Architecture – Page 47 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

Imperfectly hidden scaffolding

If you step outside Sloane Square tube station, and immediately look to your left, you see this:

This is one of those phenomena which doesn’t photo very informatively. By which I mean that if you are there, it is far easier to see what is going on. So let me now tell you what is going on. This is the inside of a new building, but covered up, while they’re completing the building, with a sheet. This sheet has another building painted on it. And there is light coming at the sheet from behind. When what is behind the sheet completely blocks out light, we see the picture on the surface of the sheet. But when light comes at us from beyond the sheet, the picture on the sheet is overwhelmed, and we observe either light, or any shapes (in this case steel structure and scaffolding) in silhouette.

What I like about this effect is both its temporariness, and the fact that it ends up looking so much more interesting that it was intended to look. The idea was that we would only see the picture on the sheet. What we actually see is a whole lot more diverting.

Here is another photo I took of the same thing, this time including a bit more context:

It’s a little more clear, in that photo, that there is a picture on a surface as well as all kinds of excitements behind it, on account of the sheet consisting of surfaces at an angle to one another.

Best of all, you can now see that one of the excitements behind the sheet – to be more exact, one of the structures behind the sheet – is a crane.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Battersea rollerblader

If someone is doing this …:

… is it okay to photo them and stick the photo up on the internet, somewhere like here? I feel that it is okay, because, albeit in a very good way, the guy is making something of a spectacle of himself. He is doing something very individual, in public, in a way that people are bound to notice. Therefore, he doesn’t mind them noticing, or he wouldn’t do it. Therefore, he won’t mind me noticing it.

Behind our self-transporter, we can just about make out the towers of Battersea Power Station. Well, I can, because I know that’s what it is, because that’s where I took the above photo, this afternoon. At the time, I was busy photoing the road, because in my opinion it is a very interesting road. For reasons which I may, or may not, explain, here, some other time.

Meanwhile, I miss Transport Blog.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A concrete pump?

Earlier in the week, on my way to St James’s Park tube, and again on my way back home from St James’s Park tube, I photoed what I described to Google as a “concrete pump”.

This concrete pump was helping to build a clutch of apartment blocks where the old New Scotland Yard used to be, before New Scotland Yard moved to a new New Scotland Yard, back where the original Scotland Yard used once to be.

I got enough images to suggest that a “concrete pump” is indeed what this extraordinary contraption is, but not enough to suggest that I had named the contraption correctly, using the preferred words of those who deploy it.

Nevertheless, enjoy. I did, especially the close-ups of the joints.

All this, just to be able to squirt concrete from a lorry into a hole. (I’m guessing, from the invisibility of building action behind all the solid fences, that his concrete was for the foundations. This being where concrete, as opposed to steel on its own, still seems to be essential.) And with a big long arm like that one, with all its joints, I’m guessing it can reach all sorts of complicated and out-of-the-way spots. (If you guess that I do a lot of guessing when I see something like this, then you guess right.)

There must be a reason why they don’t use a flexible tube, but have to make do with a rigid tube, but with the occasional rotating joint. So elaborate are those joints that they end up looking biological rather than merely mechanical. So, as with the previous posting, also about technology rather than biology, I have categorised this posting as, among other things, “other creatures”. (I’ve also added “sculpture” to the category list. Does regular sculpture come any better than this? Sometimes maybe, but not very often.)

The concrete itself must be a marvel of blending and general wonderfulness. Able to travel as a near-liquid along this elaborate pipe, under (guess) great pressure (another guess: that’s why the pipe has to be made of metal rather than of something bendier), but then able, at exactly the right time, to solidify in the deep cylindrical holes into which it is squirted. At which point it has to stay solid for ever. (Is something added, at the critical moment, to make it solidify?)

There is much that is very wrong with the world. This sort of stuff is what is very right with the world.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Photoing architectural change

I distinctly remember photoing the old Pimlico School, which was a walk away from where I live, just the other side of Vauxhall Bridge Road. And today, I came across those photos. Just the two, of which this, after a bit of rotating and cropping, was the better one:

At the time I photoed it, way back in 2004, I had no idea that it would be demolished, in 2010, and replaced with an Academy. Read about that here.

On the very same day I took that photo of the old Pimlico School, I also took this photo:

That was a scene that I knew would change, and now, many years later, it is changing. But that’s quite unusual. That was a landmark building that was definitely going to be “redeveloped”, and the only mystery was when, and in what way. More often, buildings just get smashed down or transformed without warning. Big scenes get rebuilt, without warning. Oh, there is warning, if you spend your entire life looking out for such warnings. But, I don’t.

