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The Shard Tower in London

Brainaddict said:
I'm not saying that the people working there will be screwing us - though I'm sure that is also true - I am saying the building itself, as any large-scale profit-making enterprise at the moment, is a mechanism for screwing us, and not something that will contribute to the economy you and I function in. The money will simply flow around the global economy, free as a vulture.

I just find it weird to watch people on this thread admire it when really it is a very big, very pointy cock destined for all our arses :D And it's true there are any number of big pointy cocks fucking us at the moment, in the form of the corporate takeover of the state, and the freeing of money from all obligations to nations and citizens, but this one really makes no effort to disguise itself. Zero marks out of ten for stealth skills :p
Click to expand...

Most cocks are actually ugly dirty flaccid things like this, so in the grand scheme of things, the Shard is to be celebrated.

tower440_440x300.jpg
 
Brainaddict said:
I'm not saying that the people working there will be screwing us - though I'm sure that is also true - I am saying the building itself, as any large-scale profit-making enterprise at the moment, is a mechanism for screwing us, and not something that will contribute to the economy you and I function in. The money will simply flow around the global economy, free as a vulture.

I just find it weird to watch people on this thread admire it when really it is a very big, very pointy cock destined for all our arses :D And it's true there are any number of big pointy cocks fucking us at the moment, in the form of the corporate takeover of the state, and the freeing of money from all obligations to nations and citizens, but this one really makes no effort to disguise itself. Zero marks out of ten for stealth skills :p
Click to expand...

The big pointy cock approach to asserting power through architecture has left us with some fantastic buildings over the years. Perhaps it's only after the men (it is only a man thing isn't it?) behind it have passed on that we can clearly judge a building without prejudice.

Although it's almost become heresy to say it, I'm still not convinced by the Shard as a piece of architecture. It's designed to be very loud and very noticeable, but unlike Centre Point, the Trellick Tower or even the Gherkin for example, it just doesn't seem to have much in the way of charisma. Big, pointy and so what.
 
Andrew Hertford said:
The big pointy cock approach to asserting power through architecture has left us with some fantastic buildings over the years. Perhaps it's only after the men (it is only a man thing isn't it?) behind it have passed on that we can clearly judge a building without prejudice.

Although it's almost become heresy to say it, I'm still not convinced by the Shard as a piece of architecture. It's designed to be very loud and very noticeable, but unlike Centre Point, the Trellick Tower or even the Gherkin for example, it just doesn't seem to have much in the way of charisma. Big, pointy and so what.
Click to expand...
it's shit. what's wrong with the sort of architecture favoured for centuries in this country based on the writings of vitruvius?
 
Brainaddict said:
Has anyone posted this article on the shard yet? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/19/shard-london-skyscraper?INTCMP=SRCH

I'm afraid I agree with him on a lot of it. The aesthetics of it I don't much care about, but I see the horrible (lack of) future it symbolises every time I look at it.
Click to expand...

Seems like a bit of a confused article to me - it's making some reasonable (if rather obvious) political points about what the building type - ie the skyscraper - represents, but then somehow seems to try and make that into an architectural critique of the specific building itself. It doesn't say very much of any consequence about the quality of the architecture. It basically says that it's very big, compared to most of London which is quite low rise - thanks for pointing that out; I hadn't noticed that until now. He mentions some photograph that supposedly shows how it dwarfs St Paul's. I bet that's that photo that was in the Evening Standard a while ago, taken massively zoomed-in from a viewpoint in Hampstead or somewhere so that everything is foreshortened and bears little resemblance to actual views from the ground.

And when he says that it's clad in a symmetrical skin of glass - well it isn't, that's kind of the point, so he obviously hasn't been paying much attention.

So I give this article 3/10.
 
Pickman's model said:
it's shit. what's wrong with the sort of architecture favoured for centuries in this country based on the writings of vitruvius?
Click to expand...
That sounds like the kind of thing that someone who's heard of Vitrivius but hasn't thought very much about architecture would say in the pub to try and sound clever.
 
