magazine from your hotel’s Reception deskThis building at 20 Fenchurch Street in London’s financial centre is a 38-storey skyscraper is known locally as the “Walkie-Talkie” because of its unusual shape, was designed by internationally renowned architect Rafael Viñoly. It is a dramatic edifice with curved exterior walls and windows. And there lies a problem: as any school-child will tell you, a concave mirror [above] causes light to converge. In this case, the sunlight can cause temperatures over 90°C to be registered at its focus, burning floor-matting through open doors and paint on window frames [below right], and melting the plastic exteriors of cars.
As Rowan Moore wrote in The Observer “...it has no meaningful or enjoyable relationship to anything else, either at street level or on the skyline. It makes no adjustment of scale, form or aspect”. Read more here.
Doesn’t it ruin the London skyline? It should have the same treatment as this monstrosity!
The Orbit Sculpture, London Olympic Park: Standing 115 metres high, the Orbit is the tallest art structure in Britain – offering stunning views over the Olympic Stadium, Olympic Park and the whole of London; it was designed by Anish Kapoor; construction started in November 2010, and was completed by April 2012
Some other Crazy Buildings (like the Gherkin and the Shard) are in my River Thames gallery.
The Gherkin: officially 30 St Mary Axe, a skyscraper in the City of London, opened in May 2004; with 40 floors, it is 180 metres (591 ft) tall, and is on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building, severely damaged in 1992 by a bomb placed by the Provisional IRA. The first design was much larger and higher, said to be totally out of keeping with othe buildings in the City, and a hazard for aircraft using both Heathrow and London City Airports. The “gherkin” name was applied to the current building at least as far back as 1999, referring to that plan’s highly unorthodox layout and appearance. Due to the current building’s somewhat phallic appearance, other inventive names have also been used for the building, including the Erotic gherkin, the Towering Innuendo (a pun on The Towering Inferno), and the Crystal Phallus (also a pun on Crystal Palace).
City Hall: the headquarters of the Greater London Authority, the Mayor of London and London Assembly; it is in Southwark near Tower Bridge and opened in 2002.
One Canada Square (the one with the flashing light on the top and often incorrectly called Canary Wharf after its location): a skyscraper in Tower Hamlets which was the tallest completed building in the UK from 1991 until 2010, 235 metres (770 ft) above ground level and having 50 storeys; it’s mostly offices
[Lower picture]: Canary Wharf and the River Thames by Night
The Shard, London Bridge: a pyramid-shaped skyscraper in Southwark, now open to the public; it is almost 310 metres (1,020 ft) tall and is currently the tallest building in Europe; it is also the second-tallest free-standing structure in the UK, after the 330-metre (1,083-ft) concrete tower at the Emley Moor telecommunications and broadcasting station, West Yorkshire
Shh! The MI6 Building (which of course doesn’t exist): the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service (“MI6”); it is known within the intelligence community as Legoland and also as Babylon-on-Thames due to its resemblance to an ancient Babylonian ziggurat; it is on the bank of the River Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge
Fireworks light up the London skyline and Big Ben just after midnight on 1st January 2015
The London Eye: Europe’s tallest Ferris wheel, on the banks of the Thames, 135 metres (443 ft) tall, the wheel having a diameter of 120 metres (394 ft); it is described by its operators as “the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel” (as it is supported by an A-frame on one side only, unlike the larger Nanchang and Singapore wheels)
The Millennium Dome: originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium, and located on the Greenwich Peninsula in SE London; the dome still exists, and is now a key exterior feature of The O2 (though what it has to do with molecular oxygen I have no idea); the Prime Meridian passes the western edge of the Dome
(See also these photos taken from a boat on the River Thames)
The Houses of Parliament — and a Routemaster bus!
The first royal palace was built on the site in the 11th century, and Westminster was the primary London residence of the Kings of England until a fire destroyed much of the complex in 1512; after that, it served as the home of Parliament, which had been meeting there since the 13th century, and the seat of the Royal Courts of Justice; in 1834, an even greater fire ravaged the heavily rebuilt Houses of Parliament, and the only structures of significance to survive were Westminster Hall, the Cloisters of St Stephen’s, the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft and the Jewel Tower; the subsequent reconstruction (by Charles Barry) is in the Perpendicular Gothic style; the much larger replacement building contains over 1,100 rooms organised symmetrically around two series of courtyards, part of its area was reclaimed from the Thames, which is the setting of its principal façade, the 266-metre (873-ft) river front.
The Euston Arch was built in 1837, the original entrance to Euston station; it was demolished in 1962, at that time the World’s Tallest Monumental Gateway.
The Euston Arch was demolished when the station was rebuilt in the 1960s, but much of the original stone was later located – principally used as fill in the Prescott Channel (part of the River Lea in east London) – and proposals have been formulated to reconstruct it as part of the planned redevelopment of the station; the demolition of the arch was in the plan to upgrade and electrify the main line between Euston and Scotland as part of the 1960s Modernisation Programme; the proposal called for the demolition of the entire station, including the arch and the Great Hall, the existing station being regarded as inconveniently sited and impractically small. Pure vandalism!
The Royal Albert Hall, as you can see, is like the Tardis – it’s bigger inside than out.