This being part of why I take lots of photos. Especially, now that it is so easy to take lots of photos, and so easy to store them. That way, I am more likely to get lucky with photos of things which no longer exist, or which do still exist but which later look very different.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

More Surrey cricket photos

I did a posting about a Big Thing Alignment that I saw when I went with Darren to that cricket match at the oval, and I did a posting about how the last ball of that game looked, two days later, on video.

Now for some more photos I took on the day Darren and I went to day 2 of that game between Surrey and Lancashire.

The very first photo I took that day was this:

I love how, in the middle of that big photo, we see one of those excellent You Are Here signs that you see all over London, and in many other spots, I don’t doubt, in not-London. I really like these signs, and constantly photo them, if only to remind me for later of exactly where Here was at that particular moment.

Of this OCS stand, SteelConstruction.org has this to say:

This is a most appropriate use of steel, in a geometrically complex arrangement, which adds drama and visual excitement to a famous venue.

I was hoping that this OCS Stand, would be as open for people to sit in as it was in the above photo photo, because I have yet to experience the views from the top of that stand, surely as dramatic in their own ways as the stand itself. But on the evening when Darren and I were there, the OCS Stand was shut. Shame. Memo to self: I will photo these views. If I have to make a special trip to the Oval just to ask about that, fine, I’ll do it, and keep on doing it, until they let me up there, preferably on a nice day.

Here is that OCS Stand, as it was looking at the second interval of the day, which happened not long after we got there:

That photo makes the ground look pretty dark, even though the floodlights were on. And it does not deceive. The ground did indeed look dark, to the human eye.

Here is the Pavilion that faces the OCS Stand, which is where we soon moved to:

Some like ancient, and dislike modern. Others dislike ancient, and like modern. Me? I like both, and particularly like it when they are near each other, or (as in this case) facing each other, and I can relish the contrast.

One of the particular charms of cricket grounds – this being especially true of the two big London grounds, the Oval and Lord’s – is that they feature both (fairly (at least in style)) ancient, and (very) modern architecture. In comparison, I find big stadiums built all in one go very dull. I went to a football game at Wembley, and if it hadn’t been for the big arch on the top of it, it would have been totally anonymous. It’s not just the architectural uniformity. It’s also that in a place like Wembley there are no gaps, and you can’t see anything except the stadium. You could be anywhere.

Darren and I, what with Darren being a Surrey Member, sat in those seats at the top, in the middle, and when you look out from there, across at the OCS Stand and to the left and the right of it, you couldn’t be anywhere but London. Here is another view looking to the right, which includes that earlier Big Thing Alignment and several other random Big Things besides:

And here is the view to the left, towards Battersea, where the new US Embassy, just up river from MI6, has detonated a building boom:

But forget the US Embassy. The reason I am showing you the above photo is to tell you how very dark the ground had become. Forget playing cricket. How on earth can you even see anything on that cricket pitch?

But seeing things on that pitch soon became very easy. Quite soon afterwards, observe how very light the ground had become:

The floodlights were blasting away in both of those photos, not just in the second one. Yet, in the first, they were being totally outshone by the paltry remnants of daylight. Only when daylight had seriously dimmed did the floodlights suddenly start to make their presence felt. And even then the sky is still quite light, especially down near the horizon.

I have been to the Oval quite a few times, but don’t recall witnessing the extremity of this contrast ever before. I think it helped that we were looking down on the ground from quite a height, onto the brightness of the ground. But basically, I’ve never been there when it was properly dark before.

The reason the above photo, especially of the people near me to the left, looks like it was taken with flash is because there is another big clutch of floodlights coming crashing into us from off to the right, very nearby.

Finally, here are a couple of photos I took just after arriving at the ground, through the Hobbs Gate, which is behind the Pavilion, on the far side of the Oval from the river, and from me:

One of the more agreeable features of London’s big two cricket grounds – Lord’s especially – is the number of giant photos there are on show, of cricketing heroes present and past. It was the same when I visited White Hart Lane a while back.

Here is a closer-up snap of the Surrey ladies captain, Natalie Sciver:

Sciver lead her team to victory on Bank Holiday Monday in the ladies T20 national tournament. Her Surrey “Stars” beat “Western Storm” in the one semi-final, and then won the final against Loughborough “Lightning”. Lizelle Lee got a century for Surrey in the final, but she got good support from Sciver, and Sciver excelled with both bat and ball in the semi-final, which was a lot closer.

I am fond of emphasising how sport has replaced war in the world’s luckier and richer countries. Long may that trend continue. What these giant pictures emphasise, or so it feels to me, is the local significance of big sports clubs, and the way that, in terms of how these places feel close up, sport is also busy replacing religion. This is especially true now that the other great modern challenger of religion in this kind of way, the cinema, is fading back into a merely domestic past-time. The elaborate imagery. The regular attendance at an architecturally impressive locale. The shared agonies and ecstasies of the assembled congregations. The way that the calendar is carved up into a distinct pattern. To me, it all feels very religious, and I am certainly not the only one to have noticed this. (That link took only seconds to find.)

