….which sensitively reflects its traditional fishing character….

The Snape Maltings is romantic, grand and serious with only a modicum of tourist tat confusing the central mission, but then there’s this:

A funky little house plonked in the middle of an unformed street on the edge of the musical empire. Nice bit of corten. Turns out its called ‘Dovecote Studio’ – maybe referring to the former use of the broken brick shell the corten rises out of? Windows in a dovecote? Its a space for composers, writers and visual artists – it says here – no doubt those who don’t mind the curious world peering in their windows, or not quite enough room for a sitting down, let alone swinging, cat. Cute though. House-y too, in a location completely devoid of houses. So clearly one was called for.

Its not without neighbours and there’s maybe some thought given to a relationship with outdoor space beyond these doors, but the existing ivy and new plants along this side suggest its future may be to disappear, to become an ivy-cloaked house form, a symbolic building only…..?

Sorry about the weather – it gets worse…. This is the context, some wonderful old and new buildings, and great open views across the flat, marshy river estuary towards a meeting with the North Sea. I’m not sure how the artists could stay barricaded in this little steel house-let when the wind and the rain lash in from the coast – too exciting. And just out the window across the paddock to the east, Barbara Hepworth’s Family stand gazing out over the estuary….

Go for a walk! Its much more inspiring…. even in the rain…..

So who wouldn’t like a house in the country with a Barbara Hepworth at the bottom of the garden and a major concert hall in the east wing?

This is the best shot of Cheapside’s new piece of architecture – Jean Nouvel comes to the City of London with an extraordinary building, that most banal of  typologies – yes, its a shopping centre! Three shopping/eating storeys, one of them below ground, with a section open to the sky – looking back to its somewhat ..err… classier? older? astonished?… neighbour, St Paul’s Cathedral.

Called ‘One New Change’ as it fronts both that street and ‘Cheapside’ which is far more relevant (but maybe not as sexy). We are frequently reminded by the PR machine that ‘cheap’ was Olde Englishe for ‘market’ and Cheapside was once filled with market stalls and shops….. so this is really just re-establishing an historical precedent, though with H&M and Topshop located on the Cheapside side of the building there’s a not very subliminal message to shoppers going on.

The New Change elevation – facing the rear of St Paul’s – enlivens a previously dull street and the central access/axis breaks up the building form enough for the ‘stealth’ elevation treatment to not seem too overt. But……that brown stuff??? What was Nouvel thinking? And what was Peter Rees (City Planning Officer)  thinking buying into it? Well, the BD review claims the colours reflect materials previously used on the site – since the previous building was deemed demolishable and nobody can check, this sounds like clutching at straws to me. I’m sorry, but its a crap colour, its unlike anything else nearby (mostly cream stone or render), and most suggests 70s shoes. Will we learn to love it? Hmm….

This is the ‘stealth bomber’ view. If the intention was to have the building ‘disappear’ then the brown glass does exactly the opposite, whereas a grey would have faded into the sky – my apologies for accidentally catching a bit of blue sky there, unusual stuff. This shows a more threatening presence, and it certainly could have landed from Mars or Alpha Centauri – cheaper sweatshops than China maybe..?

You can’t move much in the City without  the odd church tower framing or back-dropping the view – Bow Church above defining the Cheapside elevation looking away from St Paul’s. The glazed cladding to the 5 floors of offices above the shopping centre definitely in contrast to the existing buildings opposite. No problem with that in principle, but there’s that brown again… There will no doubt be the usual architectural claims about the building have a ‘dialogue’ with its neighbours – this means ‘we ignored them completely’ and maybe thats ok, there’s enough going on in the street anyway, but it would be more interesting to be honest about it.

The clever bits of this building are: the layout – a criss-cross of routes through the site making a stroll past the shops genuinely incidental to casual pedestrian movement  - the partial openness – this section is open to the sky and to the dome of St Paul’s, as is the central lift well, ensuring that rain, snow and the general fabulousness of London weather comes right into the core of the building – the floor finish – which is (? seems to be..) simple York stone continuing the surrounding footpath and public space into and through the shopping area.

The view looking up – couldn’t get that blue bit to come back unfortunately – but it is real sky. No air conditioning then, so the ‘mall’ has sustainability credentials in that it is largely covered or open small lanes, as the area would have been once, almost treated as though they are public streets. But not quite…. the covered ‘lanes’ of the mall, although they are fairly short, feel very much as though they are standard internal shopping centre spaces – a form of ‘tradition’ in its own way I guess!

The south elevation looking west including entry canopy. Well, the whole development is a really good excuse to find new ways to photograph Wren’s lovely old pile….

…and here’s the same elevation looking the other way… The faceting is interesting but seems arbitrarily used, changing this smaller face but not used along the north elevation.

So, how does this new insertion into the City urban landscape fare overall? It is probably impossible to have designed something for this location that would please the architectural pundits, its unabashed (while claiming serious ‘bashed’-ness!) and highly mannered modernism is a relief from nearby Paternoster Square’s kneebending to Prince Charles (all that fussy decoration), and its improvements to connectivity, street edge and public realm treatment earns pluses in the urban design department, but oops, check out the massive loading dock in Bread St, opposite ‘Le Pain Quotidien’ – I’d bargain the rent down if I were them…

Its easy to challenge a shopping centre in such a hallowed location, but as an inhabitant of the nearby East End I have to admit to being pleased to find somewhere to shop nearby that means I don’t have to trek into Oxford St, and it caters for grown-ups (along with the ‘cheap’ bits!), and is open weekends….. BUT , no Zara and no French Connection? Must Do Better to really get points in the shopping stakes…

Now we’re just awaiting the opening of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant on the rooftop – just for the views of St Paul’s you understand…

Art and architecture in NYC for the weekend… thanks to John R…

A return to the New Museum by Sanaa, the Japanese Pritzker prize-winning duo, and their attempt to make a large-footprint use work vertically, or at least small-footprintly. Good commissioning from the client – if the Japanese can’t do it, who can?

Basically, this is an art gallery on a small urban site. It has a mission to showcase “adventurous contemporary works”. Good stuff, so is it also an ‘adventurous and contemporary’ building? It is in the sense that it has to pile several tall-ish, open-ish spaces on top of each other and make access between them have some sort of logic… does this work? Well, if you don’t mind taking the lift up then fighting the rest of tourist/art-loving NYC for space on the 900mm wide circulation stair (going both ways!), yes it, errr…works…. sort of….no…. ummm, not really…. at all…

But what about the ‘piled up boxes/no windows’ look? is it an inspiring piece of urban streetscape? Well this has to be an unequivocal yes. The ‘boxes’ are fantastic, they sit well in the street and wave a challenge at both the traditional concrete/steel frame warehouses, and the ‘new’ towers. Windows? Who needs ‘em above the ground floor when you’re slipping planes like this??

Good  relationship with the neighbours – this shared wall aspect looks like an elbow or a subtle arse being shoved at the tatty frame structure warehouse next door . But there’s a smile between them.

Then there’s a scale shift with the introduction of the human – people wander out on to the balcony on an upper floor and the shifted boxes become more compelling to look at.

…and this is what you see when you get there….. its great, the view from the yellow cab in reverse. But I’m not sure this is what you want from an ‘adventurous contemporary’ art gallery. I was well distracted by the building, by the views, and the art became incidental – is this the response they want?? Disengagement….

…and the view is great, the perfect NYC juxtaposition – modern (sorry, ‘contemporary’, I’m told the word ‘modern’ has problematic connections – discuss…), materials, detailing and form sending the eye straight towards the traditional NYC timber water tower… clunk!

.. ..and giving us rooftop forensics. Wonderful things rooftops, for about 3 minutes (where does that duct go? What is that green steel structure doing?), then you have to return your attention to the new architecture you’re in/on, as the lower east side is not all that diverting architecturally – yet…

A brief foray into detailing – its simple and clever and good-looking, and lets hope it doesn’t leak…

ditto…

That upstairs space was interesting, but low-ceilinged and empty. The security guard smiled for the camera (thats not her…) as they surprisingly often do, though she wouldn’t let me photograph the works or the other spaces, unsurprisingly.

But in the end I felt a bit like this this about it all….. well the show had been curated by Jeff Koons, so it was all a bit Koons-lite … the spaces are fine, though not top or side lit so very internal, and you have to move between them – vertically! – and this staircase is a crap way to do it. Great object architecture, great counter-intuitive urban context, dodgy internal circulation…. and unfortunately that’s a bit of a major in terms of the function. Worth a visit to check it out though….

A sparkling cold day in NYC early spring gets the crowds out on the city’s newest piece of public open space – a linear park created on the structure of a disused freight line up the west side of Manhattan. Designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro plus others, it was fascinating to see it in its winter outfit – ie: not a scrap of green and snow lying about in sunless places. But crowded! Maybe it was the first bit of sun to greet New Yorkers for months, they were going for it. This area where we ‘got on the train’ – it feels a bit like that with vertical access on the alternate street corners – was a warmish space where the sun reflecting off adjacent windows threw even more welcome light around.

The view from the train to the west! Well, the big guys, Gehry (left) and Nouvel (at the back), producing landmark buildings in this developing area of Chelsea – arguably a waste of ‘landmarkness’ having them next to each other..? The push here is presumably to increase height, density and occupancy in an area of ex-warehouses happily occupied by the art world – does it work? Gehry doesn’t look too good in this view, recent development in NYC seems to be suffering from over-large footprint buildings which need greater height at least partially in order to offset their inbuilt ‘lumpen-ness’. The upper levels of Gehry’s building look like they’re struggling to hold back a taller growth – let it go, it would look better!

Nouvel’s ‘vision machine’ behind on 11th Ave looks positively polite and appropriately urban, and for all the glitz surrounding its launch, when you zoom past it the building seems to just sit happily in the urban (fairly tough) streetscape – no dramas, not sure if that’s what Nouvel intended but its good….

These guys have either dropped the car keys through a gap or are architects studying the detailing (like the rest of us….).

Its a really cool space, great the way that the seats slide out of the ‘ground’, and extraordinary that nobody walked into this shot…! Would be nice in summer with trees doing their thing but the total brown-ness of the winter experience emphasises the timber construction.

Did they bring their own furniture? The Highline does split level at this point and the left over tracks pop up as a reminder of it origins.

The view from the split level! Its so close to the river and a much better place to gaze across at New Jersey than the street level riverside walks – well, a different experience, but great to be able to be in the city, above the city, in a park and overlooking the river – all for free in this land of opportunistic charging!

The ‘sunbeds on wheels’ on the tracks are a good joke – though there is something slightly disturbing about it…. The Highline’s original industrial practicality shows in the background here as it calmly slides through a building. NYC is famous for making the most of tiny pieces of public space and the crowds in this spot really exemplify this.

One of the park’s best aspects is connecting bits of the city (this will be even more so when the next stages are completed). It travels north/south so the urban views are mostly eastwards, like this one with the buildings going from refurbished warehouses in the foreground, now art or fashion-filled, to the rising blocks in the centre. Great street scale at this end but its changing (see above and below..). For better or not?

View from the southernmost starting point of the park. A faint tinge of green survives in the planting but mostly its a wonderful mixture of natural browns and greys – like this happy park user. The Standard Hotel straddling the Highline is another leader in the regeneration stakes. With its terrific 50s references (by the Polshek Partnership Architects – no I don’t know either…!), its really classy and a genuine landmark, 20 storeys above the old tracks in the now-fashionable Meatpacking district.

The terrace looks appealing, and just close enough to the Highline for the Hotel residents to sneer ever so slightly at those in the park, but just too cold for them today! Love those light fittings, but are they too high?

So of course we had to go and have a look from the cocktail bar at the top. View to the north east here, through phenomenally clean windows, and while you do get the Empire State Building, this shows NYC urbanism at its most uninspired – the most interesting thing out there is 80 years old! You do occasionally get that with a crowd of architects – gallery openings maybe – but the crowd will shift and change, whereas NYC mid-town just sits there….

But the rooftop bar is fabulous (delicious $US20 cocktails, you have been warned!), designed to reference Warren Platner’s 60s and 70s interiors (he did the Windows on the World restaurant in the WTC), it is brilliantly over the top. This view looking down to Wall St where the urban form does stand out and identify its location and use.

Overlooking the sparkling Hudson from a great little smokers balcony (?) looking south. All that under-used river edge…. they’ll get around to it I’m sure.

Though mildly distracted by the cocktails and the view over greater Manhattan (Wall St does look like NYC should – its that ‘pointy skyline’ thing…), paying attention to the Highline was the point of this and here is the view back down to the ‘hood showing its transition status – on the street to the east (left) of the ‘tracks’ are seriously posh fashion shops etc., and to the west a still functioning distribution or transport facility, very industrial – presumably its days are numbered? Where will it go?

One of the many enjoyable things about the Highline at present is its openness, which is partly because it passes a hybrid collection of buildings, including quite a few relatively low ones (see above). Will it maintain this quality as the area becomes more built up? Perhaps becoming more contained will make it more attractive? A secretive series of spaces….

The underbelly…. we walked south on the Highline, then north underneath it – a totally different but equally interesting experience. This apparent crashing of an unstoppable piece of engineering into an unmovable brick wall must contain a useful urban metaphor of some sort – elusive at the moment….

Back near the northernmost point  (so far, this is stage one of a greater vision – the tracks stretch further north), dozens of people happily hang out or walk over a busy piece of highway, enjoying a public space that allows them to be of the city but not in the city, in a car-free, greenish space that connects a good chunk of the west of Manhattan….. and there’s that slightly disarming Gehry/Nouvel backdrop again.

Back up on the line – there’s a strange aspect to the design which wouldn’t pass the British Health and Safety challenge (anywhere else?) – these rather elegant concrete fingers (referencing sleepers perhaps?) are raised up at their base to then fall slowly into the planting, and if, like me, you walk along gazing upwards or with a camera stuck on your face (in the old-fashioned way), you trip over them! I guess this is an intentional signal that you’re about to walk on the grass, but…..

This the way up or down – vertical circulation if you like – not a ramp in sight but several lifts at odd corners. Like a lot of these things the attraction seems to have been underestimated and the stairs were jammed – maybe it doesn’t matter? The building beyond is the ‘back’ of Nouvel’s 11th Ave number. Again a stronger sense of structure and urbanity than its Californian neighbour.

Then just to prove the three rules of urban design are context context context, we stepped off the Highline and straight into a great Olafur Eliasson exhibition. Party party.

Coming into any city from an airport by cab invariably takes you past some of the more banal or even grim suburban/industrial hinterlands that that city has to offer. NYC is no exception. On a grey snowy day in March it wasn’t looking too good, until Manhattan snuck into view – defined extraordinarily by two 80 year old tall buildings that in a supposed city of skyscrapers still dominate the mid-town horizon. Crossing the Williamsburg Bridge, the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings flash between the struts waving their welcome!

These historical ‘twin towers’ keep appearing until you drop down to street level.

Traditional street edge enclosure does lower east side urban grit just as well as gentrified loft apartments…… the scale and complexity of Manhattan seems to always accommodate areas of marginal use opportunity – the developers can keep a step ahead but somehow there are still streets of ‘original’ buildings after years of development boomtime – Jane Jacobs would be pleased!

Um er well yes…. The strength and robustness of the Manhattan grid and back-of-pavement buildings accommodates all kinds of architectural posturing and silliness without major damage to its sense of urban form. The height of this building suggests that there is a city planning initiative to increase local height and density (just guessing! I know nothing about planning rules in NYC….). Doesn’t look too good here!

And here’s a bit more of the “lets play with morphology” game, and lets maybe forget that the most attractive aspect of these streets is the extraordinary consistency of those traditional warehouse forms – they don’t all look the same, are not all the same height or same materials but neither do they self-consciously change alignment, materials or height apparently just for the hell of it!

But hey, here’s a bit of urban intrusion with more chutzpah than most – the New Museum art gallery on Bowery by Japanese architects Sanaa. This building takes an internally-focused, big floorplate use and inserts it onto a small vertical site – the slipped, stacked boxes define its floors and undermine its potentially monolithic character, and the straightforward, ‘come inside’ street frontage  (hard to see here) just follows its neighbours. Does it work? More in a later blog…

Once the sun comes out photographing the fire escape patterns on the building frontages becomes irresistible. These and the window pattern and scale become the repeat that ties together the disparate ages, materials, heights and frontage length. Great urban edge!

OK I’ll stop it soon. The larger (or later? or different construction??) buildings lose the front fire-escapes so the light pattern focuses on window reveals instead – same result, unified street edge.

This is great view – back on Bowery? – where the traditional warehouse buildings range from 3 to 10 storeys but still all do the same thing typologically and at the street edge, then in the distance is that cranky lot doing the morphology game – what is that setback all about? Why up to 15 storeys all of a sudden – but not everywhere?

This is probably too small for you to see, but the Empire State building is at the end of this street view and the guy on the skateboard is happily going against the one-way grain.

Now here I’m cheating – out of the cab and onto the pavement (oops, sidewalk..) using the second most popular NYC form of transport – feet. This is the ‘new look’ Wall St – the monoculture discovered the appeal of mixed-use (especially residential) after the bankers started looking elsewhere and empty buildings started appearing. This is a 60-ish storey purpose-built residential block which might contribute to re-establishing NYC’s reputation as a city of towers – it is certainly part of the subtle character shifts going on in its famous neighbourhoods.

The next step with the feet is on and over Brooklyn Bridge – this view looking towards Brooklyn.

Looking south I love the way the Statue of Liberty is out there holding back the storms, and the container wharves angle their cranes in parallel with her upstretched arm. Walking over the bridges reminds you intensely of the island character of Manhattan, the power of water.

Looking north from the Bridge, the ‘twin towers’ pop up again, but its disturbing how they are the most compelling – and tallest – buildings in mid-town. The city seems to have lost its dramatic skyline as too many of the new buildings are large-footprint, mid-rise (for NYC), developing a somewhat lumpen skyline and internal urban landscape. It genuinely loses out – in height and drama – to developing world cities and now, it seems to me, has become ‘old-fashioned’ in the nicest possible way – maybe the most pure expression of the 20th century city, but unable to become a 21st century city? Discuss….

Back in the cab and on the way to JFK, mid-town in silhouette – through the bridge struts again – including those two archetypal towers ruling the roost. This shot picks up some of the finer grain of smaller buildings but there is no real sense of this being a city of super high density and tall buildings…. what happened? Have Dubai and Shanghai just redefined for us the expectation of what ‘tall’ really means? Or has NYC fundamentally changed its approach to urban built form?