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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?
Old Wembley Stadium gates to go up for auction
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 1, 2011
Perfect stocking filler? Timber gates weighing several tonnes each expected to fetch £10,000 in Sotheby's pre-Christmas sale
A pair of gates coming up for auction next week could be the perfect Christmas gift for a football fan with a very large hole in their front wall: each of the gigantic timber gates from the old Wembley Stadium, painfully familiar to millions of fans who queued impatiently waiting for them to swing open, is five metres tall and more than five metres wide.
Although they will be sold at Sotheby's next week by the specialist sporting memorabilia auctioneer Graham Budd, estimated at up to £10,000, bidders will have to take their awesome dimensions on trust. Each weighs several tonnes, and they are too heavy to move to the salesroom.
They were too big even for the Brooking Trust, one of the largest collections of historic doors and windows in the world, whose founder, Charles Brooking, bought them when the 1923 Empire Stadium at Wembley was torn down to the anguish of fans across the world, before the present building by Lord Foster rose in its place.
Brooking began collecting windows and other architectural fragments as a child, and was given a garden shed store as a birthday present by his parents to get the collection out of his bedroom – the first of many stores the ever-expanding collection has outgrown. The trustees are looking for a permanent home, but have sadly concluded that the Wembley gates, built in 1923 by Samuel Elliot and Sons of Reading, are a liability rather than a star exhibit.
A spokesman said: "Regrettably it is the size and weight which negates their retention in the collection. It is with sadness that they and the other pieces are being released; we have held them for the last 11 years hoping to find a way of displaying them, but without success. The funds raised from the auction will go fully to maintaining the collection and helping towards the acquisition of a museum and learning centre – the Brooking Architectural Museum Trust."
Fury grows over Burlington Arcade renovation as shopkeeper faces eviction
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 22, 2011
West End stars and Michael Winner join campaign to stop £5m 'mutilation' of Regency shopping arcade by new owners
Actors from the West End musical Mamma Mia! and film director Michael Winner have joined protests against plans to "vandalise" one of Britain's most architecturally beautiful shopping arcades.
The Burlington Arcade, which runs behind Bond Street from Piccadilly, opened in 1819 "for the sale of jewellery and fancy articles of fashionable demand, for the gratification of the public". Its legions of modern admirers are furious that new owners are planning a £5m renovation which includes refusing to renew the lease of Daniel Bexfield, an independent antique silverware specialist, because he "no longer fits the look". Campaigners claim the arcade's quaint, privately run shops are to be replaced with global brands such as Jimmy Choo and Prada.
American retail expert Peter Marino is coming up with a design that protesters dismiss as brash and out of character after seeing plans submitted to Westminster city council. Marino has said: "I like that my stores aren't built to last."
Kim Ismay, who plays Tanya in Mamma Mia!, said the plans meant one of Britain's most famous Regency landmarks was threatened by the "same-ification of everywhere". She expressed despair at the planned renovation, which includes a coloured marble floor and large sculptures by Antony Gormley. She told the Observer: "I love Gormley's work, but it doesn't go with the arcade."
Built by the architect Samuel Ware, the arcade was described by him as "a piazza for all hardware, wearing apparel and articles not offensive in appearance nor smell". Shopkeepers once lived above their shops. Prostitutes could also be found in upper rooms, entertaining men while the ladies shopped.
There are now only 20 single-unit shops in an arcade originally intended for 72. Protesters fear that this contraction is likely to increase as exorbitant rent rises gradually ensure only big chains and brands such as Prada and Gucci can afford space. One arcade shopkeeper, who declined to be named, said a Russian had just offered £1m up front, simply to secure a lease.
A European retail investment company, Meyer Bergman, bought the arcade with US property investor Joseph Sitt last year, and has said that a £5m refurbishment would turn it into a "worldclass destination". Campaigners argue that it already is one.