The Church of Cricket is, I quite realise, but a small sect, these days, at any rate in England, compared to the Universal Church of Football. But the point about sport replacing religion in modern life still stands.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Blackfriars ghost columns make themselves useful

It was a moment in London’s construction history which has always intrigued me. My photos of it were taken in March 2012:

That’s right. Those strange ghost columns were, for a few short months or years (I don’t recall), being used as so many tiny building sites, supporting the construction of the Blackfriars Bridge railway station.

I regret that some more permanent use could have been found for these ghost columns. Maybe some sort of pedestrian bridge? But I suppose these columns are distrusted for anything but the lightest use, such as we observe in the above photos.

If you read this, you will learn that these ghosts used to come in threes, rather than in the twos we observe now. The inner columns became part of the new bridge.

But if those columns were good enough to do that job, why cannot their brethren be made more use of?

It seems a shame. It seems like a missed opportunity.

I think I may have said something like this here before. So be it. It bears repetition.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Pimlico roof clutter

June 8th of this year was a good day for roof clutter. In Pimlico:

It’s the variety I like, and the mixture of the ancient (the chimney pots (including some quite superior ones)) and the modern (aerials), that I like. The chimney pots are often very decorative on purpose, while the more modern technology is only decorative as a throw-away consequence of how it needs to be to do its various jobs.

In one of them, there is scaffolding.

It helped, at lot, that the weather was so nice. In my opinion, almost anything looks good in really nice weather.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A view from the Great Pagoda in Kew Gardens

Yesterday, GodDaughter 2 and I spent the afternoon in Kew Gardens. Which is a lot bigger and a lot bigger of a deal than I realised.

The high point of our day, literally as well as metaphorically, was our visit to the Great Pagoda. And not just the Great Pagoda in a general way. We climbed up the stairs to the top of the Great Pagoda.

There were views, of which this one was, of course, my favourite:

Here is variant of that same view. Note how the lighting has changed somewhat. The Walkie Talkie remains as as strikingly lit as ever, and it remains the star of the show, but the Wheel is a bit different (as is the Waterloo Crane Cluster that reaches up above it). It was one of those bright intervals with scattered showers days:

I know what you’re thinking. Not very clear photos. Rather vague and blurry. All true, and you are definitely entitled to your opinion, if that is what it is.

But in my defence, and in defence also of my camera, take a look at the same view, minus the zoom.

The third of the above photos being a lot closer to what I merely saw than the first two are.

The vast expanse of greenery in the foreground is … Kew Gardens. That photo was photoed half way up the Pagoda, as soon as I realised that this view was happening.

Maybe a compromise is in order. Maybe this is the best photo, with some zoom, but not the maximum allowed:

Sadly, though, that lighting effect hadn’t yet occurred. That was one I took earlier

As I keep saying, my camera has far better eyesight than I do, and I am afraid the gap is growing.

Something else that continues to grow is my admiration for the Walkie Talkie. When lit as it is in the first two photos above, and when it is seen from a great distance, it is the most beautiful City of London Big Thing of them all, I think.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Boomerang still being constructed

I like these photos that I took last March. I like the rather sombre light. If my camera is to be believed, it was around 6.30 pm:

On the left, the “South Bank Tower”. Not interesting enough to the general public for it to have a name. On the right, what I prefer to call The Wheel. And in the middle? I tend to call it One Blackfriars, but as Londonist points out, many people are calling this the Boomerang.

I also like it when Big Things aren’t quite ready and are still be worked on, but you can clearly see how they’ll look. My very first digital camera coincided with the finishing off of the Gherkin and I have the photos to prove it, and ever since then, I’ve collected such architectural moments. (My first digital camera also coincided with the last months of Concorde, but I don’t have the photos to prove that, which I still regret.)

And, as I only just remembered to say: the vertical bit on the far right is the edge of all that activity going on around the old Shell Building, and the building in the foreground is just flats, next to the iMax roundabout.

LATER: Concerning the Boomerang, one of Michael Jennings’s Facebook friends (and actual friends, I think), who is called Lee J Tee, says this:

I actually really like that building. In general I think most of the modern buildings in London are worthy. A world class city deserves unique buildings and London has plenty of them, all different from each other and I like that individuality.

Amen.

I absolutely don’t understand how Facebook works, and probably never will, so I have no idea if I even can link to this, let alone whether, if I can, I should. So, just take my words for it.

Someone else says that, actually, what I have been calling the “Boomerang” is “informally known as The Vase”. Well, well. I prefer that to Boomerang.