LONDON | Projects & Construction

[LondonFox]

I love centre point..

[SO143]

Why has anti-metropolitan anger been so slow to find effective expression?

[SO143]

Boris Johnson orders rethink over Thames supersewer
27 April 2012

The future of the Thames supersewer was in doubt today after Boris Johnson announced plans for a full consultation over the project.

Mr Johnson said he is “concerned over the rising cost” of the scheme as well as the disruption to Londoners living along the route.

His latest intervention in the row will be seen as a last-minute attempt to secure Tory votes in boroughs along the Thames before next week’s City Hall election.

Insiders today said that, depending on the result of his consultation, Mr Johnson could end up pressuring the Government and Thames Water to return to the drawing board despite years of work on the £4.1 billion project.

His Labour rival Ken Livingstone today accused the Mayor of a “clear electioneering ploy” and said he was “putting his interests before the interests of ordinary Londoners”.

Thames Water wants to replace London’s inadequate Victorian sewer network with a large new tunnel, with construction due to begin in 2016.

The 20–mile underground pipe, would trace the curves of the river and be punctuated at ground level by ventilation columns at about 20 sites.

There have been complaints that the large columns could spoil famous views across the capital, including those of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

Mr Johnson today told the Standard: “It is vital that we clean up the Thames and I am committed to support measures that achieve this. But I am increasingly concerned over the rising cost that it will impose on Londoners, already hard hit by the current economic climate, and also the severe disruption for many people in some parts of London. We need greater clarity on whether this is indeed the best scheme that could be devised.”

Opponents of the scheme today welcomed the Mayor’s announcement.

....

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/m...r-7684688.html

[hugh]

Centre Point is such a cool building - it would be great to see it turned into flats.

[SO143]

by cybertect












and some new bays and shelters at the bus station, some of which are being used temporarily as a taxi rank








a lot more of the white sheeting has appeared on the north side

[SO143]

new building in Soho

image hosted on flickr

by me

[SO143]

taken in stratford (near the olympic park)

image hosted on flickr

by me

[SO143]

Revamp proposed for City’s Broadgate

The owners of Broadgate in the City of London are set to submit proposals to revamp the 25-year-old estate, in a move that could re-ignite the bitter feud over preserving the original architecture of the site.

British Land, the property company, and US private equity group Blackstone, which jointly own the site, will submit plans as early as next week to create more retail space in Broadgate Circle, the estate’s cylindrical shopping area. The overhaul will see some of the office space around the circle taken out and replaced with shops, according to people familiar with the process.

The proposed redevelopment is understood to have been well received by both the City of London planning office and English Heritage in preliminary discussions held earlier this year.

Architects Arup Associates have been commissioned to design the redevelopment of the scheme they designed in the 1980s.
The Arena, with its popular ice rink and the feel of an urban piazza at the centre of the dense Broadgate development, was very much the centerpiece of the scheme.

Any proposals to change Broadgate will be looked at closely in the wake of the furore caused last year by the proposals to demolish another part of the development to make way for the huge new UBS building, designed by architects Make.

The redevelopment of the former railway land around Liverpool Street Station by Stanhope Properties (subsequently taken over by British Land) was a pivotal step in the eastward expansion of the City and in bringing US-style construction methods to Britain, along with the engineering skills needed to bridge large buildings over railway lines.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b1378ec-8...#axzz1tKRRa2Un

[SO143]

a new tower rising at the canary wharf

by chest













the construction chest

[SO143]

Queen unveils Cutty Sark after £50m restoration



FIVE years after the Cutty Sark, once the pride of the British Empire, was ravaged by fire the ship has been restored to her former glory in time for a momentous year in Britain.

The 19th century sailing ship was to be re-opened on Wednesday by the Queen, weeks before the monarch celebrates her diamond jubilee in June.

Cutty Sark, which used to streak across the oceans carrying tea and wool, has come a long way since the flames burned through all three of her decks, turning her into an inferno early one morning in May 2007.

A £50 million ($78 million) restoration project means the black and white ship's three masts once again dominate the skyline of Greenwich, south London, where she has stood since 1954.

Chris Nash, the architect who oversaw the project, said it was fortunate that the fire struck when an original phase of restoration work, for severe corrosion, had already begun.

