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1. City Hall (London)

Viewed from Tower Bridge

Location of City Hall in Central London

Location Southwark, London, England

City Hall is the headquarters of the Greater London Authority (GLA) which comprises theMayor of London and London Assembly. It is located in Southwark, on the south bank of theRiver Thames near Tower Bridge. It was designed by Norman Foster and opened in July2002, two years after the Greater London Authority was created.

Background

City Hall was constructed at a cost of 65 million [1] on a site formerly occupied by wharvesserving the Pool of London. The building does not belong to the GLA but is leased under a25-year rent.[2] Despite the name, City Hall is neither located in nor does it serve a city (as

recognised by English constitutional law), often adding to the confusion of Greater Londonwith the City of London, whose headquarters is in the Guildhall, north of the Thames.


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However, in June 2011 Mayor Boris Johnson announced that for the Olympic Year 2012 thebuilding would be called 'London House', leading to speculation that this name may beretained thereafter.

The predecessors of the Greater London Authority, namely the Greater London Council and

the London County Council, had their headquarters at County Hall, upstream on the SouthBank. Although County Hall's old council chamber is still intact, the building is unavailablefor use by the GLA due to its conversion into, among other things, a luxury hotel, amusementarcade and aquarium.

Design

The interior helical staircase of London City Hall

The building has an unusual, bulbous shape, intended to reduce its surface area and thusimprove energy efficiency. It has been compared variously to Darth Vader's helmet, amisshapen egg, a woodlouse and a motorcycle helmet. Former mayor Ken Livingstonereferred to it as a "glass testicle",[3][4] while the present mayor, Boris Johnson, has referred toit as "The Glass Gonad"[5] and more politely as "The Onion". Its designers reportedly saw thebuilding as a giant sphere hanging over the Thames, but opted for a more conventionallyrooted building instead. It has no front or back in conventional terms but derives its shapefrom a modified sphere.

A 500-metre (1,640 ft) helical walkway, reminiscent of that in New York's Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, ascends the full height of the building. At the top of the ten-storybuilding is an exhibition and meeting space called "London's Living Room", with an openviewing deck which is occasionally open to the public. The walkway provides views of theinterior of the building, and is intended to symbolise transparency; a similar device was used

by Foster in his design for the rebuilt Reichstag (parliament) in Germany. In 2006 it wasannounced that solar photovoltaic cells would be fitted to the building by the London ClimateChange Agency.

Location

South bank of the River Thames, near Tower Bridge

The building is located on the River Thames in the London Borough of Southwark. It formspart of a larger development called More London, including offices and shops. Next to CityHall is a sunken amphitheatre called The Scoop, which is used in the summer months foropen-air performances; it is not, however, part of the GLA's jurisdiction. The Scoop and


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surrounding landscape were designed by Townshend Landscape Architects. The nearestLondon Underground and National Rail station is London Bridge.

2. Constructive criticism: the week inarchitecture

Belfast's Titanic visitor centre prepares for launch, while Venice rebuilds its bridges and RonArad reinvents the wheel Jonathan Glancey guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 August 2011

Titanic visitor centre in Belfast. Photograph: Donal McCann

The dramatic structure of the Titanic Belfast visitor centre, due to open in April 2012, is nowcomplete. With its wave-like aluminium facades, by the Belfast and Dublin-based ToddArchitects, the building is as unforgettable as the story of the Titanic itself. It broods at thecore of one of the biggest regeneration sites in Europe, which is also named after the infamousocean liner: the Titanic Quarter.

Isn't this a bit like naming a new city quarter the Lead Balloon district or Ring-o-Roses quay?

The facade of the Titanic Belfast even looks like the prow of a ship crashing into an iceberg.Perhaps it's meant to, although you would have thought such fraught imagery might beunsuitable for a major urban development.

Still, as the Titanic Quarter is due to include high-tech industry and housing as well ascolleges and offices, it might just outshine Stratford City in east London, a huge urbandevelopment also closely linked to a historic transport hub in this case the Stratfordlocomotive works of the old Great Eastern railway which has been hyped to death becauseof its symbiotic relationship with the London 2012 Olympics.

Will Stratford City sink or swim after next year's Games? The big hope is that with little else

to distract them (aside from a dip in Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre pool), Londoners andvisitors to the capital will be seduced by the lures of the biggest building here, the 1.45bn


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Westfield shopping mall that opens on 13 September this year. Europe's largest shoppingcentre will even sport three hotels, for those who feel that shopping here cannot be done in aday.

Such vast schemes would be unthinkable in Venice. And yet plans to replace the 1930s

timber-and-iron Ponte dell'Accademia across the Grand canal have been met with anger thisweek. The city argues that, as the bridge is a black hole of maintenance costs, it should bequickly replaced. A provisional design for a stone, steel and glass bridge by Bolognaarchitects Schiavani, however, looks cumbersome, while Lidia Fersuoch of the conservationgroup Italia Nostra is quoted as saying: "The [existing] bridge now has its own dignity andshould be restored. Venice risks losing a piece of its identity."

