I was in Borough last week and walking under the tunnels in the dark towards the Shard was really impressive. I still don't love the design (30 St Mary Axe is still my London building of choice), but you can't deny it's going to look striking when it's completed.
Have any of you interested in London architecture people been to NLA (New London Architecture) at The Building Centre, just off Tottenham Court Road? I went on Monday and spent about an hour and a half there. http://www.newlondonarchitecture.org/ Lots of info of all the plans for each borough in London and a couple of related exhibitions. And they run walking tours of different areas that I'd be signing up to in a shot if I lived there.
I never had until last weekend either, when I was googling to see if there were any books on contemporary London architecture, and then stumbled on that. And then I bought this book from amazon, which I've not had a chance to have a proper look at, but seems quite lovely:
Not quite related to the thread, but my favourite London building (if it can be counted as such), has to be The Barbican Estate. Holy Mother of Christ what a completely and utterly insane building, and scale and project. Something like that would NEVER get built in todays day and age. Its basically lacking a supermarket to make it a pretty much self-contained town in London's City centre. AMAZING. It reminds me of Blade Runner or something, or something that humans would build in a GIANT AIR BUBBLE on the moon as a human colony. I can spend hours walking around it going OH MY GOD THIS PLACE IS MENTUL. I particularly like the BRIGHT BLUE man-made lake, and the strange pods that residents can go and sit on on it. You can see all the pipes and shit in the water, just adding to the ARTIFICIAL APPEAL for me. I love the botanical garden too, that looks straight out of a Resident Evil game. I would really like to live there one day, place is insane.
Barbican is great. I work just down the road from it and once I got over how UGLY it was I've come to like it a lot, especially in the context of boring old Clerkenwell.
oh Lolly THANK YOU. I'd probably never hear of anything like that. I have to go. And that book looks positively AMAZING - review when you get it please
I'm quite convinced you will all LOVE that place. And it's even got a little cafe in it. I think I'm going to come up for one of the walking tours they do. There is only one at present on the website: 'South West to West End' which I won't be able to come up for again so soon, as I'm coming up again later this week, and I don't think it will be the most interesting one anyway. But if one is advertised which covers the City and it's an afternoon, I'm going to get the train up. I always look for architectural tours whenever I'm on holiday (and in the US there always seems to be a lot of them), so I'm sure I'll enjoy one where I can come up and see everything in progress. Oh, and I can't remember if it was in this thread that I mentioned Richard Serra's 'Fulcrum' sculpture, but I found it for the first time last week. AMAZING.
Yes, and I did a walking one and (even better still) an architectural boat tour. Possibly the best thing I did there.
I think I read somewhere that The Apprentice credits have been redone to include the Shard for this series.
Taking the topic title quite literally... http://www.sphericalimages.com/panoramas/gigapixel-panorama-of-london-from-st-pauls-cathedral
I have to say the pics I saw of it yesterday were that it was VERY UNATTRACTIVE INDEED. However I will make full judgement when the top is complete. One cool picture I saw was the sun reflecting off the top, which was actually super cool indeed. And I expect it to look lovely at night. Otherwise it has too many ugly additional features that detract from the original images of the beautiful smooth 'shard'.
In London while waiting for my mate on Friday, I looked up, and there was the shard. Its OK, nothing special, bloody tall. I tried to take a picture because between the cranes on top was the moon, it looked rather snazzy, but my phone didn't seem to pick it up.
Oh did we see the pics from the guys that scaled it The views are amazing... http://www.placehacking.co.uk/2012/04/07/climbing-shard-glass/
You know, I do like The Shard - on the whole. But I find the top really dissatisfying. Why couldn't it be topped off PROPERLY?
I know a few people who've said that. I don't mind the fact that it doesn't go to a single point at the top, but why the hell are the uppermost floors in the open air? Without glass surrounding them you can just see the bare steel structure, which is just messy.
I assume it's meant to be a bit offbeat, a touch quirky you know... but I just find it annoying. It's also entirely feasible that it's due to some kind of issue with the logistics and running of the building... you always see steam rising from Canary Wharf...
