If London is trying to make itself into some kind of copy of Manhattan, it’s looking like a roaring success — if, that is, you’re going for the “soulless, impersonal, could-be-any-city” look.
Of course, I think it looked better back when I were a nipper:
That looks like London. The other looks like shit.
That tall building on the left. It looks like a cartoon building, dudn’t it?
I bet making it look “curved” like that doubled the over all cost.
More than likely the core of the building is conventional, that is, common construction methods are used. And all that curved nonsense is simply “connected” to the outside of the superstructure, and thus, has no structural value to it.
However, all of the connections from the internal superstructure to the external sillystructure had to be custom made for all of them are different all the way up and down, and around, the entire building. Right down to the floor tile guys that had to cut ever single floor tile around the perimeter, and all the other disciplines.
Remember, gov’t “officials” approved of this process.
Now, I have no problem at all with people building whatever they want on their own property, and further, I don’t believe anyone else should have any say in it.
But.
When other people are forced at the point of a gun to pay for it then I believe a whole nuther set of rules comes into play and as always the gov’t flaunts, ignores, and otherwise wastes the efforts and value of others and are never held personally accountable for their behaviors.
While it was under construction, it was reported that that curved building had a nasty tendency to focus the sun’s rays and melt cars. (Note the article is from 2013; I CBA to see if they ever fixed the problem.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/london-skyscraper-can-melt-cars-set-buildings-fire-8C11069092
Well said, ghostsniper. And “cartoonish” is the perfect description. Who would approve the final plans for these? Just awful.
It has been 5 decades since I was in London, and at that time it was a fantastic city, all of the museums, changing of the guard with horses and soldiers in red coming up one street with drums and music while a bunch of Scots are coming down another with bagpipes and drums. Westminster Abby, poets corner, 10 N. Downing and Parliament, live plays with named actors for about twice the price of a movie and beautiful old buildings going to the Tower with Beefeaters and lots more. I cut out part of the rest of my trip to go back and spend and extra three days in London and how in the world could they possibly decide to fuck their city up and make it look like Dubai on steroids? Hmmmmm…..
And one last thing, the money, half penny, penny, thruppence, sixpence, shillings, pounds and crowns and such and getting change back that was minted during Victoria’s reign because that was what they used like God intended and that is what you used to pay for great tasting beer, ale, stout and stuff.
Current London skyline (and many American cities as well) screams:
“Hey, look at me, my building is more useless, un-ergonomic, uglier and more unnecessarily expensive than yours”, a herd of monuments to egocentric assholes trying to out do each other in insulting the users and passersby.
I worked in an example of the type for about 15 years – it was supposedly an award-winning building, but it was an ergonomic disaster, full of wretchedly hot and freezing cold zones, leaking rainwater all the time, and even though it was to house R&D and engineering, the *spit*architect*spit* made the thing non-functional for its purpose; e.g., no wiring provision for connecting computers, not even dumb terminals, over the objections of the company building committee.
We used to say if the turd ever came for a visit, we’d strip him naked and duct tape him to a south-facing window so he could experience all the glories of his “passive solar” building that the asshole inflicted on us.
Kim, I’m in London right now, it’s where I live and work. and I believe, very strongly, that every Londoner agrees with you.
Since you’re local, can you confirm my suspicion that the Faberge’ egg-looking bullet-building is a mosque?
What possible objection could anyone have, to living in a city where the buildings look like grainscoops and sex toys?
And here I thought I’d had a dram too many.
I’m pretty far from an architecture luddite, but London has been going down hill ever since they built that large glass dildo right in the middle of it. We won’t talk about the 60’s console TV masquerading as a building next to it. Barf.