"The fire caused a great deal of damage but luckily at the time the important historic parts of the ship had already been taken off and were in storage. That was good luck,'' he told AFP.

"About five or 10 percent of the ship was lost in the fire, so there was a great deal of luck.''

The restoration, described by the Royal Museums in Greenwich as "one of the most complex conservation projects ever undertaken on a historic ship'', has been funded by £25 million of public funds raised from Britain's national lottery.

There is great pride that the work has been completed in time not only for the diamond jubilee but also for the London Olympics, which open on the other side of the River Thames from Greenwich on July 27.

In a complex feat of engineering, the ship has been raised three metres in the air, allowing visitors to walk underneath her hull and giving the impression that she is sitting in a sea of glass.

"A lot of ships are conserved and repaired but none have been physically lifted and suspended three metres in the air,'' said Jim Solomon, the chief engineer.

"Projects like this don't come around very often.''

Cutty Sark's new elevated position allows visitors to see the innovative design of the hull which enabled her to sail from Sydney to London in 1885 in a then-record 73 days, leaving the early steam ships in her wake.

"It is very important to keep this unique ship to represent the background to our wealth and prosperity,'' said Nash.

He compares the technological sophistication of Cutty Sark in its time to the impact made by the supersonic Concorde jet in its era.

"This ship is a symbol of British maritime power for many reasons: one is the aspect of trade, the other thing is the technology. At her time this was the most advanced technology that existed.''

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/travel/n...-1226338555300

[LondonFox]

Originally Posted by SO143

new building in Soho

image hosted on flickr

by me

That's a hotel I believe just off Leicester Square.. Used the be where the Swiss building was.

[SO143]

oh really? i thought that building was the M&M World (world's biggest candy store)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...postcount=3381

[TedStriker]

Originally Posted by hugh

Centre Point is such a cool building - it would be great to see it turned into flats.

I'm with you there.

[jamiefearon]

Originally Posted by SO143

oh really? i thought that building was the M&M World (world's biggest candy store)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...postcount=3381

It's both, a hotel and the M&M World.

[LondonFox]

Whatever it is.... It's cool as fuck to look at!

[LondonFox]

Originally Posted by SO143

oh really? i thought that building was the M&M World (world's biggest candy store)

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...postcount=3381

Look here!

http://diarywhatsnews.blogspot.co.uk...quare.html?m=1

[SO143]

i see

thx for the correction mate

[SO143]

A south London construction company has been fined for continuing unsafe working practices at a site in Upper Norwood, Croydon, after repeatedly ignoring safety warnings.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) identified multiple failings at a site on Sylvan Hill where Unicorn Services Ltd was building a four-storey block of flats. The site was described as ‘a potential death trap’.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard that on 26 September 2011 an HSE inspector served eight prohibition notices to stop dangerous practices at the site after identifying serious safety breaches.

The notices covered dangerous scaffolding, people working unsafely at height, fire-related hazards and dangerous electrical equipment.

Unicorn also supplied ‘appallingly inadequate’ documentation for risk assessments and project management.

HSE returned to the site in October and found that little or no improvement had been made to many of the illegal practices.

An improvement notice was subsequently served requiring the site manager to arrange training to safely manage construction operations. However, the manager failed to meet a compliance date of late November.

http://www.theconstructionindex.co.u...s-a-death-trap

[SO143]

Olympic Park Still Under Construction



Heavy machinery clatters ceaselessly at London’s Olympic Park, the massive construction site in East London which will be the centerpiece for competition at the 2012 Olympic Games. Last Monday, a group of journalists riding in a bus around the loop road of the complex peppered an official of LOCOG, the London 2012 Olympic Organizing Committee, with questions about his organization’s progress. The most important one was this:

“Will you be late in completing the work?” asked one reporter.

“No,” said a determined James Bulley, Director of Venues & Infrastructure, momentarily freezing his face with a smile after answering. “The fact is that everything is on track.”

Bulley, a 40-ish man with closely cropped hair, penetrating eyes, and a lot of patience, spoke rapidly into a microphone as he explained to the reporters that there was still much work to do, but that it would indeed be finished in time for the Games’ Opening Ceremony on July 27.

“It still looks quite a construction site at the moment,” Bulley said. He continued: “This brings back to life what was a heavily contaminated area.”

