{"id":2428,"date":"2013-01-17T16:58:06","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T23:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2428"},"modified":"2013-01-17T17:12:06","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T00:12:06","slug":"mr-kimmelman-goes-to-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2428","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Kimmelman Goes to London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having just returned from the English capital I was intrigued to learn that the New York Times<\/i> architecture critic Michael Kimmelman also recently visited London to consider the high rise building craze that we previously discussed here<\/a>. Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s piece<\/a> in last Thursday\u2019s Times<\/i> makes some good observations and suggestions.\u00a0 For example, with respect to The Shard<\/a>\u2014a frequent topic of conversation among our London friends\u2014Mr. Kimmelman notes that:<\/p>\n

\u2026[The Shard] is hulking and unimpressive at street level. But adding density at a rail hub makes sense\u2026And from afar the vertical faceting of The Shard\u2019s facade reduces the impression of bulk. The crystalline effect is subtler than many Londoners feared. The building almost evaporates in certain soft light, its crown dissolving into a mesh of attached screens<\/i>…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This evaporative effect is something that I think is evident in the photograph of the Shard in my Towers of London post<\/a> as well as, perhaps, in this view of the building from Farringdon Road:<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>

View of The Shard from Farringdon Road (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

Mr. Kimmelman charitably suggests that, like the regenerated Olympic Village<\/a>, \u201c<\/b>we\u2019ll have to wait to see how [The Shard] works after it\u2019s finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rothschild-HQ-New-Court-001\"<\/a>

New Court (OMA)<\/p><\/div>\n

The majority of Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s piece, however, is devoted to another new tower in The City, the Rothschild Bank\u2019s New Court building, by the firm of Rem Koolhaas<\/a>. A review of New Court by The Observer\u2019s<\/i> Rowan Moore<\/a> is complimentary, noting that this building has\u2014in contrast to much of Koolhaas\u2019s work<\/a>\u2014\u201cghosted its way on to the skyline with a surprising degree of discretion.\u201d Mr. Kimmelman likes it too, praising the building\u2019s profile as \u201cdistinguished.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/i>Playing off of Mr. Moore\u2019s earlier analysis<\/a> of London\u2019s towers in which, among other things, he challenges architects to think about the street-level public spaces that their buildings create, Mr. Kimmelman notes that:<\/p>\n

The plan\u2026 with a quasipublic<\/i> plaza that links<\/i> the covered forecourt of<\/i> [New Court] with the graveyard<\/i> of [an adjacent Christopher Wren<\/a> Church, St Stephen Walbrook<\/a>] is ingenious, elegant…a glass and aluminum colonnade defines the street edge, with a broad portico and pedestrian passage behind, framing the church view. The plan brings transparency, surprise and civic grandeur to a narrow lane; and by revealing Wren\u2019s building, it invents a pas de deux, the Rothschild tower nodding to the tower of St Stephen.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Portico,<\/a>

Portico, Colonnade, and Forecourt of New Court, looking towards St Stephen Walbrook (Philippe Ruault\/OMA)<\/p><\/div>\n

This assessment of New Court agrees with Mr. Moore\u2019s that the building offers welcome relief from the many City structures that, in Moore\u2019s words, \u201crise sheer and opaque from the pavement.\u201d\u00a0 Nonetheless, Mr. Kimmelman\u2014admirably keeping to his mission<\/a> of focusing on the democratic and socially-redeeming qualities of architecture\u2014holds that public access could be better:<\/p>\n

I said quasipublic earlier only because while you can now see St. Stephen from St. Swithin\u2019s Lane, you can\u2019t get to it. A gate between forecourt and churchyard is locked; bank guards discourage the curious. So, unfortunately, an architecture of openness meets the architecture of paranoia that has reshaped cities like London and New York for more than a decade.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As is typical of Londoners when it comes to the subject of architecture, the opinion of New Court among Observer<\/i> readers<\/a> is more divided than among the professional critics.\u00a0 \u00a0One reader is with Mr. Kimmelman and Mr. Moore in appreciating New Court\u2019s virtues:<\/p>\n

Though never a Koolhaas fan, this building shows great restraint, fitting into its surroundings quite beautifully. <\/i>[It\u2019s] what architecture should be about. \u00a0<\/i>[It\u2019s a] shame so many others can only grandstand\u2026<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For another reader, however:<\/p>\n

\u2026the small <\/i>[Wren] church in front has more identity than that monstrosity behind it\u2026all you have to do to see if a building is good is to imagine it as a silhouette in black. The church would have a distinctive profile, the masses of block behind would look like masses of blocks\u2026.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"New<\/a>

New Court, St Stephen Walbrook, and The Walbrook (D. Saitta)<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s nice that New Court and another adjacent but much more critically reviled building\u2014Norman Foster\u2019s Walbrook<\/a>, which Moore accurately describes as \u201can assertive, ribbed, over-inflated blob\u201d\u2014gesture \u00a0to St Stephen in their cornice<\/a> lines and, in Walbrook\u2019s case, to St Stephen\u2019s famous dome (which is based on the original design for St Paul\u2019s Cathedral).\u00a0 While I do like New Court, I\u2019d have to agree that the most significant effect of these two particular London buildings is to make one appreciate Wren\u2019s church all the more. \u00a0And perhaps that\u2019s the most important contribution of\u00a0 London\u2019s new towers to the city\u2019s architecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having just returned from the English capital I was intrigued to learn that the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman also recently visited London to consider the high rise building craze that we previously discussed here. Mr. Kimmelman\u2019s piece […]<\/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":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-london"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-Da","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428","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=2428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428\/revisions\/2433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}