Skyscrapers in London

[MikeH]

Shame, it just looks like any other city.

[Provost Harrison]

The ones they building in Docklands certainly aren't anywhere near as interesting as the ones they are putting up in the city, that much is a fact...

[Saras]

Originally posted by molly bloom

http://www.pullmancourt.org.uk/

Pullman Court, Streatham:

Wait. You consider this a nice building?

[Provost Harrison]

There's nothing wrong with it, but I don't see anything particularly inspiring about it...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Well molly, your view is going to get a whole lot worse if this prediction of what Docklands will look like in 2008 is anything to go by

Great- anytown, anycountry, anycontinent (except Antarctica).

You consider this a nice building?

Saras


I don't consider it to be a bad building by any means. I like the curvilinear balconies, for instance, infinitely preferable to the monotonous oblong planters we see all too frequently.


I prefer brick built though- probably from spending so much time in Manchester and less well off parts of London- there's a lot to be said for the humanizing aspects of brick construction.

[Saras]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Saras

I don't consider it to be a bad building by any means. I like the curvilinear balconies, for instance, infinitely preferable to the monotonous oblong planters we see all too frequently.

I prefer brick built though- probably from spending so much time in Manchester and less well off parts of London- there's a lot to be said for the humanizing aspects of brick construction.

Depends on your perspective and houses you've seen. This one is just too ... Khrushchevian for my taste.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Saras


Depends on your perspective and houses you've seen. This one is just too ... Khrushchevian for my taste.

It's better built and designed- I think you're being a bit harsh on the architect.


We do have a tower block a short walk from where I live that was used in an old ad campaign for the Face, I think, or Levi's- about a trendy young Russian smuggling goods in to Russia from his trip abroad.

The tower block fitted in very nicely with the 'Russian' Cold War landscape. Thankfully it has been renovated and its bleakness ameliorated somewhat.

It's above this market:

https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/04/308927.html

[Saras]

Originally posted by molly bloom

It's better built and designed- I think you're being a bit harsh on the architect.

Oh I believe that, and it DOES look better than those blocks where I grew up in until I was 4, but that was my first impression.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Saras


Oh I believe that, and it DOES look better than those blocks where I grew up in until I was 4, but that was my first impression.

When I was a student, I lived in some grim blocks in Manchester on the Hulme Estate.

Nico lived there for a time too, when she was well into her heroin fuelled decline, so you can imagine just how ritzy it was.

The big idea when they were built was 'building' communities (rather than letting them develop) by demolishing brick 'slum' houses and replacing them with shoddy concrete and asbestos blocks with interconnecting walkways.

They were grey, which always went well with Manchester's prevailing weather. The heating systems were interconnected, which meant if one flat had cockroaches, all in a block tended to get them- oh, and mice too.

The walkways made excellent tracks for muggers on bikes too- or deliverers of drugs.

http://www.housit.org.uk/press/ihrtext.htm

The flats were also used in the first series of 'Cracker' on British television.

http://www.unitedmanchester.com/movies/TV.htm

I once went to see 'Eraserhead' at the old Aaben Cinema there- it was hard to tell when the film ended and I reentered the neighbourhood.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Well molly, your view is going to get a whole lot worse if this prediction of what Docklands will look like in 2008 is anything to go by

Didn't quite work out.

Anyway, reason for bump, the Shard is coming along nicely. That is to say work is being done.

http://www.shardlondonbridge.com/

The Minerva building worksite by Cannon Street is rather annoyingly blocking my walk to work though.

[Winston]

So, Provost Harrison, have you heard what molly bloom said about you?

[FrostyBoy]

It's nice. I assume one of the reasons it is pyramid in shape is so that it doesn't cover a lot of area in shadow.

[onodera]

Moscow isn't a big village built around a cluster**** of skyscrapers (we have a damn castle smack in the middle of the city and the same problems with teh ground as Paris), so the skyline is quite different.

[Dinner]

Drab identical concrete apartment blocks? Check.
Gaudy, newish, and economically useless spire? Check.

Why that must be Russia!

[onodera]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Drab identical concrete apartment blocks? Check.
Gaudy, newish, and economically useless spire? Check.

Why that must be Russia!

Yes, drab identical concrete apartment blocks.
But that "spire" you are talking about is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostankino_Tower - not gaudy, not newish and very useful.