{"id":2373,"date":"2013-01-04T03:07:55","date_gmt":"2013-01-04T10:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2013-06-19T07:51:42","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T13:51:42","slug":"the-towers-of-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2373","title":{"rendered":"The Towers of London"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON<\/strong> 4 January 2013.<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0London is currently experiencing a relative frenzy of high rise building. The existing and proposed structures are known locally by their shapes, including \u201cThe Shard<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Cheesegrater<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cThe Walkie-Talkie\u201d (or\u2014better in my view\u2014\u201cThe Pint<\/a>\u201d). \u00a0Just over a month ago The Observer<\/i>\u2019s architecture critic Rowan Moore<\/a> examined this building trend.\u00a0 He posed a series of excellent questions that should be asked of all towers proposed for any city on earth:<\/p>\n

Do they\u2026 show consideration of scale or proportion or try to make a meaningful relationship with their surroundings? Is there anything special about their detail? Is there consistency or integrity in their overall concept? Do they create handsome new public spaces at their base? Does their internal planning produce the best possible living or working spaces, which are well laid out and make good use of daylight?\u00a0\u00a0 Failing all the above, do they have any worth in the rapidly debasing currency of iconicity? Are they, in other words, exhilarating to contemplate or innovative\u2014do they transmit some sort of buzzy excitement about London being a dynamic world city?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Credit:<\/a>

“Is London’s Skyline Going Down the Tube?” (Credit: Nick Brown)<\/p><\/div>\n

Regrettably, Moore has to answer \u201cno\u201d to all of these questions when they\u2019re asked of the Towers of London. He argues that most of the two dozen or so towers currently being built in the city are of poor architectural quality.\u00a0 They\u2019re located in places that don\u2019t make sense, where they either interfere with the \u201clong views\u201d of historic sites, or they\u2019re not well served by public transport.\u00a0 They don’t create appealing and accessible public spaces, either at their bases or in the form of viewing galleries on their upper floors. Perhaps most importantly, they\u2019re non-compliant with master planning principles or are being built over the objections of local neighbors and statutory authorities.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shard, Viewed from near St. Paul’s Cathedral (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mr. Moore is not an anti-tower Luddite. He notes that towers can be beautiful, and that a good part of London\u2019s genius over the last 2000 years has been its ability to accommodate changing architectural styles.\u00a0 But for Moore today\u2019s towers are \u201cmostly units of speculation stacked high, garnished with developers’ ego\u2026There is no vision, concept or thought as to what their total effect might be on London, except that it will be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Cheesegrater, 122 Leadenhall Street (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

I was impressed by the number of reader comments<\/a> on Moore\u2019s piece\u2014404 submitted over the course of two days. These surely cover the waterfront of popular opinion about high rise building in London.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very close call as to which position wins out: pro-tower or anti-tower. Many readers agree with Moore that London\u2019s Towers are another form of urban blight. This comment, from \u201credshrink,\u201d is typical:<\/p>\n

Their gimmicky shapes and their scale conceal a dull sameness at their core. Their apparent variety is only a thin veneer on the model of a streamlined, corporate city that ends up looking like any other of a similar mold\u2014like Shanghai or Dubai<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Pint7.800\"<\/a>

The Pint, 20 Fenchurch Street \u00a0(D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Tower haters often propose more aggressive central oversight and planning to keep greedy developers in check and prevent the London skyline from being completely destroyed. Other\u00a0readers suggest that London’s skyline can’t be destroyed because it never really had one, although admirers of Christopher Wren<\/a>\u2019s churches and Canaletto<\/a>\u2019s representations of them would surely disagree. One reader suggested that the absence of skyline is falsified by anyone who\u2019s been to Parliament Hill<\/a>, or even to Primrose Hill<\/a>. \u00a0Those who see the towers as enhancing the skyline suggest that a city has to change with the times. As Moore notes, this adaptability is a big part of London\u2019s distinctiveness and appeal. London is not a set museum piece like Paris, whose well-preserved urban core is beautiful but also borne of autocracy rather than liberty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Canaletto1.800\"<\/a>

London Skyline by Canaletto, 1747<\/p><\/div>\n

The most thought-provoking reader comments introduced a more nuanced and complicated calculus for evaluating the pros and cons of tall buildings. \u00a0One reader (David Kane) suggests that London towers must be evaluated in light of the city’s\u00a0differentia specifica<\/i> as an urban phenomenon:<\/p>\n

I agree with the comment that Paris has been well served by town planning, as have many other cities. However, it’s a little late to impose top-town town planning on London. It has never been such a city. London is a series of villages that have, over time, become part of London. London’s intrigue is in its infinite variety, not its beautiful cityscape.\u00a0 I like The Shard, because I like the mix of old and new, but I confess, I’m not convinced by all the new buildings going up and some of them may look out of place. None-the-less I prefer to see London in a state of flux, adapting to the needs and demands of its people.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another reader (\u201c280E\u201d) plays off of Moore\u2019s reminder of London planning officer Peter Rees<\/a>\u2019 belief\u2014apparently ignored in practice\u2014that towers work best when clustered together:<\/p>\n

By avoiding the creation of a concentration of tall buildings (so far anyway), the problem of architectural quality is exacerbated, since every building needs to carry the full responsibility of the skyline by itself. If you look at cities famous for their skylines, such as NY or Chicago, most of the buildings are actually quite uninteresting individually (particularly in NY’s case), but they add up to a great overall effect, and can be very engaging at street level.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Canaletto2.800\"<\/a>

London Skyline Today (Reuters)<\/p><\/div>\n

A third reader (\u201cPetengeth\u201d) likewise suggests that towers are best appreciated not on their own but rather in relationship to something else<\/em>, specifically the older buildings with which they coexist. Such coexistence doesn\u2019t have to be uneasy. In fact the modern and the ancient can bring out the best in each other<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I don’t live in London, but visit occasionally. One of my favourite things is that contrast between shiny glass towers and tiny ancient pubs squeezed in in little gaps, like reminders of the past. Something London does really well.\u00a0 Save the best and build the best, that is the answer.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Swan Tavern, 77-80 Gracechurch Street (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

The \u201cbest\u201d towers, then, are (1) conscious of their historical context, (2) cluster together and make collective meaning with their fellow travelers, and (3) invite contrasts (or comparison) to what has come before.\u00a0 By this accounting London\u2019s towers do pretty well (but for a different assessment, see here<\/a>).\u00a0 The Cheesegrater does<\/i> slope in order to accommodate the view of St Paul\u2019s Cathedral from Fleet Street (regrettably, The Shard ruins\u00a0the view of St. Paul’s from Hampstead Heath<\/a>).\u00a0 The Pint does<\/i> symbolize something widely associated with British culture, the building’s accumulationist logic (i.e., its more valuable upper-floor bulge) notwithstanding.\u00a0 And as many others have observed, The Shard does<\/i> recall a Wren spire, especially when viewed from, say, Hackney.\u00a0 But in another sense these buildings still suffer from a lack of\u00a0intercultural<\/i> resonance.\u00a0 What would a 21st<\/sup> century tower look like that turns on an intercultural sensibility, rather than individual architectural conceit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON 4 January 2013.\u00a0 \u00a0London is currently experiencing a relative frenzy of high rise building. The existing and proposed structures are known locally by their shapes, including \u201cThe Shard,\u201d \u201cThe Cheesegrater,\u201d and \u201cThe Walkie-Talkie\u201d (or\u2014better in my view\u2014\u201cThe Pint\u201d). \u00a0Just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,18,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-intercultural-city","category-london","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2382,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}