Photography by Wilfred Tomescu

Central London’s own tendency is much more diverse as new buildings respond to emerging needs whilst keeping a cohesive relationship with the old buildings. The iconic Portland stone construction reflected in the modern glass façades has become an imposed, characteristic image of London.

However, South of Thames, the amalgam appears ameliorated. Southwark is dominated by sought-for regeneration projects – most notably the City Hall and Bankside – and London’s most famous food market, the Borough Market. Here, the response to London’s growth and modernisation is led by the conflict between the public transportation and the pedestrian culture; the old is left underneath as the new stacks on top. Thus, the riverbank, the underground, the street level and the overpass create new levels in the structure of the borough. A viaduct roofs the Borough Market, old streets remain underneath brick arches and the churches are shaded by modern constructions built on the raised banks.

Photography by Wilfred Tomescu.

From the middle of this Southwark, London Bridge Tower seems to be pushed upwards by the very same tectonic plates that form the layering. It is well connected to this understanding of organisation as it has an underground entrance, one at street level and another that connects with the public transportation. Its exterior aesthetics suggest that it is still in the process of formation but that illusion is given away once inside, where it is noticeable that the composing ‘shards’ are linked by thin and irregular strips of glazing, mounted on a poor composition of visible structural elements.

 It is from this landscape perspective that the building is most often portrayed, whether in the media, with its characteristic use of the term ‘controversial’ or the now coined moniker ‘The Shard’; or from high-altitude representations, which show it as a sculpture, a landmark or a monument. In those versions, mostly inaccessible in reality, the relationship between the cluster of towers in The City and London Bridge Tower is a double-sided blade. Sometimes it seems that the tower is the first move in a chess game – the very first chess piece that breaks the line of pawns on a chessboard whilst other times it seems that it was left behind on the wrong side of the river whilst the other towers encourage it to jump over.

Photography by Wilfred Tomescu.

In terms of architecture and urbanism, the ground level gives yet another perspective. The approach is very rewarding as the building hides and shows itself behind foreground buildings, creating dynamic and exciting vistas in tune with the aesthetic ideals of the Picturesque. The tower can be seen from almost anywhere in Central London and, from most places, it seems to belong. Weather reminiscent of Golding’s Spire, blending in the background of faraway churches or a suggestion of a modern equivalent of Tolkien’s all-seeing Eye of Mordor, the building is infallibly English.

Photography by Wilfred Tomescu.

However, at ground level, the architecture ceases to dominate. On foot, the surrounding approach is tedious and constricted; unwelcoming, tight streets seem to be leading past the building rather than towards it. The structure of the tower meets the ground elegantly as the cladding stops a few floors above and the ground floor plan is set back to create a sheltering overhang. This is compromised by poorly detailed, redundant canopies that break the line of cladding.

Photography by Wilfred Tomescu.

The London Bridge Quarter site is cluttered and leaves the appearance of an interchange rather than a modern urban intervention that is looking towards the future. Bollards dominate the pavement, surround buildings and, sometimes, even double the structure. The adjacent buildings on site suggest that the neck breaking, violently converging lines of the tower gave up floor space in favour of height. This is where the building is too small and the thin roman bricks are the first to suggest that in the context of Southwark, the project is contrived. Instead of a site-specific restoration, a plaza or a park, the borough is left with yet another transportation node. A transitory population is unlikely to congregate and socialise is such a place.

Outside the British context, the concept is anything but new. This way of representing the future has been attempted numerous times since the age of Enlightenment from Expressionism – most notable, in this case, is the German Expressionist Bruno Taut’s ‘Stadtkrone’ – through Futurism and Russian Constructivism and realised in the construction of New York. Furthermore, a hotel, a restaurant, housing and offices are not sufficient for a city. Following the current tendency, London is more likely to keep adding streets on top of the old ones that become too cluttered, overpopulated and filled with constrictions and dead ends. Maybe the future of Southwark will see a number of skyscrapers with streets leaving each floor platform and each level representing another generation with its specific breakthroughs and mistakes, lifestyles and technology – a true vertical city.

Atrium of UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Image: Peter Cook

We were delighted to win the President’s award for practice-based research for our project ‘Design for the warming environment’ which focused on two buildings we had recently completed: UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies and Judson College in Illinois.  We are firm believers in the potential for practice to achieve research outcomes at the highest international level, particularly so in such an applied subject.

The award has helped build credibility in subsequent work, both in practice and academia: encouraging other organisations to participate and journals to publish the outcomes.  We have also continued to develop the ideas from ‘Design for the warming environment’ in projects such as the multi-disciplinary and cross-university Design and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate, (De²RHECC) which was funded through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change funding call.  The project investigated economical and practice strategies for the adaptation of the NHS’s estate to increase its resilience to climate change whilst meeting onerous emissions targets. Detailed refurbishment strategies were devised and potential barriers to their implementation were investigated.