Whatever the quality of the new Accademia design and however rightful the concern for itsconservation, there's the worry that any new bridge in Venice might share the same fate asSantiago Calatrava's stone-and-glass-decked Ponte della Costituzione, which opened in 2008.Not only was the elegant new bridge expensive, but tourists have a habit of tripping up as they

mount its irregular steps. Although this has been used as a stick with which to beat thebridge's contemporary design, it might well be that holidaymakers are so busy looking at theview that they miss their step, as they do on the Accademia bridge, too.

The Titanic's tragic fate or something like it is about to befall the 26-storey HarmonBuilding in Las Vegas. While buildings have risen and fallen with the treacherous tides of thelocal property market, the Harmon Building is no ordinary slice of the developer's pie. Theblue, oval-shaped tower was designed by Foster and Partners as the centrepiece of the $9bnCityCenter leisure development for MGM Resorts International. Due to open in December2009, and at 49-storeys high, the building has never been completed and may well now bedemolished.

WOW factor.Photograph: W London in support of Elton John Aids Foundation

And finally, Ron Arad has decided to reinvent the wheel. A designer famous for hisunexpected ways with furniture, Arad has shaped one of a range of customised "WOW bikes"for the W London as part of the hotel's fundraising campaign for the Elton John Aids

Foundation, announced this week. Arad's bike boasts strange flower-like steel wheels. "Iwanted to explore the idea of a bike with no wheels," Arad explained enigmatically in a press


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statement from the hotel, "with just the suspension like a smile without the cat." Guestsstaying at W London can ride this and other WOW bikes by, among others, shoe designerPatrick Cox, Paloma Faith and Alice Temperley until 29 October 2011 when they will beauctioned off for charity. Bon voyage, indeed.

3.Olympics Aquatic Centre review

Zaha Hadid's London 2012 Aquatic Centre hasn't come cheap at 269m, but it is theOlympics' most majestic space Rowan Moore The Observer, Sunday 31 July 2011

The London 2012 Aquatics Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid. Photograph: David Poultney

From the outside, it's a car crash. Or a UFO crash. Or, to use the watery metaphors that are derigueur when talking about Zaha Hadid's 269m Aquatic Centre, it is like a vast turtle wavingover-sized flippers. A great roof, whose beauty should come from the way its great weightcame down to the ground at three points is engulfed with even bigger temporary structures,blown-up, go-faster versions of what might be seen at a county cattle fair, needed to house the15,000 temporary seats for the Olympic Games. They will be taken away afterwards, leavinga 2,500 capacity, which is the most that any non-Olympic swimming event is likely to attract.

Then, once spectators have negotiated the crowd management arrangements, which the

building accommodates somewhat clumsily, they will enter a space, a room big enough formore than 17,500 people. It is impressive because it is big, and purposeful, and will containlarge crowds, but also because the architecture rises to the occasion. The architects' moves areconfident and equal to the scale of the place. More than that, the interior has a feeling ofwholeness. It feels moulded or carved, not assembled. It looks like a body more thansomething constructed out of pieces.

The big thing is the roof, steel-framed and timber-clad, which floats and undulates..Officially, it's like a wave, but, with its combination of weight and agility, it's very like awhale. At either end a concrete bowl, containing the pools, the permanent seating and supportspaces, rises to meet the roof where it descends. Along each side, in the gaps formed between

the bowl and the roof, huge glass walls will be installed after the games, opening the space tothe sky and the surrounding park. Now these gaps open to steep banks of temporary seats,


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contained within the great flippers that are so problematic on the outside. Inside, they arecontinuous with the rest of the space, and add to its drama.

The work focuses on the two pools, for swimming and diving, coming down to a few humanbodies in water, small and fragile relative to the whole, a shift in scale that is somehow

achieved smoothly. The diving platforms are moulded out of the same concrete as the rest ofthe lower structure, making them extensions of the architecture rather than additional piecesof concrete.

Another pool, for practice, would be part of the experience too, visible behind a wide glasswall, but International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations have required an unfortunatetemporary partition. It's something to do with keeping athletes and officials apart, which isclearly very important, but it blocks the view. Elsewhere the interplay of architectural andsporting demands is happier. The greys of the structure are offset by strong primary colours:the blue pools, the yellow and red of the lane markers, and an interesting pinkish light filteredfrom the outside through translucent walls in the temporary extensions.

The Aquatic Centre is the London Olympics' most majestic space: the most potent, the mostcharged. It is also 2012's most difficult child, the first venue to be designed, the last to befinished. It was accompanied along the way by stories of escalating budgets (nervous builders,and near abandonment of the design). Built, it has compromises, like the view-blockingpartition and the flippers, about which Hadid does not even try to pretend to be happy. Asoriginally conceived, the awkward temporary extensions would not have been there, as therewas to be a roof big enough to cover both temporary and permanent, but this proved tooextravagant.

