Why be an Architect?

Why be an Architect? it’s a bit like asking an athlete why train so hard to enter an event that you have no guarantee of winning, and in some cases no chance of winning. As best summed up by Dr Jaques Rogge in his speech at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games: ‘it is not about winning, it is about how you compete’.  Sometimes being an Architect feels a bit like competing at the highest level to secure last place. At other times it feels like it is a major achievement qualifying, and it is enough to be content with that. Having been that athlete competing at amateur level, it is easy to draw comparisons between the motivations for entering a half marathon say, or choosing to qualify as an architect, in one sense it is about self realisation, the proving to oneself that it is achievable, in another it is competing for a cause, Architecture is the latter.
As a profession we may be accused of fuelling our ‘monstrous’ egos from time to time, making grand gestures with bigger, better, taller buildings; making the rich even richer and so on. In reality the buildings are the legacy of an intense process of imagination, devotion and tenacity to get the project designed, agreed and delivered in time and on budget; and it is the Architects who are blamed when either of the last two are not met, even though the project is in the control of countless professionals whose sole job it is to control costs and program. Who ever heard of the quantity surveyor being blamed for cost overruns? or the project manager for late delivery, but everybody knows of Richard Rogers and the Millennium Dome and the often misquoted seven hundred and fifty million pounds for a tent.
The truth is little was publicised at the time about the long term strategies for regenerating East London, I seem to remember briefly reading in the architectural press at the time (Building Design in 1997 I think) that the Dome would form part of an future Olympic bid following Birmingham and Manchester’s unsuccessful bids in the 1980’s and 1990’s respectively. Here we are in 2012 and after five years of negative publicity and London hosting the most successful games ever from a Team GB perspective, widely regarded as a triumph from an international perspective. The opening ceremony, celebrated those human qualities that our people over generations have exhibited, imagination, tenacity perseverance, and it is widely recognised that the Games could not have been hosted without it. So what did we do? some members of the public may associate Architects’ names with the  design of the buildings, Cook: Olympic Stadium, Hadid: Aquatics Centre, Hopkins: Velodrome. for example. Countless other nameless individuals worked as part of those teams, would have no doubt put in stupidly long hours, competing to win the project in the first place, then fighting to make the project the best that it can be against cost cutting, time constraints and the harsh reality of project delivery. So why do it? for some it is just a job, for some it is so they can say ‘I worked on that’ even if it was only coordinating the fit out of the toilets, for others it could be for the ‘experience’, whether it is about getting the big name on the CV or having the project in the portfolio. So why be an Architect? I cannot speak for the entire profession, but for me it is to make a difference, a positive contribution to the built environment in which we live.

Does Exactly what it says on the Tin...Millennium Dome 2000

It is December 2000, after eleven months of hearing how the ‘Millennium Experience’ had attracted far less visitors than anticipated, the project is making a loss and so and how we the public with our voluntary contributions are having to pay £750M for a tent. So it is time to go and experience it for myself, well actually with a friend, more a partner in crime, fellow Architect, Darren Staples whose impressions on the day gave me the title for this piece. The approach to the Dome is via the official route, public transport, train from Birmingham to London, then the Underground to the Dome, via the Jubilee line extension and its architectural stations, notably by Michael Hopkins as you enter the line at Embankment, underneath Portcullis House, the new government offices, (also attracting negative press for reasons related to cost.) The journey down to the Underground line is through a series of escalators taking you down through an immaculate concrete and dark grey steel void, with up-lighting so effective that you constantly feel like it is daylight overhead. The station itself is clean and well arranged like a modern station should be. The train journey takes you through the world of Foster (Canary Wharf) before terminating in the very blue world of Alsop at Greenwich with its diagonal columns, and suspended concourse inside the void.

The escalator journey takes you up into more of the world of Foster in the trademark white steel and glass with grey panelling arranged in the form of a serpentine bus terminal, somehow lacking in buses. The sea of red tarmac leads you to a huge bank of turnstiles and ticket booths under a white tent canopy on yellow steel columns, but strangely no queuing, is this because the negative press has scared everyone off, or is it because the system of crowd control is so efficient that everyone is filtered through without a hitch, the crowd control mechanism directs you to a large temporary cinema, which invites you to spend twenty minutes or so watching a specially made ‘Blackadder’ episode, where Edmund and Baldrick build Leonardo da Vinci’s time machine, and it all gets a bit messy…anyway enough of that. The short film itself introduces you to the Dome, and you get to see the first view of what is inside, following the secrecy that has been surrounding the ‘Millennium Experience’ for the whole year. We have heard so much about the Dome itself, either related to size, it is big, or its cost to the public, or the lack of people visiting the attraction.

