Arrowhead Quay | Canary Wharf | 114m | 26 fl | On hold

[Langur]

@Potto
I agree with Rational Plan's expansion on my argument. CW is much better planned at street level than either Pudong or Dubai. They're dubious models at best.

The proposed towers are also much nicer than most in Pudong or Dubai. It's true that they're not landmarks like Burj Khalifa or SWFC, but other parts of London have added lots of eye-catching new landmarks in recent years: Shard, 122 Leadenhall, Gherkin, London Eye, O2 Dome, etc. In addition to our old icons (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, St Paul's, etc), we're hardly short of landmarks for the tourists.

Canary Wharf's best known and most iconic building is pyramid-topped 1 Canada Square, which is a landmark of local rather than global interest. However even if they built something more striking, such as this, I doubt it would make Canary Wharf a major tourist hub. It didn't work for Tokyo, and no one visited Taipei even after they built the tallest building in the world. The nearby O2 Dome is a beautiful and extraordinary building, but location alone means that most visitors to London never know of its existance.

Tourist destinations need several strings to their bow. Dubai has used the Burj al Arab and now Burj Khalifa in their tourism campaigns. However they also have one of the world's biggest hub airlines (making a stopover in Dubai attractive), duty free shopping, and flashy winter sun beach resorts. Canary Wharf won't have any of those no matter what they build.

For all these reasons you're being a bit unrealistic as to what a striking new tower design could achieve for Canary Wharf.

[delores]

Canary Wharf needs a cultural draw that separates it from purely business if it's to become a real part of London, it needs to mix up the tenancy build a university perhaps, give another reason for it's existence apart from just a monocultural facsimile of the city.

[Officer Dibble]

But the City isn't monocultural: in addition to all the corporate offices, it has a major cathedral and hundreds of churches, one of the world's greatest arts centres (in the Barbican), a couple of museums, loads of old pubs, crazy old livery halls and other historic buildings (many of them open to the public and therefore effectively museums), etc. Canary Wharf has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to compete with all that, but then it covers a much smaller area. Its USP could in fact be that it's simply a high-density, high-quality CBD, with the shops and restaurants etc needed to service those offices but without the leisure and tourist distractions. That aim would be consistent with its conservative architectural choices to date.

[potto]

I think Canary Wharf choosing Herzog & de Meuron to design a piece of Wood Wharf is rather telling and somewhat vindicates my view that Canary Wharf have been either asleep at the wheel or blinded by their desire to create a physical rendition of a corporate PowerPoint template.

Remember they are not just competing against the City but at an international level in their own right and ultimately it will be to their advantage if they keep generating a positive image for London as a whole, after all it was this desire that gave birth to them in the first place.

[i_like_concrete]

Originally Posted by Langur

@Potto
I agree with Rational Plan's expansion on my argument. CW is much better planned at street level than either Pudong or Dubai. They're dubious models at best.

Nobody was arguing that Pudong or Dubai are well planned at street level, what makes that so hard for you and rational plan to understand? Nobody is arguing they are total flawless model for development, simply that they share a feature with CW, that of a new district built at a different scale to the surrounds, and that as a collection of buildings making a skyline, they work better.

CW is not particularly well planned at street level, even if it is better than the above examples, and yes, the quality of individual buildings is good, but the overall interaction of those buildings, as part of a skyline, is severely lacking, and is simply creating a large wall of buildings.

The proposed towers are also much nicer than most in Pudong or Dubai. It's true that they're not landmarks like Burj Khalifa or SWFC, but other parts of London have added lots of eye-catching new landmarks in recent years: Shard, 122 Leadenhall, Gherkin, London Eye, O2 Dome, etc. In addition to our old icons (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, St Paul's, etc), we're hardly short of landmarks for the tourists.

