Royalty weighs in on London architecture

maxinewarwick — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:21:00 -0500

Even Prince Charles weighed in on the discussion about the London skyline. A notorious and colorful critic of modern architecture, his recent comments echoed his famous 1984 speech when he described a planned extension to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle" - shredding confidence in modern architecture.

He expressed concerns that the London skyscraper boom would result in "not just one carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend, but a positive rash of them that will disfigure precious views and disinherit future generations of Londoners".

Going head to head with Lord Richard Rogers, the architect of numerous London towers and the chief architecture adviser to the London mayor, the prince complained that architects were indulging in a "free for all [that] will leave London and our other cities with a pockmarked skyline".

Leading architects rebutted the prince's claims and claimed Britain was leading the world in skyscraper design.

"He's wrong," said Ken Shuttleworth, lead designer of 30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin. "London is not a museum. It has to be renewed for the next generation, especially as it attempts to become the world's leading city. We can't leave it as it is in medieval times."

The prince's remarks generated sympathy among some architects who have grown quietly concerned that tower proposals have spread to the traditionally low-rise areas and even to suburbs, breaking the unwritten rule that towers should be built in clusters to limit their impact.

"There is no great clarity about where we build towers and where we don't," said Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. "What we need is a policy that supports principles like building towers in clusters and next to major transport interchanges."

Read the Prince's speech here

Ugly Buildings: The Hall of Shame

maxinewarwick — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:48:47 -0500

There's a rash of montrous buildings on the horizon of another great city - London. The blog Gridskipper solicited opinions from some of London's top architects about the monstrosities in their own city.

Though many mention the ego-driven towers that dot the skyline, the biggest offenses seem to come from lazy and uninspired projects.

Sam Jacob, founding director of Fashion, Architecture, Taste summed up what's wrong with many new London buildings in two sentences. "Ugliness isn't an aesthetic," he said, "it's about a meanness, a lack of generosity. In urban planning terms, a grabbing of public resource for private gain."

He thinks a candidate for this crown is St. George Wharf, located on a prime stretch of the Thames riverfront. "These are yuppie ghettos. Designed from the brochure outwards, they bristle with balconies that rubber-neck the river. It's not their greedy maxing out of volume that's the problem. Or the crashing together of economic circumstance (cheap loans, post-industrial rehabilitation, exponential rise in property value). It's the fact that it tries to look nice. That it does 'architectural' things (a touch of modernism, a little dash of High Tech, a dose of Pomo). It's their desire to please that is so despicable. They capture an anemic, generic marketing-led reductiveness. If James Blunt were a building, he'd be these. If they were food, they'd be coffee-chain sandwiches."

Read more comments from other London architects here