A spokesman for the owners said they did not intend to ruin the arcade, and added that many of its features were no longer original. "Their intention is to restore and preserve it," he said. "They acquired it precisely because of its heritage and architecture and any suggestion that they intend to destroy its uniqueness is simply wrong."
Winner told the Observer the planned changes amounted to "disgraceful mutilation" and said it was "absolutely typical of how beautiful areas of London are going to be vandalised".
Bexfield described the prospect of an arcade of designer shops as soulless. Campaigning tweets against the renovation are said to number more than a million.
Susannah Lovis, who has had a jewellery shop in the arcade for 13 years, said: "I'm really concerned about this planning application. The arcade is unique. To alter shops to multinational brand names removes the charm and history. They've been saying they want big global brand names, which is such a tragedy."
Ivan Macquisten, editor of the Antiques Trade Gazette, said: "Developers seem to be gradually ripping the heart out of London's traditional antiques enclaves." He argued that the uniqueness of places such as Burlington Arcade is boosted by small independents, but "this can be overlooked in the glare of big-name luxury brands".
An English Heritage spokeswoman said: "We are going to be talking to the people involved in the proposals to see if they're going to impact on the special interest of the arcade. Ultimately, neither we nor Westminster can do anything about the nature of the retailers."
Commenting on Bexfield's ousting, the owner's spokesman said: "He's got a prime store right on the corner. When you've got an arcade such as this, you want something to attract more customers."
Referring to the accusation of inappropriate Gormley sculptures, Markus Meijer, chief executive of Meyer Bergman, said that the Royal Academy houses a lot of modern art which "doesn't necessarily make it a less attractive museum".
Michael Blair, an architect involved in the renovation, said they were going back to the original designs. Referring to criticism of the marble floor, which was originally stone, he said: "I'm sure if [Ware] was alive today, he would have preferred marble."
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."
MediaCityUK wins a building prize
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 14, 2011
Manchester's MediaCityUK may be unpopular with certain BBC staff required to travel "up north", but the city takes great pride in the place.
Last night the Salford Quays complex was awarded building-of-the-year prize by Greater Manchester chamber of commerce.
That will be more welcome than the trophy it picked up last month, the Carbuncle Cup, which was awarded by the magazine Building Design.
Phil Cusack, chairman of the chamber's property and construction committee, said the development was "of national economic significance."
He added: "MediaCity will contribute to the economic well-being of Salford, Manchester and the region for generations to come. This award recognises its importance in terms of the immense contribution it is already making."
Source: TheBusinessDesk
Huaxi: the village that towers above China – video
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 13, 2011
Huaxi, formerly a poor farming community, is a powerhouse symbol of the country's economic expansion, embodied by a giant 328-metre skyscraper. Jonathan Watts reports
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.
Battle to save Broadmoor hospital from demolition
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 10, 2011
Victorian Society lists first state asylum for criminally insane among Britain top 10 most endangered buildings
A campaign has been launched to save the listed buildings of one of the most notorious institutions in the country, Broadmoor, built in 1863 as the first state asylum for the criminally insane.
One of the first patients transferred from the old Bethlem hospital - now the Imperial War Museum - was the artist Richard Dadd, renowned for his minutely detailed fairy paintings which now change hands for huge prices, who was confined for life for the murder of his father. He was encouraged to continue painting and help decorate the new building and its theatre, and some of his work survives there.
Other famous patients have included Ronald Kray, one of the Kray twins; Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper; James Kelly, one of the suspects as the original Jack the Ripper; and William Chester Minor, an American army surgeon, who became one of the most prolific contributors of quotations from Broadmoor when the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled, and who inspired the best-selling novel The Surgeon of Crowthorne.
Broadmoor remains a high-security psychiatric hospital. Despite its grim reputation, and the fact that its designer Joshua Jebb was better known as a prison architect, Broadmoor was seen as an enlightened approach to care rather than imprisonment. It was built on a height in Berkshire with beautiful views, terraces and flowerbeds, and a kitchen garden where the patients grew much of their own food: an Edwardian photograph shows the buildings in a landscaped setting that could be taken for an opulent private home or a hotel.