The first thing that struck me as on entering is the sheer volume of people supposedly not visiting, I cannot move for people, in fact I don’t think you could get any more people in here, it is absolutely packed! The next thing that struck me was the size, big does not cover it, it is a city in here. The Body Zone, the much publicised sculpture of a nonsexual recumbent embracing couple, the organisers did not want to offend anyone, so here we are with an embracing couple of bodies probably about four stories high, who can tell in this space? With an escalator entering the elbow, with an extremely long line of people, mainly children waiting to enter.

The red tarmac surface is constant and the space has the feel of a trade fair, with stands and striking exhibition pavilions curving their way around the outside of the main path. The Pavilions themselves are designed by signature architects, Zaha Hadid, Eva Jiricina were probably the most prominent. Some of them are stunning, three to four storey buildings that would seem large in an urban situation, but here they are dwarfed by the sheer volume of the Dome. The entry to each of the exhibition pavilions is based on the concept of queuing, (a Belgian friend of mine once referred to it as our national sport) you stand in line on a ramp that is lined with images to get in. The exhibitions themselves are mainly images stuck on the walls of the pavilions, there are a few interactive exhibits. There are refreshment pavilions punctuating the spaces between the exhibition pavilions with hospitality areas on their upper levels, strangely not crowded, but this is a Saturday, maybe all the corporate hospitality takes place during the week.

On the inside of the curve are exhibitions that hug the event space in the centre of the Dome, the event space hosts two shows a day, we have arrived too late to see the first show, and the later show will start too late to get back to Birmingham (the benefits of using public transport and timing of events not being publicised), so will have to give the show a miss. The show is in progress at the moment, the press reviews have been reasonably good, the show directed by Peter Gabriel, is a kind if circus by all accounts. On walking around the Orange exhibition, on its many levels looking at the advances in technology and communications over the past century a deluge of people spill out of the show arena, raving about how good the show was, and that their friends back home don’t know what they are missing.

I have heard a lot of people saying that they did not think very much of the exhibition. On considering the exhibits from the politically correct Body Zone, Cool Britannia, a parody of British culture, The iconic London bus advertising the Great Exhibition of 1951, The intriguing Mind Zone to the Spirit Zone, being renamed as ‘Faith Zone at the last minute, as a result of pressure from church groups. The result being a cone shaped chill out space with blue light flowing in from overhead, makes a tranquil space. Around the outside are images depicting the main religions, interestingly giving the year that each one will be celebrating when the numbers changed to 2000.

Does the exhibition sum up Britain at the turn of the century? Yes, I think it does the political correctness that dominates society shows in the style of the exhibition, watered down so as not to offend anyone. The media scrutiny seems to be unjustified, and the notion that the exhibition should be removed at the end of the year seems a total nonsense. The central arena could easily host all manner of concerts, to attract specific crowds as opposed to trying to appeal to the whole population at once. Outside the dome, it is good time to look around the environmental walk, a deck that follows the tip of the Greenwich Peninsula,  a lot more static exhibits telling about the local environment, local wildlife habitats, and how the project has cleaned up some of these and is safeguarding it for future generations.

Having a beer the at one of the outdoor bars, the place is filled with lots of kids playing in the playground on various swings and roundabouts, one of them is a structural model of the dome, with the twelve masts, chains for cables and a bouncing platform on the centre for the shell. It struck me that there will be an entire generation that will remember that the millennium experience was brilliant, the Body Zone, the ‘Blue Peter’ pavilion and yes it is made of cardboard, the play zones, the show at the circus inside a huge, huge tent.