The RIBA’s annual research awards exist to promote the innovation and insight that emerge from excellent research. The awards acknowledge and encourage fresh and strategic thinking in architectural research for the benefit of the profession as a whole.

Projects are judged by a distinguished panel of experts in four categories:

• Master’s degree thesis
• PhD thesis
• University-led research
• Practice-led research

The deadline for receipt of entries is 5pm on 20 May 2013. For full terms and conditions and to enter please see www.architecture.com/awards

Herne Hill railway station, London
Architect: John Taylor
Source: Building News, 1 May 1863, vol.10, p.337
© RIBA Library Books and Periodicals Collection

150 years ago in May 1863 there was news of the competition to design Liverpool’s New Exchange Buildings which had attracted 44 entries and were on public display in the city’s Old Session House (1). Church building was actively taking place, resulting in the opening of new or rebuilt churches such as the Gothic-style Daylesford Church in Worcestershire (2). Generating far more columns inches than these and leaving a legacy we are still using, readapting and investing in today were the railways.

Daylesford Church, Worcestershire.
Architect: J. L. Pearson
Source: Building News, 15 May 1863, vol.10, p.375
© RIBA Library Books and Periodicals Collection

“It seems as if the nation had become seized with a mania for railway locomotion, otherwise the excursion train could not have so speedily become a recognized institution in this country.” (Building News, 8 May 1863, vol.10, p.349).

Architectural details, Herne Hill railway station, London,
Architect: John Taylor
Source: Building News, 1 May 1863, vol.10, p.337
© RIBA Library Books and Periodicals Collection

In 1862 Herne Hill was a new station on the expanding network of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, and was featured in Building News on 1 May 1863. The architecture of the station is Gothic, a style praised in the same article as a sign of the “improving state of public taste” (3) and its application on all types of buildings given as evidence of the vibrancy of the style.

Herne Hill railway station in May 2013. It was Grade II listed in 1998
(Photograph by Wilson Yau)

There was also news of the laying of the foundation stone of Blackfriars Bridge (4). When the crossing was completed, the line from Herne Hill station was able to cross the Thames and connect to the eastern terminus of the world’s first underground railway, the Metropolitan line, which had only opened in January that same year.

The use of steam locomotives in the confines of a tunnel proved to be too much for some though. By May the Builder (5) was complaining of the dire state of ventilation in the Metropolitan Underground Railway: “the sulphurous fumes which escape from the tunnel are both unpleasant and unwholesome”. The journal recommended additional air shafts to improve the situation. There were complaints about the impact of the new railways on cities. In the article “Railway vandalism in Ludgate-hill” it was claimed that the new Ludgate Hill Viaduct would block a view of St Paul’s Cathedral and through demolition further ruin London, “proverbially an ugly city” (6). The viaduct was opened a few years later, but removed in the late 20^th century.

It’s clear that London has always been a contested space and it has never been easy to build there.

References:

1. Builder, 30 May 1863, vol.21, p.381
2. Building News, 15 May 1863, vol.10, p.374
3. Building News, on 1 May 1863, vol.10, p.327
4. Builder, 9^th May 1863, vol.21, p. 336
5. Builder, 9 May 1863 vol.21, p.335
6. Building News, 15 May 1863 vol.10, p.381

Chilehaus, Hamburg, 1929
Architect: Fritz Höger
Photographer: Francis Rowland Yerbury (© RIBA Library Photographs Collection)

A masterpiece of Expressionist architecture, Hamburg’s Chilehaus was built as part of a programme by the city council to clean up insalubrious areas. With its upper storeys recessed to circumvent height restrictions, the brick office building provided accommodation for 4,500 workers and gained international recognition for its architect, Fritz Höger (1877-1949). Brick was well suited to Hamburg’s damp climate but was also held to symbolize traditional German values such as honesty and sincerity. It was thus regarded by Höger and others as a colourful, indigenous riposte to the monochrome International Style. Höger’s work was much admired in England where it influenced buildings such as the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon (1932).

From an article by Robert Elwall, Assistant Director, British Architectural Library, and originally published in January 2010.

More images are available to view on RIBApix.

Design for a beach house, California, for Rupert R. Ryan, 1937
Designer: Rudolph M. Schindler
© RIBA Library Drawing and Archives Collections

This coloured presentation sketch by Rudolph M. Schindler (1887-1953) features an unrealised hillside home overlooking San Francisco Bay. Born in Vienna Schindler trained under Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos before moving to Chicago in 1914. There Schindler joined Frank Lloyd Wright’s office and was sent to Los Angeles in 1920. Schindler’s work was primarily residential and included concrete tilt-slab construction experiments as well as futuristic hillside homes, reflecting his advocacy of ‘Space Architecture’. Schindler’s designs were rediscovered with a traveling exhibition organised by U.C. Santa Barbara and hosted by institutions in the US and Europe. This drawing was included in the 1972 inaugural exhibit of the Heinz Gallery at Portman Place and is one of three drawings presented to the RIBA by Schindler’s family.

