Comments on: The Shard architecture and skyline landscape symbolic reviews https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/ Gardenvisit.com Tue, 22 Oct 2013 03:37:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 By: Tom Turner https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5616 Tue, 22 Oct 2013 03:37:19 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5616 In reply to Christine.

That would be a great epitaph for Lord Norman Foster and I suggest a design competition for his, hypothetical, tomb stone. For design ideas, one could do worse than start with his design of the solid glass National Police Memorial on Horseguards but I would definitely want it to have an epitaph and ‘he did an awfully good box’ would be a prime candidate. The historic examples of epitaphs, below, are nowhere near as appropriate, wonderful though they are:
Absent from the body, Present with the Lord.
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
But many that are first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Love is eternal.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
Love never ends.
They gave their today for our tomorrow.
Gone fishin’
A gentle man.
I have fought the good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.
I would not regard a transparent block of glass as 100% appropriate for the police but it stands beside ‘A black rectangular creeper-covered enclosure surrounds the air shaft, forming a single block’. So I guess that is OK.

]]> By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5615 Tue, 22 Oct 2013 01:54:34 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5615 Foster does an awfully good box! Albion Riverside is also good, with the glass and solid juxtaposition of the first photograph being particularly strong. The view back the other way, is not as strong (the second photograph). The two buildings as a group are fine, even if the space between needs attention as you say.

You are right – all the exterior spaces and relationships are virtually non-existent – with only a grey paved surface. (This grey paving seems much less considered than the grey paving by Harry Seidler at the Riverside Centre in Brisbane.)

]]> By: Tom Turner https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5614 Sun, 20 Oct 2013 03:36:05 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5614 In reply to Christine.

I think that all the buildings in the ‘foreground group’ are by Fosters. The firm seems much better at ‘objects’ than at the ‘space between objects’. A few weeks ago I was cycling along the Thames in West London and noticed the juxtaposition of curvilinear and rectilinear buildings. Then I noticed the sign on the rectilinear box and discovered that Foster & Partners had designed both. The outdoor space is vacant and slabbed. This is not a visual problem, because the river is such a good thing to look at, but it is not conducive to social use of the outdoor space.
http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/foster/fosterexterior.jpg
http://www.harrodsestates.com/assets/media/1218632940Albion_Riverside_from_Battersea_Bridge_day_shot.jpg
http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2010/07/11/20100711_d0792.jpg
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/london/albion_riverside_nw300510_3.jpg

]]> By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5613 Sun, 20 Oct 2013 02:15:25 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5613 It is probably not the worst view. (It is still an improvement on the modernist buildings peeking through in the background.) But what happens here is there is insufficient contrast between the glassy group of buildings and so they ‘read’ more like a homogeneous mass ie. one big blog of glass. So in this ‘reading’ the strength of the individual forms is lost.

Foster’s building stands up the best in this group in the context because its form and facade articulation are stronger. (Noting that it is also in the foreground of the view).

]]> By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5612 Wed, 16 Oct 2013 01:18:20 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5612 The first thing to be said is that it is a much superior building to the one it replaced.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard ] That alone makes it worthy of being built.

I am not sure if the Shard also improved the visual impact on St Paul’s compared with the building it replaced?

Secondly, the view of the Shard in shown in the wiki entry is good. Is this a real view that you get from some vantage point? The Shard lit is also good.

The inclusion of the observation deck is also good. Are there pictures available which illustrate the views from the deck?

The view from great tower street is interesting – with the perspective giving you a surreal perception that perhaps it is a strange extension of the street you could drive on off into the horizon?

I am not sure that the Shard quite retains the purity and strength of its sketches? In origin [ http://the-shard.com/media/20301/design.sketch.jpg ]or design development? [ http://www.richardrogers.co.uk/Asp/uploadedFiles/image/News/R_120803_N9_news.gif ]

]]> By: Tom Turner https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5611 Tue, 15 Oct 2013 03:28:54 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5611 In reply to Christine.

I look forward to reading it.

]]> By: Christine https://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/the-shard-architecture-and-skyline-landscape-symbolic-reviews/#comment-5610 Tue, 15 Oct 2013 02:54:04 +0000 http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/?p=10019#comment-5610 Ok, time for me to have some sort of opinion on the Shard….

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