As an aside, I can remember a TV programme about this - I'm guessing it was based on "Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future" written by Scottish geologist Dougal Dixon - and it showed what would happen to the earth if man buggered off. Here's an extract:
Amidst the spreading greenery, the surviving buildings are battered by weather and erosion. Without repainting and maintenance, bridge spans do not last more than fifty years. Our modern steel and concrete buildings, like city-centre office blocks, fare better: ivy dangles from the skyscrapers that still protrude, for a time, from the green layers of forest. In fact, the air and rain is clean of the acidic pollutants that damage our buildings in the present day. But they have lost their window glass, and are scorched by fire.

Wooden structures are the first to vanish completely, their fabric destroyed by the patient attention of insects.

Stone buildings last longer - at least, those far from the unstable land close to the rivers - but as more trees take root among the rubble, more walls are brought down. The very mortar of Hadrian’s Wall (built circa 122 AD, almost 2000 years old) has long crumbled to dust, and frost and lichen are destroying the stones themselves. After five centuries, the stone buildings are reduced to hummocks under the turf.

The skyscrapers survive a little longer, as long as their foundations hold against the rise of the water tables. But corroding concrete at last exposes the steel bars that reinforce the buildings. After that, the collapse is swift.

It seems unlikely that any modern building would last as long as the great stone constructions of the Middle Ages. The oldest castle in the UK, at Chepstow, Monmouthshire, dates from 1067 AD. Many buildings and structures have survived longer still: the oldest Egyptian pyramid is the Djoser at Saqqara, dating back to c 2630 BC, and the earliest part of Stonehenge dates from c 2950 BC. Modern buildings in a city like London – built on a flood plain - rest on much less stable foundations, subject to inundation and natural earth movements.

http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_3/01_en.htm
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Ok, so the remaining Roman concrete-built buildings (self-selected for durability by being the ones that have survived) might outlast "most" of our concrete buildings (because the majority of all buildings fall down/get knocked down eventually) but it's a bit of a myth that the Romans made better concrete than we can.

Also, I'd like to see how long the Pantheon dome would survive in a climate like, say, the UK's, without any maintenance.
 
teuchter said:
Ok, so the remaining Roman concrete-built buildings (self-selected for durability by being the ones that have survived) might outlast "most" of our concrete buildings (because the majority of all buildings fall down/get knocked down eventually) but it's a bit of a myth that the Romans made better concrete than we can.
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I didn't actually say that the Romans made 'better' concrete (although the article authors assert that their methods of creating the stuff - using low water content and close compaction - means it may well be better than a lot of the stuff created now).

A fundamental thesis in the Roman concrete book is that the Romans likely used a very low water content mortar, which is why it has lasted all these years. The problem for modern construction problems is that concrete of this low a water content is not an economical option. The Romans had thousands of slaves working on their job sites who could be forced to pound and manually manipulate stiff concrete into place
http://www.romanconcrete.com/questions.htm
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That said, the Romans didn't reinforce their concrete buildings with steel, so they aren't liable to suffer problems from subsequent corrosion if cracks appear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete#Common_failure_modes_of_steel_reinforced_concrete
 
Modern concrete can contain additives that allow the water content to be reduced whilst maintaining workability, and also to guard against corrosion of the rebar. Lots of early reinforced concrete suffers problems with rebar corrosion but the technology has subsequently advanced to mean that it should not now be a major problem.
 
anyone noticed the subtle improvements to the London Bridge concourse.

the roof new roof keeps revelaing itself, its just one row of ticket barriers now on the 'Southern' side - which is a great improvement in the morning peaks. Plus you can start to work out how that whole side of the building is going to interact with The Shard. I quite like the improvements so far.

Assume its going to be quite a mission whenever they sort out the area where the current retail (BK etc) is though
 
When not struck by its comical proportionality, I'm finding its symbolism a little depressing now. It's obv. not how I want to feel about new buildings :(
 
The other day I came into St Pancras station in the evening. You can see the Shard in the distance as you approach. There was a dark storm cloud over south London but the Shard was reflecting an area of lighter sky so it looked almost white against the dark grey background. It looked very cool, but I would have needed a zoom lens to take a photo.
 
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