The obvious comparison is with the 93m, 6,000-seat Velodrome, another wavy-roofed workcompleted last February, seemingly with the smooth precision of a high-performance bike.The Velodrome's roof required 300 tonnes of steel; the Aquatic Centre's about the same sizebut with admittedly more difficult conditions uses 3,000 tonnes. The Velodrome, trim andtaut, is also a handsome building, and promises to be a powerful venue.

Part of the complication comes from the fact that the centre was designed before London wonthe bid. London was in danger of being seen as the safe-but-boring option, with dullbuildings, and Hadid's design could be waved in front of the IOC as evidence of stardust. Theproblem was that the people who would eventually be the clients for the building, theorganisations set up after London won the bid, didn't exist then, and the brief was not as

developed as it would be later. When designs come first and clients second, there is oftentrouble.

But there may also be a mismatch between the processes of something like the Olympics andarchitecture as conceived by Hadid. Architecture, for her, is something that should make itspresence felt, intervene, change things, perhaps get in the way. Her style seems to be aboutdynamism and weightless modernity, but her buildings are actually massive. They are slow,not fast. They reflect an old idea, common to Palladio and Le Corbusier, that architects sculptand shape and compose. Hence her roof, which dips down in the middle to suggest twodifferent spaces within in the overall enclosure, one for swimming and the other for diving.

I am sure that the Aquatic Centre could have been built more cheaply and easily, and withoutits crashes of permanent and temporary. It is a building that will be at its best after the games,


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when the flippers have been replaced by the great glass walls, although it will then face a newrisk of being too grand for a public pool. The wavy roof risks being too small for theOlympics and too big for its afterlife. It can only be hoped that, whatever plans are made forits future upkeep, they are equal to the ambitions of the structure.

4.Santiago CalatravaCity of Arts and SciencesValencia, Spain

As the site is close to the sea, and Valencia is so dry, I decided to make water a major

element for the whole site using it as a mirror for the architecture.

Santiago Calatrava

Photo: arcspace

The City of Arts and Sciences, developed by Santiago Calatrava, is a large-scale urbanrecreation center for culture and science which also incorporates LOceanogrfic, anunderwater city designed by the late Felix Candela.

Set in the old dried-up river bed of the Turia, midway between the old city of Valencia andthe coastal district of Nazaret, the City of Arts and Sciences covers an area of 350,000 squaremeters.

Following a disastrous flood in 1957, the river was diverted along a canal to the south of the

city, and the dried-out riverbed planted as a 7 kilometer long promenade through the center ofthe city. The promenade is crossed by two streamlined new bridges designed by SantiagoCalatrava.


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Photo: arcspace

Designed almost entirely by Valencia born Santiago Calatrava LHemisfric (Planetarium)was the first element to be opened to the public in April 1998. The Science Museum PrincipeFelipe opened in 2000, LUmbracle (Parking Structure) opened in 2001, the Palacio de lasArtes, still under construction, is scheduled to open in 2002. Calatravas use of pure whiteconcrete and Gaudiesque fragments of shattered tiles, an important Valencian industry, tie allthe structures together as a whole.

Photo: arcspace

This impressive architectural ensemble brings new focus to an incoherent and underdevelopedarea, while linking and providing a marker for the outer areas of the city.


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Photo: arcspace

The two principle buildings, the LHemisfric and the Science Museum Principe Felipe, areorganised around a raised promenade running from the base of the Palacio de las Artes alongthe defining, longitudinal axis of the site, and offering views out towards the sea.

Photo: arcspaceLUmbracle

LUmbracle (Promenade and Car Park) is Santiago Calatravas latest contribution to theunique and comprehensive complex of the City of Arts and Sciences.

Photo: arcspace


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The roofs of the nautical structures that form The LOceanogrfic (Oceanographic Park), anunderwater city covering 80,000 square meters, were designed by the late Felix Candela.

Photo: arcspace

A communications tower had originally been planned for the western tip of the site but achange of government in 1996 led to the replacement of the telecommunications tower withthe Palacio de las Artes.

Santiago Calatrava won the competition for the communications tower in 1991 and later thatsame year he was given the commission to develop the entire complex.

Photo: arcspace

This walkway, an integral part of the overall landscaping, serves as an ordering element;gardens extend to either side and, as a reminder of the sites fluvial past, shallow reflectingpools embrace the planetarium, covering the roof of the library, cinemas, several auditoria andrestaurants beneath. Further strips of water mark the northern boundary of the ScienceMuseum.


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Drawing courtesy Santiago Calatrava

Client: Generalitat Valenciana (Government of Valencia)

P.S. Further west the promenade culminates with the Calatrava designed entrances to theAlameda Metro Station (1991-1996) and the Alameda Bridge that connects Old Valencia withthe University. The steel canopies that mark the entrances to the underground station can be

lowered by hydraulically driven rods, to rest flush with the pavers, thus sealing the station.

Photo: arcspace

Photo: arcspace


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Photo: arcspace

The roofing of the underground station stem from the girder sustaining the bridge structure,with a central zone of concrete spokes and ribbed outer areas where the concourses fit in the

stairwells.

Photo: arcspace

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