Dr Kurt G F Helfrich, CA
Chief Archivist and Collections Manager, British Architectural Library, RIBA

More images are available to view on RIBApix.

Architectural inspiration is different for everyone – from being captivated by an intriguing patterned ceiling, to finding satisfaction in the rhythmic placement of windows or wonderment at the sheer size and scale of buildings. The ‘Who rocked your world?’ drawing workshop at the RIBA’s Spring Last Tuesday event invited members of the public to plot inspirational architecture from around the world on a huge floor map. As the evening unfolded, participants watched the map grow and architectural identity over-shadow arbitrary national borders.

Participants drawing

Participants adding their drawings to the map

On the map, participants planted their drawing of their chosen building – some famous, others obscure – alongside images from the RIBA’s own collections of architectural drawings and photographs. Examples from the collections included the patterned houses of the Ndebele of South Africa, Piranesi’s drawing of the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome and Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House. Drawings produced during the workshop showcased a wide range of exciting, and often widely unknown, architecture from abroad, including the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the commercial edifice of Norman Foster’s Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation headquarters and the less well-known Mount Buzludzha, the now disused space-age headquarters of the Communist Party in Bulgaria.

So, who rocked your world?

The map with images from the collections and participants’ drawings

India and South-East Asia

Middle East

The workshop was led by Ros Croker, Library Education Curator, RIBA. See more images from the collections on RIBApix and check for more events in What’s On.

First Chris Halligan of Stephen George and Partners, whose Guide to Building Materials and the Environment won the in the 2011 Practice-led category, has kindly agreed to share his thoughts with us.

Receiving the 2011 President’s Award for Outstanding Practice-Located Research was possibly the greatest personal achievement of my career to date. Not only due to the recognition it brought myself, Joanne Denison (my co-author) and Stephen George and Partners – but also because it was totally unexpected.

When we wrote the Guide to Building Materials and the Environment, we never considered it to be true “research”. To us, “research” meant either laboratories full of people in white coats testing theories against empirical evidence or strange looking jet aircraft gleaming as they nudged hypersonic speeds at the edge of the atmosphere. Our own aim was just to provide a practical resource for use within our own company which would help us avoid the frustration we had encountered when seeking information for a project. The suggestion from Nick Austin, our practice manager that perhaps we should consider entering our work for the President’s Research Awards just wasn’t taken seriously by Joanne and I. (After all, we didn’t wear lab coats or own a wind tunnel…) However, Nick was insistent that we should enter and moreover, he felt the Guide stood a chance of being a contender. Credit must go to Nick for convincing us to make a submission in the end – and when we received the news that we had in fact won, the shouts of shocked elation were audible across the street!

Winning the Award presented us with several subsequent opportunities to appear at various prestigious events. One of the most memorable for myself was to be asked to lecture at the Thirteenth World Triennial of Architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria run by the International Academy of Architecture. This resulted in being presented with a very touching gift of architectural literature from the Dean of Architecture at Tbilisi University in appreciation of the high standard of our contribution to the event. The next evening, I was asked by the British Ambassador to Bulgaria to be interviewed with him on Bulgarian television to promote the sustainable credentials of the London 2012 Olympics. It’s quite something to hear yourself being dubbed into a foreign language!

Since we won the Award, it has been difficult to find the time to update the Guide as often as I would like. Probably in common with many other practices, the economic downturn means we are all working twice as hard just to stay in one place! However, we continue to acquire and collate information on materials and the third edition of the Stephen George & Partners Guide to Building Materials and the Environment should be available before the end of the year.

The RIBA’s annual research awards exist to promote the innovation and insight that emerge from excellent research. The awards acknowledge and encourage fresh and strategic thinking in architectural research for the benefit of the profession as a whole.

Projects are judged by a distinguished panel of experts in four categories:

• Master’s degree thesis
• PhD thesis
• University-led research
• Practice-led research

The deadline for receipt of entries is 5pm on 20 May 2013. For full terms and conditions and to enter please see www.architecture.com/awards

‘Architecture’ mosaic, Albert Memorial, 2010: One of the four external mosaics representing the four arts. (Photograph by Wilson Yau)

‘There can, indeed, be no doubt that the public expect a monument of great and conspicuous magnificence.’
(George Gilbert Scott in the Builder, 18 April 1863, p.276)

Mismanagement had damaged the project for a grand memorial to Prince Albert in Hyde Park, in the opinion of the Building News of 24 April 1863. It said anything built subsequently that could be said to resemble art would exceed everyone’s low expectations. What was ultimately erected, through its rich decoration and sculptures, symbolically brought together the arts, sciences and industries that Albert promoted during his life.