Canary Wharf represents one of the largest investments in a single area in London or the UK for the past 30 years, huge amounts of money ploughed into completely transforming a built environment. It seems that with the exception of 1CS, none of that investment has been put towards creating a unique skyline that can boost the profile of the area both within London, and as its own international destination for business. These are not just the fantastical desire of people who want nicer buildings, they are perfectly practical and logical steps to take in order to make a property development as valuable as CW competitive in an increasingly diverse international market. As a global city London attracts business from everywhere, and CW is instrumental in that, in coming years it will need to offer more than a sterile business park aesthetic if it is to stand out against international competition. And Wood Wharf is a clear example of how CWG are recognising this.

What is worse is that this is residential proposal, not even tied in with the CW masterplan, it can't even pretend to be stuck in the 'companies prefer bland office blocks' argument, as it could clearly be of a far more interesting architectural design, that only increased its desirability as a place to invest in or live.

Canary Wharf's best known and most iconic building is pyramid-topped 1 Canada Square, which is a landmark of local rather than global interest. However even if they built something more striking, such as this, I doubt it would make Canary Wharf a major tourist hub. It didn't work for Tokyo, and no one visited Taipei even after they built the tallest building in the world. The nearby O2 Dome is a beautiful and extraordinary building, but location alone means that most visitors to London never know of its existance.

Canary Wharf is visible from plenty of important parts of London, why simply allow it to turn into a boxy addition to the skyline, an uninteresting background popping up in images of Tower Bridge, the South Bank, Shard View? If so much money is being willingly spent at CW by developers, we should be encouraging them to add to the drama of London, not actively design against it because of some nonsensical argument about Taipei 101. London already has the tourists, and it already is an important city, the standard we should expect already needs to be higher, we don't need gimmicks, we should be expecting architecture and masterplanning that fits the status of London as a world city.

Tourist destinations need several strings to their bow. Dubai has used the Burj al Arab and now Burj Khalifa in their tourism campaigns. However they also have one of the world's biggest hub airlines (making a stopover in Dubai attractive), duty free shopping, and flashy winter sun beach resorts. Canary Wharf won't have any of those no matter what they build.

For all these reasons you're being a bit unrealistic as to what a striking new tower design could achieve for Canary Wharf.

Canary Wharf is not its own city. It is part of London. Central London has decided to block more high rises, and the skyline will never be a particularly dramatic affair, even with the pinnacle et al, it remains highly constrained.

CW represents a greater opportunity, and now that WW is no longer going to be a simple office based annex to CW, we may actually see something that can stand out internationally, rather than pop up in the background as an overgrown business park.

[kerouac1848]

As much as we all moan about CW the reality is it has been rather successful as an estate in terms of earning income for its owners. It has grown hugely over the past 15 years and now houses more bank HQs than the City. The change of direction with WW is more about recognising that their original audience had rather shrunk since 2008, instead of seeing the place as needing a change for its own sake to boost its international profile. Given that it kind of made sense to shift the focus in order to attract an industry which seems to be growing.

[Langur]

@Concrete
I appreciate the detail of your response, but imo the fact that CW is not a separate city actually strengthens my argument. CW doesn't really need to add to London's profile of architectural icons, given the number and variety that London already has, and has recently built.

And imo you're being a little harsh on the architecture CW already has. 1 Canada Square may be the most memorable building there, but I also like the post-modern blocks of the first phase of CW. I love Foster's HSBC with its smooth lines, and also his part of the Citigroup complex. His Tube station is surely one of the finest in the world (and the best in London). I expect a similar wow-factor from his new Crossrail station. I also rather like Pan Peninsula's art deco inspired "streamline", and also the minimalism of this new proposal.

You and Potto talk as if Herzog & de Meuron mark some fundamental departure, but when they've got three large buildings by Norman Foster (with another UC), equally large proposals from Richard Rogers, and other buildings by the likes of Ieoh Ming Pei and Cesar Pelli, then the employment of Herzog & Meuron doesn't seem so out of pattern.