The NHS wants to demolish one building and replace the walled gardens with housing.
The campaign has been launched by the Victorian Society, which has included the hospital, whose buildings and gardens are listed Grade II, on its list of the 10 most endangered Victorian buildings in the country. Also on the list are a cricket pavilion now cut off from its pitch by a high hedges, a train station closed to the passengers still using its platform, a Leeds flax mill designed as an ancient Egyptian temple that originally had a grass roof with a flock of sheep, and an Edwardian swimming pool in Bradford, which has just been closed by the council and drained of water.
"Broadmoor has suffered from insensitive new buildings, but the old buildings and the grounds survive in remarkably intact condition," Ian Dungavell, director of the Victorian Society, said. "We're not denying that they may not be suitable for a modern psychiatric hospital, but we are questioning whether it might not be better to develop some of the yucky modern buildings that litter the grounds, and consider more carefully the most suitable use for the old buildings. In particularly we're not convinced that a boutique hotel can possibly survive overlooking a new high security hospital."
Dungavell said the recession had triggered a flood of reports to the society of important buildings in trouble, as businesses close and local authorities slash budgets. He believes Manningham Baths, in Bradford, built in 1904, to be the most intact surviving example in the country, complete with ceramic spittoons along the sides of the swimming pool. The local authority closed and drained it in the past few months to save money, and it has since been broken into and vandalised on three occasions.
Dungavell, who swam 104 lengths there in 2008, one for every year of the building, as part of a campaign to highlight the threat to Edwardian and Victorian pools, said: "It is really sad to see the building locked and deteriorating, when it is still surrounded by streets full of people who could be using its facilities."
Other buildings on the Victorian Society's top 10 at-risk list are:
• Ancoats Dispensary, Manchester, built in 1891, Grade II listed
• Bletchley cricket pavilion, 1898, unlisted
• South Eastern railway office, London Bridge, 1900, unlisted
• Wansford railway station, Peterborough, 1845, Grade II listed
• Crumpsall and Cheetham library, Manchester, 1911, Grade II listed
• The Old Rectory, Columb Major, Cornwall, 1851, Grade II listed
• Temple Mill, Leeds, 1843, Grade I listed
• Former YMCA building, Merthyr Tydfil, 1911, Grade II listed
V&A to celebrate British design with Olympics-spanning show
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 7, 2011
The Haçienda club, Concorde and Harlow to feature next year's showcase of design from 1948 Games through to those of 2012
There will be Concorde, an E-type Jag, a recreation of Manchester's The Haçienda nightclub and …well, Harlow, included in what is expected to be the most comprehensive survey of postwar British innovation and design ever staged.
The V&A announced on Friday plans for its big show next year which will showcase more than seven decades of the best British design with a timeline that runs from the austerity Olympics of 1948 to the less austere 2012 Games.
The exhibition's timing, in the depths of economic turmoil, could not be better in that it will show that some of the best ideas have emerged from the worst of times. It will, said co-curator Christopher Breward, "demonstrate that in times of economic downturn, actually that idea of the British inventor, the British maverick, the old Victorian idea of the engineer-hero has both a long history and is a very important way of looking beyond the immediate financial mess".
The show, he hoped, have "a positive message. The evidence is there in the objects".
The exhibition launch was held on the top floor of the Gherkin, a building that will feature in the forthcoming show. From there other important examples of postwar architecture which will be in the exhibition could just be made out through London's dingily grey morning skies: the Lloyds building; Erno Goldfinger's brutalist 1960s Balfron Tower and Zaha Hadid's Olympic park aquatics centre, for which the V&A has commissioned a new model.
The show will also feature the growth of new towns with models and drawings for urban utopias such as Milton Keynes and Harlow which has the Frederick Gibberd-designed residential block The Lawn, one of the earliest examples of British high-density housing.
