Farringdon Futures: concluding our cities theme, we review seven ideas for a neglected part of London, prepared for the London Architecture Biennale.The theme of this summer's London Architecture Biennale The name Biennale is Italian and means "every other year", describing an event that happens every 2 years. One of the most important Biennales is an art exhibition that takes place for three months in Venice — the Venice Biennale — but there are numerous others: Armature That part of an electric rotating machine which includes the main current-carrying winding. for a smorgasbord of architectural events, a route was chosen stretching from King's Cross station King's Cross station may refer to::
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The history of London London has a recorded history that goes back over 2,000 years. During this time, it has experienced plague, devastating fire, civil war, aerial bombardment and terrorist attacks, yet, it has still grown to become one of the financial and cultural capitals of the world. divides itself between East and West around this route, following the now subterranean River A subterranean river is a river that runs beneath the ground surface. These rivers can either be entirely natural, or a result of the deliberate installation of a culvert to channel a flow from the surface to underground, usually as a part of urban development. Fleet, a murky cloaca cloaca (klōā`kə), in biology, enlarged posterior end of the digestive tract of some animals. The cloaca, from the Latin word for sewer, beneath the clogged artery of Farringdon Road Farringdon Road Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, Central London, part of the A201 road connecting King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. It goes south-east from King's Cross, crossing Roseberry Avenue, then turns south crossing Clerkenwell Road before going past . But of all locations in central London The term Central London refers to the districts of London which are considered closest to the centre. There is no such conventional definition, nor any official one, for the entire area that can be called "central London". it is Farringdon Road that has most resisted change and failed to demonstrate appropriate ambition. It is neither a City slicker, nor a Clerkenwell loft-dweller, nor part of the accountancy and legal 'Midtown' culture which has replaced the colourful Fleet Street milieu. Farringdon Futures, like the charrette at the first Clerkenwell Architecture Biennale in 2004 which reinvented Smithfield meat market, sought a vision for an area of London which is set to become a major rail interchange. The project was devised by Paul Finch, editor of AR, Lee Mallett, urban regeneration consultant, Richard Jones and Andrew Dufty of project manager Jackson Coles, with assistance from Catherine Kidd of Alan Baxter Associates who provided geological and historical information. Farringdon Station Farringdon station is a London Underground and National Rail station in Clerkenwell, just north of the City of London in the London Borough of Islington. Services It is on the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and Circle lines, between King's Cross St. on Cowcross Street, just to the north of Smithfield, will become one of London's busiest interchanges when Crossrail is built, connecting with the north-south Thameslink and three tube lines Tube Lines Limited is a private company, responsible for the maintenance, renewal and upgrade of the infrastructure, including track, trains, signals, civil work and stations, on three London Underground lines. . Much bigger than the Fleet ever was, the existing north-south rail lines cut deep into London's flesh alongside Farringdon Road, scarring the area leaving opposing largely Victorian buildings alienated across a 100 metre void. Farringdon Futures teamed seven architects with--is this an architectural first?--seven developers, to engage with realities and alert planners from the three London boroughs that they too should be thinking more concertedly about the area where Camden, Islington and the City meet, given its potential. A planning battle has already commenced over the character of this new centre in the city, framed in terms of City offices versus new, 24 hour, local vibrancy--an argument already articulated over the future of Smithfield and office schemes proposed for it. More discussion now rather than planning inquiry later would probably be a good thing. Seven sites along Farringdon Road earmarked for probable development were selected for interrogation interrogation In criminal law, process of formally and systematically questioning a suspect in order to elicit incriminating responses. The process is largely outside the governance of law, though in the U.S. . Running roughly from south to north, the design teams' ideas are presented on the following pages. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Site 2 Cowcross Street south side: Klein Dytham, Steve Smith (DEGW) with Jim Green