As architecture? The Dome forms an icon that signifies the beginning of an urban renaissance in one of the most rundown areas of London, it does exactly what it says on the tin. The decision to host the exhibition at Greenwich resulted in the architectural intervention that we now know as the Dome to protect the exhibition from the extremes of the British weather and allow it to be enjoyed throughout the whole year.  Had the exhibition been held at the NEC in Birmingham, which was an alternative proposal, there would have been no Dome and no focus of attention on Greenwich and no impetus to spark regeneration. The cost of the exhibition would have been the same, and I doubt that there would have been the number of visitors that did make it to Greenwich.

AMAZON WATCH » Urge Brazil's Chief Justice to Maintain Suspension of the Belo Monte Dam

AMAZON WATCH » Urge Brazil's Chief Justice to Maintain Suspension of the Belo Monte Dam

ARC Middle East 2012 Abu Dhabi Part 2

I guess a few of you that have been reading my blog are already getting the impression that for me Architecture is concerned with far more than aesthetics, at the start of the afternoon session Saleh Mubarak. Head of Civil Engineering and Architecture Qatar University claims just that, well not just that, he is talking about Construction Project management: Characteristics and Challenges. Starting off on the premise that Architects and Engineers come to a project with completely different goals, mutually sharing the ‘Architects vs Engineers, can’t live with them, can’t live without them’ mentality, and to illustrate the differences made the statement that Architecture is concerned with Aesthetics whilst Engineering is about safety, which was met with some skepticism from the audience, and the statement was modified along the lines that Architecture is concerned with everything. Moving on the differences between Engineering and Architecture were illustrated not to oversimplify but to emphasize that one is an art one is a science and although Architecture does cover everything and there are no right or wrong answers, meaning that opinions are subjective and making it an Art. Engineering on the other hand, deals in answers are more absolute, meaning that opinions are objective,  it will either stand up or it won’t, making it a science. In project management terms the type of project will influence who takes the lead: Vertical projects i.e. buildings are Architecture led whereas horizontal projects i.e. roads are Engineering led.

Having come to the middle east from the background of construction projects in the UK I can relate to a lot of situations in the discussion. Time management for example, it is actually not possible to manage time, but the tasks that you have to get completed in the time available, and the notion that when busy you don't have time to get 'organised' but spend far more time in being 'dis-organised'. Key challenges of the project management process in the Middle East Region? much of it has to do with the mentalities of individuals involved: Unknown decision makers and the ‘what to do Yanni?’ mentality. The resistance to change, the ‘been doing it this way for 25 years’ mentality. ‘English is not English’ we joke about English and Americans using the same words but meaning different things, program, programme, schedule, for example; the problem becomes magnified when there are so many nationalities involved. Risk management is influenced by different priorities: labour costs are low, the workforce is mainly unskilled, climatic conditions mean that there is lower productivity during summer months.

All these factors serve to make the process more challenging, and I think the key tactic is about flexibility, being able to act differently in given situations, flexibility to deal with different perceptions and to address different priorities. In summary there are challenges to maintaining the team managing the project that are not necessarily unique to the region but are certainly more prevalent which makes the emphasis on teamwork all the more important.

First thing on the Sunday morning James Bannerman, Lateral Thinking for Principal Architects' brings a wealth of experience from a variety of fields, starting out in the music industry, from being a cartoonist for Punch magazine, working with BA, Orange, Starbucks, NASA, Mission to Mars. Teaching at Warwick Business School on the MBA programme and currently a senior Academic at Oxford Brooks University, and author of ‘Genius’. If the talk was anything to go on, I would say that the book is well worth a read. The talk ranged from anecdotes of using the cliche ‘it’s not rocket science’ to a room full of rocket scientists, to the story of the Wright brothers ignoring the notion of what will not work and replacing with the question why will that not work? ...and success!

The expected groan when we were all asked with the interactive exercise involving nine dots and connecting with straight lines? What do you see? nine dots that can easily be connected with four lines without taking the pen off the paper: and to achieve the exercise with three, and continue working at it until you link the nine dots with one line will take a little thinking outside the box. Demonstrating that nothing is impossible it you are prepared to think a little differently, what was surprising is the amount of ways that is is actually possible. The discussion moved on about why for many of us thinking outside the box is an effort, where thought processes are likened to the mountain stream with the water taking the path of least resistance and defining its own channels and in some cases experience not being an advantage.

There are many examples of a simple change of emphasis or asking the question differently (simple with the benefit of hindsight). in the 1980's how to break Wham! in America...answer go to China. Seems obvious in hindsight, don't tackle the problem head on, playing China made them a global sensation overnight, by making news. One example of creativity that sticks in my mind is where a negative is turned into a positive…Guinness! Not just because I enjoy a pint of Guinness on occasion, but, 'What is wrong with a pint of Guinness?'…the time taken to pour, and those fantastic adverts based on the notion of time ‘all the time in the world’, ‘good things come to those who wait!’ with the surfer waiting for the perfect wave. The reality was not changed, it was the way that we look at it, and turning the negative into the positive is often what we do as Architects. One last word on creativity, avoid  ‘But’ the No.1 Idea killer, as the word that kills creativity.

The last speaker, Alberto Treves, Section Director of Design, Abu Dhabi Educational Council (ADEC). tells of ADEC’s vision of educational reform through Architecture,and the experience of project delivery.Starting out with the vision that all new schools will be developed in designs that enable students to create knowledge and understanding through exploration and experimentation. Taking us through the new school designs to promote an integrated learning environment based on the notion of the central hub a flexible break-out space at the heart of the school. The aspirations for the designs with integrated sustainability features that earned the school building an Estidama Three Pearl  rating. (The UAE's Environmental Design assessment tool that deals with environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability). Three pearl being the highest. Having worked on similar programmes in the UK I can relate to some of the challenges of developing an architectural prototype that is rolled out across multiple sites, and judging by some of the comments from members of the audience it seems that this programme is not without its challenges.

As an Architect relating to local context is a strong priority, however, when working on a national programme the reality is that some of these priorities become compromised in the interest of project delivery to facilitate the building 100 schools in the Emirate. The project was procured through inviting architectural practices in an international design competition, what cannot be controlled by the Architects is who is selected at the end of the day. Going back to my opening comments about architecture being concerned with aesthetics it seems that we can not avoid assessing the perceived success of architecture from an aesthetic viewpoint. I suppose it stems from the notion that we could do better, and in my view that is healthy!

The seminars gave a number of perspectives on what we do from how we work to facing the challenges ahead, the one to one meetings had a number of benefits of getting to see some ‘cool stuff’without the interruptions of holding meetings in the office, and the opportunity to talk about work in a broader context. At the same time having the opportunity to talk with such a range of suppliers and fellow Architects at one time meant that advances in technology, materials, developments in processes are a lot more noticeable.

Abu Dhabi has the feel of a city undergoing significant change with high hopes for the future, with a number of projects to look out for from the ongoing growth of Masdar City, the world’s first zero carbon city to planned works such as Nouvel’s Louvre and Gehry’s Guggenhiem this is very much a city to return to in the future.

Abu Dhabi September 2012

ARC Middle East 2012 Abu Dhabi Part 1

This is a blog in two parts that is an account of a flying visit to the the UAE's Capital. There is not much sight seeing as much of the activities are centred on the ARC conference. Arrival into Abu Dhabi International Airport takes the traveler into a space resembling the Jedi Temple, a cluster of drum shaped sculptures with flowing roofs that become the walls before heading out into the main terminal. On leaving the airport it appears that work on Masdar City has ceased for the weekend, the red terracotta sculpture of the Masdar Institute, sits within its dense cluster of buildings on a concrete podium surrounded by tower cranes as the next phases get underway.

‘Please slow down, you are crossing the speed limit’ says a polite female voice as the Nepalese cab driver works his magic through the contraflows. Sheikh Zayed Mosque is grand, very grand shining white domes surrounded by minarets. The highway is green, very green, more like driving through a park than along a tree lined boulevard even the Gas/petrol stations are completely surrounded by trees. Signs of wealth are everywhere, Officers Club, Sport City, Convention Centre with sinuous glass tower and shading device that morphs into the roof of a grandstand apparently for people to watch the traffic. The skyline is dominated by glass towers, some with imaginative shading devices as the city becomes more energy conscious. Along the side of the road air conditioned bus stops announce the first part of the integrated transport system and the city's aspiration to encourage people out of their cars.

The sun sets behind the Ethiad Towers with shadows and colours changing by the minute, the water becomes still in the Intercontinental Marina and people pack up after a day’s boating on their motor cruisers talking about the weather getting better and the best time of the year being October, November what would the Brits talk about if there was no weather? Mooring charges, a group of fifty-somethings discuss mooring charges and how Intercon is as bad as Yas Marina, to the untrained eye, these boats are huge representing a small fortune, or in most cases a large fortune, drinking huge amounts of fuel, and they complain about mooring charges…I guess some people are never happy.

The format of the event is based on one to one meetings with suppliers punctuated by a series of short seminars given by a group of engaging speakers, a bit like a years worth of CPD in two days. From the keynote address of Saeed Al Abbar, vice Chairman of the Emirates Green Building Council, there is a real a sense of the enormity of the task ahead of us in addressing the increased population demands on cities whilst reducing energy consumption.

The headline Issues are that the population of the UAE set to double by 2030, and energy security is a serious issue. Power is heavily subsidized meaning that the population has no appreciation of the amount of energy they are consuming. Power stations are gas fired using the depleting reserves of natural gas in the emirate with moves being made towards nuclear to cope with increasing demand along with renewables (Masdar). As energy demands increase the imports of gas will increase along with LPG and the use of oil at eight times the cost even Saudi Arabia is expected to become a net importer of energy by 2030. Water security, the UAE receives very little rain and demand for water is met by desalination plants which are a heavy user of energy, meaning that if there are issues with energy security, water supply is affected very rapidly, makes you wonder about all those trees! As Architects we are acutely aware that buildings consume vast amounts of energy, to put it into perspective, in the 1920’s a building in Abu Dhabi would consume absolutely no energy. The 1970s following the discovery of oil saw a massive increase as the use of air conditioning became the dominant means of cooling buildings, I suppose it is not really so surprising that energy usage to cool buildings has increased exponentially over the past 40 years when we consider the amount of glass towers that have been built like those I was looking at earlier.

Rob Watson, founder of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) says that Mother Nature does not care which label you use on your building LEED, BREEAM, Greenstar… just that a label is used, or more specifically that the building is designed responsibly and is assessed in terms of environmental performance. LEED registered buildings and certification is on the increase despite the economic downturn. Environmental trends show data supporting a positive view of environmental performance improvement for LEED projects, emphasizing that there are emerging economic benefits of sustainable design.

With the emphasis on 2030 remaining a constant, targets are set and revised on a year by year basis from data collected from projects. Some of the big picture numbers include: Energy saving estimate 11% in non-residential energy through the construction of LEED buildings and 13% reduction in commercial water use. The increase in the reuse of existing buildings will make an energy saving equivalent to 200million barrels of oil. As more site area data becomes available from USGBC savings in terms of 'location efficiency', the placement of projects in close proximity to transport routes is showing tangible benefits based on the current trend a reduction of 70million vehicular journeys by 2030 will save the equivalent of 30Billion gallons of gasoline a year. On 'Indoor Environmental Quality', reports are associating an economic value to good design that results in increased productivity and reduced sick days. Green labeled buildings command a rent premium of 3-6% and an increase in sales value of 11-19% meaning that not doing LEED is no longer an option. In NYC For example, tenants are demanding green buildings and it is now difficult to let buildings that are performing badly. 

I can’t help feeling that we are not doing not enough, and that there is still a long way to go to meet the targets of 2030, what is encouraging is that the trend is moving in the right direction and is beginning to gain momentum, and we are gaining access to data that can help convince clients to go green. Green building is here to stay!

As the day moves into the one to one meetings there is a sense that there is a long way to go on the road to 2030, at the same time there is a sense that everybody is on board and doing what they can, whether it is about the recycled content of materials, longevity of products so that recycling happens further down the road, or about developing more intelligent tools enabling us to facilitate good design.

Abu Dhabi September 2012

Elephant Hunt...London Docklands 1999

As an architectural student in 1997 I remember being angered by what felt like continual negative publicity surrounding the Millennium Dome and the association with the term ‘White Elephant’, this was not the first time I had heard the term associated with Architecture, I had also heard it associated with the Docklands in the 1980’s. With the benefit of hindsight this may be a symptom of a greater problem. The public mistrust of spending what is perceived as public money on ‘Architecture'. In the summer of 2011 I returned to the Greenwich Peninsula for the first time in nearly over a decade, the Millennium Dome, renamed the O2 and heralded as a runaway success, currently known as the North Greenwich Arena and venue for gymnastics in the London 2012 Olympic Games.  My first encounter with the Dome was at Interbuild 1997, the model was on display and the Architect Mike Davies of the then Richard Rogers Partnership was giving a talk on architecture being fun, with some interesting insights into the genesis of what became the Dome. The first time I saw the Dome for real was in the summer of 1999, a visit to a family friend in Camberwell presented the opportunity to make a visit.

The sun begins to set behind the twin wind turbines of Chetwood’s Sainsbury’s ‘Energy Store’,  a quick change of plan and a quick look around the project, timber strip and glass plank facades, aluminium roof, dynamic entrance, lots of natural light (even at dusk). The project seems to be popular with the locals. From this vantage the Dome becomes visible, although strangely in this light, it does not seem so impressive, the white Teflon seems to be grey. The area is still awaiting the completion of its infrastructure, a sea of tarmac, footbridges that lead to nowhere, well not exactly to nowhere, but at this stage a fenced off area at the back of a housing estate, signs directing nonexistent traffic, railings and pathways also leading to dead ends. Finally after trying various dead ends, the Thames footpath presents itself as being one and three quarter miles from the Cutty Sark, so it’s off through a narrow alleyway between what seems to be a petroleum plant and a chemical works, to the bank of the river. The water is flat calm with just enough movement to distort the reflections of the riverside buildings, under a yellow-green sky. The air becomes still, civilisation begins to light up in the distance as the sun makes the city towers become a silhouette as it disappears below the blocky horizon. With the acidic stench of the chemical works firmly in the air, the Thames path meanders its way past rusting iron half built barges and the remains of London’s waterside industry. Cesar Pelli’s off-the-shelf Canary Wharf tower seems awkwardly divorced from Manhattan, but with its pyramid roof illuminated, has a greater presence in dusk than in the daylight.

The Dome, in a view downstream, looks far more impressive than it did half an hour before. The red lights on the yellow masts with their own up-lighting, the cool glow of the Teflon and the bright lights in the twelve circular pods that line the circumference, give the whole area the impression of a space ship landing as the industrial decay disappears into the shadows. Civilisation again, the welcome sound of people laughing and chatting outside the Cutty Sark tavern, along with the chink of glasses as the night warms up. The path leads its way past the neoclassical naval buildings, as the small green dome atop the foot tunnel marks the end of the trek. The Thames Walk finally reaches the Cutty Sark, a magnificent tea clipper, sailing ship whose claim to fame is its role in the establishment of the tea routes to Sri Lanka, sitting proudly in her dry dock, looking every bit ready to put to sea, just some two hundred years late. The lift down into the Greenwich foot tunnel is out of action because we have arrived too late in the evening, so it’s off down the spiral staircase that coils round the lift shaft, worn concrete treads, black painted iron handrails, white glazed bricks line the descent into the river bank. Through the central iron cage parts of the workings for the lift are visible. A tube lined with glazed bricks makes the journey below the Thames, to what appears to be a rusting white painted cast iron sewage pipe though which you must enter to get to the corresponding lift shaft to make the ascent to the ground making the previous journey in reverse.

On the North bank there is a fault with reality. the spiral steps bring the visitor out into a park with the Thames behind, sense of direction from previous visits leads us to a hole, a great big hole, fenced off and looking every bit a building site where Island Gardens Docklands light railway (DLR) used to be. Not a particularly spectacular station if memory serves, the railway was elevated above the street, a blue steel and polycarbonate circular tower mimicked the cores that led to the foot tunnel. A spiral staircase coiled around a central lift shaft in a cobbled courtyard. Small shops occupied the spaces below the two arms of the railway, in pretty much the same way that Victorian viaducts have their arches occupied by all manner of activities. A series of signs indicate that a replacement bus service would take us a couple of miles to join the working part of the DLR. Apparently Mudchute Station had also been removed to make way for an extension to the railway to bring it in touch with the Millennium Dome and Village. The shuttle bus dropped us off at Cross harbour and soon enough the train arrived to take us on our way through the Docklands although not much to see in the darkness.