There will be about 350 exhibits on show, over two-thirds of them from the V&A's vast collections and it will cover everything from fashion to fine art to video games.
Breward said The Haçienda was so important in youth culture that it had to be an important part of the show and the club's original designer, Ben Kelly, is working on the V&A show. "You'll almost feel like you're there," said Breward. "Within an exhibition context."
There will be the more obvious exhibits – Dyson's bagless vacuum cleaner, say – as well as unsung heroes such as the Topper dinghy and the Moulton folding bike.
Ghislaine Wood, the show's other curator, said the show represented three years of work and it had been a good opportunity to research the V&A's own collection. "We have acquired contemporary material right from the beginning of the V&A's history and it is at moments like these that you realise how important it is to keep collecting contemporary work."
• British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age will be staged between 31 March and 12 August.
British brutalist buildings added to endangered monuments list
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 5, 2011
Preston bus station and part of the South Bank centre in London listed as among the world's most endangered structures
Some of the most widely disliked buildings in Britain, so called "concrete brutalist" structures of the 60s and 70s, including a bus station in Preston, a library in Birmingham, and parts of the South Bank centre in London, have been listed among the world's most endangered treasures.
The UK has seven places on the World Monument Fund's watch list for endangered sites – more in proportion to its size than any other country.
The sites are usually nominated by campaigners to save them – the 20th Century Society in the case of the brutals – and inclusion is often followed by hefty grants from a trust fund based in the Empire State Building in New York and backed by American Express, which has just committed a further $5m (£3.2m).
The seven UK nominations the island of St Helena, that speck of land in the south Atlantic where Napoleon was imprisoned; Quarr, a 20th-century abbey on the Isle of Wight; Newstead Abbey, Byron's family home; and the medieval ruins of Coventry's old cathedral, levelled by a night of German bombing but still standing beside Sir Basil Spence's new building.
The most controversial, however, will undoubtedly be the harsh, uncompromisingly grey concrete buildings jointly nominated as "British brutalism", which though they have passionate admirers, have also often been voted the structures people would most like to see demolished.
In the case of Birmingham central library, they are likely to get their wish. Although the 1970s building is still in use, the most ambitious new library project in the country, a towering £200m complex including a new home for the Birmingham Rep theatre company, has already started to rise above the rooftops. When the books and collections are transferred in 2013, the old building will be demolished, and many in Birmingham – including most of the staff – will dance on its grave.
Preston's monumental bus station, the biggest in the world when it opened in 1969, and still doing the job for which it was built, is also threatened with demolition.
Like the Preston and Birmingham structures, the Hayward Gallery in the South Bank complex has been refused listed building status, although it is flanked by the Grade II*-listed National Theatre and the Grade I-listed Festival Hall. Many artists including Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin have mounted spectacularly successful recent exhibitions there, but over the last decades several redevelopment proposals for the South Bank complex have envisaged flattening it and its neighbouring Queen Elizabeth concert hall.
Jonathan Foyle, chair of the UK branch of the WMF, said: "Britain has a high level of statutory protection and guardianship, but it also has a very wide and rich heritage and inevitably things fall through the cracks in the floorboards. We are independent and non-governnmental, and we see it as our job to stick up for the underdogs, to flag up the importance of places that might not immediately strike everyone."
A total of 67 sites have made it on to the list this time, ranging from the enigmatic Nasca lines which run for miles across the Peruvian desert, to the American civil war site of Charleston in South Carolina, considered at risk from unsympathetic tourist development including rows of moored cruise ships. The floating fishing villages of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam are included, along with a fire-damaged railway station in Istanbul.
Sites devastated by natural disasters have also made the list, including hundreds of traditional villages and historic sites destroyed or damaged by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and monuments in Christchurch, damaged the New Zealand quake.
"The watch [list] reminds us of our collective role as stewards of the earth and of its human heritage," Bonnie Burnham, president of the fund, said in New York.