Born in Alabama, Green moved to Canada to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War. (Baylight Properties) Tokyo-based Klein Dytham flew in and brought with them Tokyo's 24/7 lifestyle to jump start the new Farringdon with an open-all-hours insertion over the tracks focused on WAWWE--'We Are What We Eat'--a pink pleasure accessory with lots of eats, parked over the tracks and straddling strad·dle v. strad·dled, strad·dling, strad·dles v.tr. 1. a. To stand or sit with a leg on each side of; bestride: straddle a horse. b. the point at which the three boroughs meet. This allows each to pursue a typical real estate ambition--Camden social housing, Islington high value private housing, and offices for the City, neatly avoiding the narcotic narcotic, any of a number of substances that have a depressant effect on the nervous system. The chief narcotic drugs are opium, its constituents morphine and codeine, and the morphine derivative heroin. See also drug addiction and drug abuse. effect of blanket office culture with an injection of anarchic enjoyment. Smithfield is our last memory of the 24-hour city London used to be. This scheme could kick start it back to life. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 1 Holborn Viaduct: Studio Egret West with Roger Zogolovitch (Lake Estates) One of the few places where London's topography operates at two different surface levels, the conjunction of Holborn Viaduct at the upper level with Farringdon Road passing beneath was exploited to the full. 'A gateway to prevent the sprawl of offices', this first scheme clearly set the parameters of the planning debate, and proposed a rich mix of uses that generate extra value from multi-level intensification of food-orientated retail and a new kind of hotel--a 'living room' for travellers, set in a golden glass box (what else in a city paved with the stuff?). This is a gilded gild 1 tr.v. gild·ed or gilt , gild·ing, gilds 1. To cover with or as if with a thin layer of gold. 2. To give an often deceptively attractive or improved appearance to. 3. version of Johan-Otto von Spreckelsen's Grande Arche at La Defense, where it is possible to live, eat, work, shop and relax for flexi-bites of time. It proposes a new animal in the commercial property jungle--the 'work hotel'. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 6 Bowling Green Lane car park: M2R M2R Master 2 Recherche (French) Architecture with Nick Johnson, Urban Splash An antidote to our hermetic hermetic /her·met·ic/ (her-met´ik) impervious to air. her·met·ic or her·met·i·cal adj. Completely sealed, especially against the escape or entry of air. keyboard culture, 'X-change' is an intense experience at the very heart of the city, which revisits the original revolutionary nature of Farringdon as the terminus of the original Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1860 as the world's first underground metro line. Being virtual starves the senses. Here is a new kind of city centre building, stretching north from the new Farringdon station with three elements--a circus, a server, a hole. The Circus, located near the main station platforms, offers a market to complement Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus. It is a public space through which everyone passes, a magnet for people to meet and trade. This connects with the 'hole', a place for shelter and refuge from the everyday bustle of the Circus, and the 'server at the northernmost end, providing a gateway to the Circus, hosting only visual and aural information, filled with experiences you can find all around the world: restaurants, cafes, bars, and nightclubs. The server temptingly 'whistles' its stories to northern cities, beckoning their citizens to the bright lights of London and beyond. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 4 'London's Favourite Building', Farringdon Road: Swanke Hayden Connell with Richard Powell (First Base) When John Seifert Architects designed New Court House for the east side of Farringdon Road, little did they know the infamy Notoriety; condition of being known as possessing a shameful or disgraceful reputation; loss of character or good reputation. At Common Law, infamy was an individual's legal status that resulted from having been convicted of a particularly reprehensible crime, rendering him it would afford them. How much longer need we put up with it? In 1915a German Zeppelin had the right idea and dropped bombs on a nearby building and destroyed it. SHC SHC Sears Holdings Corporation (Hoffman Estates, ILt) SHC Self-Help Clearinghouse (Valley Cottage, NY) SHC Spring Hill College (Mobile, AL, USA) SHC Solar Heating and Cooling have invited modern Zeppelins back to the new Farringdon Sky Terminal as an alternative to eco-unfriendly air-travel by jet. The new terminal sits above London's busiest rail terminal, and four spectacular residential towers by developer First Base, forming a key node in the new European network of EcoAir's hugely successful low-altitude panoramic airship airship, an aircraft that consists of a cigar-shaped gas bag, or envelope, filled with a lighter-than-air gas to provide lift, a propulsion system, a steering mechanism, and a gondola accommodating passengers, crew, and cargo. business. A fifth tower houses a vertical retail mall. Low on emissions, the new helium airships have made a magnificent comeback. At ground level, the Farringdon Road elevation is opened up at the base of the towers to a public piazza and a series of garden bridges linking across the station. The point about the hugely increased density is that you might need it to make the cost of dealing with the railway tracks acceptable. Farringdon is now the new Heathrow. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 5 Farringdon Lane Cutting: McDowell + Benedetti with Alan Leibowitz (Dorrington Properties) Farringdon's essential problem is how to bridge over the railway cuttings and stitch back the new space created into the fabric of Clerkenwell to make a new place. Planning restrictions and views of St Paul's, however, limit the opportunity. This scheme spans the railway, creates a moderately-sized new piazza, linking to Clerkenwell Green and reestablishes the presence of the Sessions House at the west end of the Green. A new 24-hour galleria marks the 'lost' route of the River Fleet, above which sits an adaptable building with an unrestricted mix of uses. Higher values to fund the scheme are generated by the 'Red Building' at the northern end of the site, with commercial uses at ground and offices or residential above. Intended as a new marker for Farringdon, the proposal includes an open user clause on the market buildings, signalling a more sophisticated recognition of the flexibility needed to make a modern city vibrant and sustainable--without planning interference. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 3 Turnmill Street cutting: Adams Kara Kara (kär`ə), river, c.140 mi (230 km) long, NE European and NW Siberian Russia. It flows N from the N Urals into the Kara Sea, forming part of the traditional border between European and Asian Russia. It is navigable in its lower course. Taylor with David Rosen (Pilcher Hershman) The rail cutting that runs north from Farringdon station offers such an enormous potential to link the east and west back together that some sort of tool is needed to explore likely pedestrian movements between the two reunited parts of the city. Only when analysis has been done might it be possible to see where the optimum location for uses might be. This animated presentation by engineers AKT AKT Auto- ja Kuljetusalan Työntekijäliitto (Finnish Transport Workers Union) AKT Automatischer Kassentresor (German: automatic cash desk vault; used in german banks to secure money at counters) AKT Apprentice Knowledge Test demonstrated just how much more intense Farringdon might become and how digital structures might be used to discover likely desire lines and how these might determine optimised linkages over the cutting. A powerful, adaptable tool for determining the detailed shape and use of new development, and a technique whose artificiality points up the desirable flexibility of the future city [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Site 7 'The Grauniad': Allford Hall Monaghan Morris with Helen Gordon (Legal & General) Soon to be redeveloped, The Guardian (fondly dubbed 'The Grauniad' in journalistic tradition) headquarters on the west side of Farringdon Road is the last bastion of Fleet Street. This 'city sandwich' project with apposite ap·po·site adj. Strikingly appropriate and relevant. See Synonyms at relevant. [Latin appositus, past participle of app journalistic ambition blows apart conventional commercial rationality and seeks to supplant the familiar mono-functionalism of large office buildings with an infestation infestation /in·fes·ta·tion/ (-fes-ta´shun) parasitic attack or subsistence on the skin and/or its appendages, as by insects, mites, or ticks; sometimes used to denote parasitic invasion of the organs and tissues, as by helminths. of different uses and people-attracting devices. Like a Rubik's Cube, the scheme proposes minimised units of accommodation for whatever you want to do, in order to maximise values (a principle well established in the residential and small workspace market) and takes it to an extreme, with flexible space sold or rented on a cubic basis rather than the old square footage. Structurally, the building is extensively violated to open it up to new elements. Apparently Legal & General, one of the UK's largest institutional investors, were shocked to find themselves convinced by their own appraisals. Watch this space! [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 05.03 How big?--250sqft or 2,250cub.ft using Rosen's ratio. The module is [pounds sterling]7.77 per cub.ft (that's [pounds sterling]70 pr sqft in old money). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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