For the past 400 years, the Lower Lea Valley had been used for heavy industry and domestic and industrial landfill. The soil was so contaminated it had to be cleansed with giant soil washing machines to make the site safe for development. Moreover, there were 52 high voltage electricity towers which criss-crossed the site which had to be dismantled and removed, something organizers said was one of the largest civil engineering projects ever in Britain.

Organizers have planned carefully to only build permanent structures which will have a bonafide legacy use, something which has plagued previous Games organizers, especially in Athens.

“We won’t leave any white elephants,” Bulley said.

Within the park –which will be a secured area and have three tightly controlled entrances– the basketball arena is a temporary structure covered with a white PVC film. That building will be dismantled after the Games, with parts reused or recycled as appropriate. The Aquatics Centre has 17,500 seats for the Games, but 15,000 of those seats are temporary and will later be removed. The entire water polo venue is temporary and will be taken down. The athletes village was designed to be reconfigured and become an apartment complex after the Games.

.....

http://running.competitor.com/2012/0...truction_51482

[SO143]

Borisopolis: London under Boris Johnson

The Emirates Air Line cable car, new Routemasters, new Boris Bikes, decluttered streets, the Olympic Orbit sculpture… after four years of Boris Johnson as mayor, London is a mixture of vanity projects and a few good ideas



Mayors love buildings. They love the opportunities to pose in hard hats, to make their mark on their cities, to leave permanent monuments of their reigns and to demonstrate in the most tangible possible way that Something Is Being Done. Mayors have also been known to use large contracts and profitable planning consents to return favours to their supporters in construction and development and, in some disreputable cases, to take kickbacks themselves.

London mayors have more reasons than most to like planning, architecture and design, as these are areas within their relatively limited range of powers where they have some influence. They oversee the London plan, which guides the future development of the city, and have the power to approve or refuse significant planning applications. They have budgets that can be spent on the city's public spaces.

Ken Livingstone, in his last incarnation as London mayor, pursued a policy of unstoppable growth, based on his belief, since discarded, in the permanent revolution of financial services. Nothing should stand in the way of developers erecting buildings that would serve the banks that would make the money, a portion of which could then be extracted to pay for the affordable housing that was made more necessary by the high property prices caused by the boom in financial services.

He adopted Richard Rogers's idea of the "compact city", that it was good to densify and intensify the centre of London, rather than let it sprawl horizontally into the green belt. The results of his dash for growth, combined with the compact city, were a series of towers pushed through the planning system with Livingstone's support: some, such as the Shard, are now being completed; some are poking their concrete lift cores into the air; some remain computer-generated images awaiting the funds to be turned into reality. Livingstone also pursued, with partial success, a policy of creating "100 public spaces", based on Barcelona's renewal of its streets and squares.

Then came Boris Johnson, who has shown himself as much in love with grand gestures as anyone, although with limited funds to achieve them. He has therefore thrown himself behind the London River Park, a privately financed plan for a series of pontoons floating in the Thames that, while they will have some benches and green stuff here and there, will also have extensive corporate hospitality areas to pay for the project. He backed the Emirates Air Line, a cable car that may or may not be functioning in time for the Olympics, in return for sponsorship which means that the airline will get its name on the tube map. He has slathered the streets with blue cycle lanes, a colour by happy coincidence close to the branding of the sponsor of Boris bikes, Barclays Bank.

He has promoted the Orbit, the 115m-high sculpture by Anish Kapoor next to the Olympic stadium, which reportedly arose from a chat between Boris and its sponsor, Lakshmi Mittal, in the gents' at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And, indeed, unless there is some so far hidden genius to this structure, which will reveal itself once the public is allowed to explore it, it currently looks to me very much like a lot of steel and money pissed into the sky, to no great purpose except the vanity of those involved. Johnson has presented images of the Eiffel Tower visible above Parisian apartment blocks and sincerely seems to believe that the Orbit will be no less impressive seen from the future residential developments on the Olympic site. I doubt it.

He has also backed the revival of the Routemaster bus, with the admirable intention of bringing back a bit of dignity and civility to public transport. These handsome if over-styled objects certainly lift the spirits in rare sightings along the 38 route – there are eight currently in operation – but until they become the standard rather than the exception they will remain in the category of rhetorical flourish.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesi...on-livingstone