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Tag Archives: London
Tragic London tower lesson
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 City Planning, Grenfell Tower, London, Manhattan, Simon Jenkins, Urban Density
9 Comments
London bridges standing up
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
Inside Drabble’s developer
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 Alien, Developers, Fiction, Gasometer, London, Margaret Drabble, Providence RI, Sigourney Weaver, The Ice Age
1 Comment
Rampant peeping-Tomism
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 Guardian, London, Neo-Bankside, Oliver Wainwright, Peeping Toms, Skyscrapers, Tate Modern, This East Side
4 Comments
London then and now
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
Posted in Old Video
Tagged Cites, London, photography, Video, Vintage Footage, Yestervid
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Videos of London, 1927/2014
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 Big Geek Daddy, London, Luftwaffe, Modern Architecture, Preservation, Rick Steves, Video, Video of the Day
4 Comments
Krier on cities’ skyscraperitis
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 Garden City, James Howard Kunstler, Leon Krier, London, Roger Scruton, Skyscrapers
2 Comments
London in 25 hard minutes
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 Europe, Historic Architecture, London, Paris, Rick Steves, Tour, Video
3 Comments
Mixing work with pleasure
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 Class, Henry James, Labor Day, London, Paris, Princess Casamassima, Revolution, Socialism
1 Comment
London’s Tin Pan Alley, RIP
RIP? So it appears, to the eyes (and supposedly the ears) of many. A deep source sent me an article from Britain’s Evening Standard headlined (in part; it was an almost endless “hed”) “Kinks Star Slams ‘Soulless’ Denmark Street Redevelopment.” … Continue reading
