-high Shard, a 66-storey office block next to London Bridge, will be the tallest building in Europe when it is finished.

Unesco's World Heritage committee has ruled that: "Incremental developments around the Tower over the past five years have impacted adversely its visual integrity."

Unesco is also concerned about the 43-storey Doon Street tower, which is being built in Lambeth across the river from the Palace of Westminster.

The World Heritage committee has said specific measures to protect the immediate and wider settings and have not yet been sufficiently developed.

Helen Carter

Dorothy Annan murals listed as former telephone exchange faces demolition

The Sheet — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:05:58 +0000

Murals that celebrate 1960s technology will have to be preserved elsewhere if owner Goldman Sachs redevelops site

A sequence of tile murals celebrating the white heat of British technology – the teleprinters, wiring circuits, spiky aerials and banks of switching gear which constituted 1960s telecommunications – has been listed to preserve it as the grim grey building supporting it faces demolition.

The murals – in smoky blue, brown and green – were the work of Dorothy Annan, who was commissioned in 1960 at the enormous cost of £300 a panel to create them for the Ministry of Works, to decorate a huge new telephone exchange in central London.

Annan collected scores of images of communications kit, and visited General Post Office buildings for inspiration before designing the murals, which include stylised representations of pylons, cables, telegraph poles, cabling, television and radio aerials and generators. She visited the Hathernware pottery in Loughborough and hand-scored her designs onto each wet clay tile Her brush marks can be seen in the fired panels.

When it opened in 1961, the purpose-built Fleet Building on Farringdon Street – designed by Eric Bedford, architect of the Post Office Tower (now known as the BT Tower) – was the largest telephone exchange in the capital.

The IT revolution has made thousands of such buildings redundant across the country, and the Fleet Building has been a derelict eyesore for years. It is now owned by Goldman Sachs, which is believed to be planning to clear and redevelop the site.

Heritage minister John Penrose has not listed the building itself – although grim, it has its admirers – which probably means the tiles will be carefully dismantled for storage and reuse.

Annan, who died in 1983, exhibited with the leftwing Artists International Association, and once featured in a morale-boosting wartime show in an air-raid shelter beside work by Augustus John.

Her paintings are in many national collections, but she was also known for her tile murals, many of which have been destroyed in recent decades. Only three of her major public murals are believed to survive – the largest single example, the Expanding Universe at the Bank of England, was destroyed in 1997.

Maev Kennedy

Tiny Tyneside church beats Canterbury cathedral and Gormley in arts competition

The Sheet — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:08:32 +0000

Engraved glass so delicate that frost can change its nature helps scoop top prize for Northumberland. The Northerner's arts monitor Alan Sykes reports

A tiny church high above the Tyne valley has beaten off competition from the likes of Canterbury Cathedral to win this year's Art in a Religious Context award from the charity Art & Christian Enquiry.

The biennial award was made for two commemorative stained glass windows commissioned for St John's church, Healey, in Northumberland, by artists Anne Vibeke Mou and James Hugonin.

Anne Vibeke Mou was born in Denmark and graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2005 before moving to Newcastle. She has shown in Denmark, Prague and London as well as at the National Glass Centre at Sunderland University. Her work for St John's, which lies between Hexham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is a sheet of glass covered with thousands of tiny impact marks made by hitting the glass with a tungsten point, creating swirling, cloud-like forms which can be seen from the outside of the church as well as from its interior. A hard frost can affect her window, giving it an extra layer of depth.

James Hugonin was born in county Durham and graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in 1975. He has shown at the Baltic and Kettle's Yard in Cambridge as well as in London, Edinburgh and Germany. He is shortlisted for this year's Northern Art Prize www.northernartprize.org.uk which opens at the Leeds City Art Gallery on November 25th. His window is made of small rectangles of glass, some transparent and some translucent, mainly red, blue, yellow and green. Although totally abstract, a double helix form can be made out in the patterns of colour.

The two windows were commissioned as a memorial to his parents Julian & Virginia Warde-Aldam by local landowner, Hotspur magazine editor and churchwarden Jamie Warde-Aldam, a relation of the Quaker Robert Ormston who built the charming neo-Norman church in 1860 (at the third attempt, the nave having collapsed twice during the building process). Jamie says:

Everyone in the parish is delighted with the award. Working with James and Anne Vibeke on the project for a year has been a deeply rewarding, educational experience. They both have the highest standards, are meticulous in their respective methods and showed a sensitivity to each other's work as well as for the character and fabric of the church. Without their generosity, patience and friendship, this commission would not have happened.

The prize is worth £4,000, with £1,500 each going to the artists and £1,000 to the church. Other finalists for the award included sculptor Antony Gormley, who created another of his human figures, this time made up of old iron nails, for Canterbury Cathedral, Jonathon Parson's grid-like Cruciform Vision for Guildford Cathedral, Thomas Denny's Transfiguration stained glass window for Durham Cathedral, and Katy Armes' NoThing for Hellington Church in Norfolk. The judges were chaired by the Dean of Chichester, the Very Rev Nicholas Frayling.

Laura Moffatt, Director of Art & Christian Enquiry, comments:

This year's ACE Awards have once again revealed the depth and diversity of artistic practice among faith communities in the UK. Our short-lists included an Islamic Hall of Remembrance and a major new stained glass window in a cathedral, as well as some very high quality works of art and architecture in small rural parish churches.

Alan Sykes

National Trust to open fourth Wordsworth house in the Lake District

The Sheet — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:54:12 +0000

Fire at Allan Bank triggers plan to create a new sort of visitor attraction at the villa which the poet once described as a 'temple of abomination'. He warmed to it later.

The National Trust is planning to make the best of what initially seemed to be a bad job, by opening a fourth Wordsworth house in the Lake District.

Whether the poet himself would have approved is another matter. He suffered endless problems with smoking chimneys at Allan Bank on the edge of Grasmere, and also wrote of it as a 'temple of abomination' when it was built in the middle of his view from Dove Cottage.

Time has long since mellowed the 1805 Georgian villa but in March it was badly damaged by fire. Repairs are now pretty much finished and the Trust has decided to open the house to the public from the end of next March. For years it had been let to tenants although you could, and still can, take plenty of lovely walks in its grounds.

Allan Bank is doubly special to the NT as later owners included Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, co-founder of the trust which has just celebrated reaching the astonishing total of four million members. He was a tireless campaigner who frequently wrote to the Manchester Guardian about such other abominations as Manchester Corporation's attempt to compensate for flooding the nearby valley which is now Thirlmere reservoir, by planting distinctly out-of-place shrubs in the wild landscape.

The Trust is holding a couple of open events at the house on Wednesday 23 November (10am-midday) and Saturday 26 November (1-3pm) to launch a process of involving anyone and everyone in how the house is to be shown. Although currently an empty shell, Allan Bank has evidence of past decoration including what appear to have been stencil patterns in the Wordsworth's bedroom (one of eight; it is quite a substantial place).

Research since the fire has also shown that the walls changed from cream to stone to a yellowy sandstone and then back to cream during the 206 years since a Liverpool merchant, John Gregory Crump, used his 'new money' to construct Wordsworth's abomination. Window frames have been variously black, red and off-white and samples of all the colours will be on show at the open events.

Allan Bank's First curator, Sarah Woodcock, says:

Initially it will be like visiting an empty property when you're buying a house, and we hope that people will come up with all the ideas you tend to have on occasions like that. For ourselves, we are thinking about somewhere which feels open and full of opportunity, and perhaps encourages the sort of reflections which the Wordsworths and Canon Rawnsley had when they were here.

The gardens will be an extra attraction, with evidence in letters that Wordsworth took a hand in designing a special 'viewing tunnel' and placing stone seats at vantage points overlooking the stupendous view. One of the main windows frames the little island in Grasmere whose proposed sale prompted Hardwick to come up with the concept of the National Trust. He left the house to the Trust when he died in 1920, but with a lifetime's tenancy for his second and much younger wife who only died in 1959.

Allan Bank's association with fire and smoke also saw a large wing at the rear of the house burn down in the 1950s. But historically and in terms of the mainetenance budget, this was a blessing in disguise as it wasn't there in Wordsworth's day.

The other two Wordsworth homes apart from Allan Bank and Dove Cottage are his birthplace in Cockermouth and Rydal Mount, down the valley from Grasmere.

Martin Wainwright