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Tag Archives: London
Wee wow for Bauwauhauses
“Mutts-have: Architects create luxury kennels for charity auction” is the headline of this story by Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright. “Mutts-have”? … I’m sorry, that really does not cut the mustard. Mutts-have ≠ must-have. And if you glide down the complement of … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged Bauhaus, Bow Wow Haus Auction, Dogs, Kennels, London, St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, Zaha Hadid
1 Comment
Battering Battersea Station
Owen Hatherley has denounced a large development around the historic Battersea Power Station, in London. I cannot read his piece because it is behind the paywall of The Architects’ Journal. But I do have the next best thing – its … Continue reading
London perceived, tortured
By torture, we’re not talking pins under fingernails, the Iron Maiden or Philip Glass, but how else to describe what the leadership of London has done to the city of London in the last several decades? If a city is … Continue reading
Carbuncle Cup victor of 2017
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 Carbuncle Cub, Daniel Libeskind, Dezeen, Frank Gehry, London, Pritzker Prize, Victoria Station
3 Comments
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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