Horrible name, but a rather nice development which uplifts the game of tourism and is one of the best examples in London of how to handle a public place (which receives some 5m visitors per annum). Previous issues of this guide showed a Terry Farrell Po-Mo barnlike building housing, appropriately, a McDonald’s. It has been […]
Category: Londos’s Contemporary Architecture
Tower Place
Foster’s publicity for this rather elegant 42,000 sq. m. office building claims it as a reinvention of the famous, early ‘70’s Wills Faber design replacing taller and ‘insensitive’ 1960’s designs, and the medieval grain of small buildings and streets. Two triangular plan buildings are linked by a superb large atrium: “the stone and glass facades. […]
Plantation Place
This is a bit of a beast, reminiscent of Denis Lasdun’s effort just north of the Barbican (Milton Gate) i. e. its all glass — plus decorative stone fins (the planners insist on stone). But it is not unattractive, has a splendid upper level garden terrace, enjoys superb views and is extremely well detailed. In […]
Like Lloyd’s of London, the Royal
Exchange was, until recently, another exercise in cultural continuity masking architectural differences. The first Royal Exchange was founded as a place of international commerce and built 1566. It burned down in the Great Fire of 1666 and was then rebuilt, only to be burned down again in the 1830’s. Each architectural exercise provided the same […]
A City architectural geography
You can catch all of that in one, wide ranging review. But now turn around, away from this nodal point around the Tower and walk through the back streets of the City toward the ‘navel’ of the City: the area around Bank. Here, you will be at the centre of a metropolitan area that can […]