Competition design for the Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, London, 1863. Architect: Charles Barry Junior.
© RIBA Library Drawings and Archives Collection

Two days earlier Scott won the competition to design the Albert Memorial, beating the entries of six other invited architects including Charles Barry Junior, E.M. Barry and Philip Charles Hardwick. This expensive example of Victorian architecture, a symbol of a monarch’s grief and paid for by public subscription, is the most grandiose memorial to Prince Albert. Many smaller memorials were built across the British Empire, something that the Building News considered had diverted energy and funds away from the creation a greater imperial monument in Hyde Park.

Albert Memorial 
Architect: Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878)
Artist: John Drayton Wyatt
(Source: Builder, vol. 21, 1863 May 23, p. 371)
© RIBA Library Books and Periodicals Collection

‘The structure is to have a shrine-like appearance, and be enriched to the utmost extent all the arts can go.’
(Building News, 3 April 1863, p.307)

Despite reservations about the rejection of the Classical style that Albert was reported to have favoured, Building News’s description of Scott’s Gothic design is remarkably similar to what was built – lavishly decorated and with a seated statue of Prince Albert underneath a canopy, but with one exception. What today is still a major landmark in the area of London dubbed ‘Albertopolis’ could have disregarded all practicalities and been nearly twice the size and height, reaching 300 ft high, according to Building News. This idea, intended to make Scott’s design even more striking by simply increasing its size, was soon dropped.

References:

• Builder, 18 April 1863 ‘Proposed Memorial of the late Prince Consort’ , vol.21, pp.276-7
• Building News, 3 April 1863. ‘The Memorial to the Prince Consort’, vol.10, pp.249-50
• Building News, 24 April 1863. vol.10, pp.307-8

Images:
Discover more images of the Albert Memorial on RIBApix.

Fantastical Cities family workshop: Models, drawings and collages

Frank Gehry’s buildings received new exterior colour schemes and Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 was re-imagined during the free public workshop last weekend at the RIBA’s headquarters – 66 Portland Place. Families gathered ideas and inspiration by looking at images from the architectural collections of the RIBA and worked together to design their own new cityscape. Following the example of 19th-century publisher John Tallis, whose original guides featuring topographical street views of London are one of the highlights of the RIBA’s Early Imprints Collection, families conjured up new representations of the city.

Drawings and collages lining the streets of the new city

Fantastical Cities family workshop

Fantastical Cities family workshop: Some of our amazing participants and their work

Talent was in plentiful supply!

Fantastical Cities family workshop: A view of the new, growing city

Participants drew the roads and created buildings to line the streets, responding to their neighbours and the rest of the new, growing city. Sorry, Le Corbusier, no grid was created, and apologies to Ebenezer Howard, radiating forms were absent, but more optimistically for the environment, cycle lanes and railways were added without prompting from adults! Hypothetically made out of anything from the typical bricks and stone, to the more imaginative materials like pizza (hmmm), nuts and bones, the buildings were represented in drawings, origami, collages and 3D models.

Workshop banner

Images used in the workshop, from the collections of the RIBA (see more on RIBApix)

Workshop leader Ros Croker

We’d like to thank all our participants for sharing their many talents and ideas with the RIBA team, led by Library Education Curator Ros Croker, this Easter holiday.

Participants’ feedback

If you enjoyed looking at the achievements of our youngsters, and would like to take part, check What’s On for more information about the education events taking place over the summer at the RIBA.

All images © Wilson Yau / RIBA, British Architectural Library

Controversy exists around the idea of new towns and place making from scratch. Contrived and created for a specific purpose, programme or more recently, a developer’s whim, a common criticism is that they too often lack the character of a place that is organic and sprung from a history of people and layers of tradition.  

In history the Garden City Movement and the British Welfare state were both motivated by socio-economic and architectural drivers to create bold, new developments that took pride in tackling the complexities of city making and offering better living environments.  Can these factors once again be a source of collective pride?

Launched last week, The Banality of Good, a new exhibition at 66 Portland Place, explores six international cities built between World War II and the present day. Curated by Dutch collective, the Crimson Architectural Historians and first shown at the Venice Biennale, it incorporates into large allegoric triptychs both the dreams and the realities of the towns to explore whether they can become the ‘Banality of Good.’ 

 As part of the Spring Last Tuesday, Crimson Architectural Historians Dr Michelle Provoost led an introduction to the exhibition and with a packed Florence Hall a musical performance of ‘Brasilia’ by the singer, guitarist and author Mark Ritsema.

 Showing until 10 May, 10am–5pm.