As the DLR threads its way past apartment blocks, the London Arena, office blocks, strong lighting announces the arrival at a deserted Canary Wharf, strangely the Dome looks larger from here than it did from the energy store, in fact it looks stunning as the last traces of daylight fade into night and the lighting takes over. In the docks, Chris Wilkinson’s dynamic bridge comprises of one section leading to nowhere, stuck on its own little island, the second section lies on a barge as this young urban fabric morphs as the tide of events changes its direction. Foster’s Canary Wharf underground station bursts out of the ground like a beautiful glass whale coming up for air in the middle of a park, isolated from the dockside by mounds of sand, stacks of sheet piling, tractors and diggers as the race for the millennium breaks for the weekend. Beneath a glass canopy spanning the chasm between Cesar Pelli’s mantle-piece and an anonymous office block, activities seem to have been suspended for the weekend. Outside the canopy, what resembles a snake slithering across the water among the barges, glowing green on its belly and white on its back, Future Systems’ floating bridge, leading nobody from the nothingness of Canary Wharf and deposits them in front of the concrete blocks and mounds of sand and the tower cranes of the dormant East India Quay development. The DLR goes to ground to link into Bank underground station.

Another disorientating tangle of tunnels and escalators leads up to the surface to be confronted with James Stirling’s last work in Lego with its clock face that looks more like the EU flag. A scan round reveals the city as being deserted, the former Natwest Tower, now known as Tower 42, shyly disappears in to the night, Sir John Soane’s Bank of England disappears into the background as the whole area is saturated with ornamental columns, capitals and pediments. At the end of the street a violet-blue glow issues from the doorway of one such façade by Sir Edwin Cooper, the façade is all that remains of the original building, whilst the current configuration of Lloyds of London’s Headquarters proudly supports its business behind. The paved street edge meets an elegant stainless steel balustrade as the ground drops away to a cobbled shelf with a single tree. A steel ramp curves playfully round the tree at a higher level, linking the street with the main entrance, although reading as an emergency exit. On the shelf the source of the violet-blue glow is directed up to pick out different areas of activity. The shelf slopes gently into the site where giant concrete columns disappear into an unseen netherworld, as though this unique jewel was planted a long time ago and has been recently excavated. A café sits on the shelf, although strangely its doors are closed at night, but there again in this ghost town, why should the doors remain open? The café appears to be at the centre of the site, the shelf continues to form a terrace, whilst stainless steel ducts occasionally puncture the cobbled surface. To the left of the tree four glass elevators sit idly in their tracks, each with two red lights at their base. Scanning round to the right the Cooper façade gives way to the distinctive staircases, unclad at this level, following the staircase up the façade the stainless steel cladding curls round to enclose the escape route. Above the café, stainless steel pods plugged into their concrete framework whilst glass panels give a hint of what might be going on inside. Following the street to the corner, the blue to the right and what appears to be a good copy of Mies’ Seagram building to the left. At the turning of the corner, the entrance to the site reveals itself, a broad flight of stairs ascends majestically to meet the building beneath an exquisite curved glass canopy. The violet-blue lighting washes the details in a cool glow, the canopy sails straight through the heart of the building whilst taking care of business manifests itself on either side whilst the concrete structure confidently holds all manner of pods panels and ducts in place. Further down the street, the cobbled shelf gives way completely to the underworld and the cables and guide tracks take the glass lifts down into the ‘dig’. Bikes are chained to the concrete framework although the owners are nowhere to be seen. A walk back through the stillness with the glow of Lloyds behind, between the decorated facades to rejoin the underground.


There is something about football results and alcohol that makes people think that they can defy the laws of physics. England, in the Euro 2000 qualifiers have beaten Poland 6-1. Whilst travelling upward on the escalator from Marylebone underground to Marylebone mainline station, the underground is a deep station, and hence long escalators. There were two guys on the downward escalator, celebrating England’s win ‘six one, six one…’ with a third guy thinking that it is a good idea to slide down the stainless steel division between the escalator and stair…on his feet, in surfing position. It was going pretty well up to a point, until he caught one of the signs on the division with his foot…surfing pose becomes aerial cartwheel, then a messy tumble, over and over he went, down, down before landing in a giggling crumpled heap at the bottom. So there you go…beer and high spirits = failure of the laws of physics.