Tag Archives: London

Carbuncle Cup victor of 2017

Posted on September 12, 2017 by

This year’s Carbuncle Cup, awarded annually (three years now) to the worst new building in Britain, goes to a development called Nova Victoria, so called because it is what you see when you emerge from the Victoria Station tube stop. … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tragic London tower lesson

Posted on June 25, 2017 by

The Grenfell Tower that burned in London, costing several score of lives, offers lessons that we can and will again fail to heed. No building can be perfectly fireproof, and no ladder truck can reach beyond 20 stories anyhow. If … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

London bridges standing up

Posted on June 4, 2017 by

Yesterday’s terror attack on London Bridge follows by about two and a half months a similar attack on Westminster Bridge, four bridges east of London Bridge. Thirty-three bridges span the River Thames in Greater London. The most famous is Tower … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Inside Drabble’s developer

Posted on May 3, 2017 by

Margaret Drabble’s 1977 novel The Ice Age is supposedly about Britain and its existential angst during the ’60s and ’70s, but I just started reading it. For a few pages near the outset, at least, it concerns the career of … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Rampant peeping-Tomism

Posted on May 2, 2017 by

With all the glass residential towers going up with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the hotshot cities of the world, the global market for binoculars and telescopes must be going haywire. But not everyone wants to be caught in the two-ring circus … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

London then and now

Posted on April 13, 2017 by

This video, “Oldest Footage of London Ever,” from Yestervid, one-ups its own videos of old footage of New York posted here a few days ago by including not only the old footage but also side-by-side old and new footage – … Continue reading →

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Videos of London, 1927/2014

Posted on January 12, 2017 by

Here are two videos side by side of the same scenes in London from 1927 and 2014, courtesy of Big Geek Daddy’s Video of the Day. A week ago I posted “London in 25 hard minutes,” one of Rick Steves’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Krier on cities’ skyscraperitis

Posted on January 10, 2017 by

According to the headline writers at BD magazine, Britain’s leading journal of architecture, the takeaway from Leon Krier’s new essay there is “It doesn’t matter if skyscrapers are designed by world-class architects or hacks – they’re destroying our cities.” I … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

London in 25 hard minutes

Posted on January 4, 2017 by

By hard I mean compared with the soft gray focus of the video in my last post, “Fifty soft minutes in Paris.” This is the Rick Steves tour of Britain’s capital. Steves’s voice is mellow enough, and the photography, unlike … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Video | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Mixing work with pleasure

Posted on September 5, 2016 by

It is Labor Day, so permit me to combine work with pleasure. What follows are lines from the experience of the bastard London bookbinder Hyacinth Robinson, who has just signed on to a vague role in a hazy future socialist … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment