This came via an email and looks interesting – and in the absence of a website to link to, I copy it below.

London Festival of Architecture Debate

Thursday 24th June 2010 at the Apple Store, Regent Street in association with Wired Magazine and chaired by Ben Hammersley editor of Wired UK.

This debate will challenge notions of the ‘data-city’: are pervasive digitial devices and open data changing the way we interact with the city? Will access to data speed up the divide between affluent and poorer areas? Are we becoming ‘data dandys’- ‘wrapped in the finest facts and the most senseless gadgets’?

Tickets are free, but must be reserved, email: Lauren.McKirdy@inst.riba.org

Start time not confirmed – but their last such debate started at 6:30pm and lasted a couple of hours.

Thanks to an invite from the chaps (and chapesses) over at the Londonist, I found myself lurking around the entrance to The Barbican Centre this morning – waiting for a chance to have a look at the first significant redevelopment in the Barbican estate since it was built.

Frobisher Crescent is a odd bit of Barbican history, being originally planned as a semi-circle development, with shops on the ground floor, then several floors above with flats. For reasons which seem lost in the mists of time, the decision to fit out the block with residential flats never happened – and the upper levels were leased out to the City of London Business School, with the lower levels being used for conference rooms, a cinema and the like. The shops never arrived.

A central courtyard, called the Sculpture Court also never lived up to its name and remained barren.

The Crescent is named after Sir Martin Frobisher, who was one of Queen Elizabeth’s private pirates and tended to rob the Spanish fleets of their New World gold. Frobisher’s Barbican connection is that a fair amount of him is buried in St Giles’ Churchyard. But St Andrew’s Church at Plymouth nabbed his heart and entrails.

The school recently moved out though, leaving the opportunity to finally finish off the original plans for the development, and the property is being converted back into flats by United House. They say a key factor in winning the contract is that they have their own builders and don’t outsource the work to 3rd parties. Gives them a tighter level of control, which is important as this is a Grade 2 listed building.

We were taken up to the “ground level” (which is actually the 3rd floor!) for a look and some photos, then up to the 6th floor where the builders are working. They are only converting floors 7,8 and 9 into flats, but using floor 6 for admin – the current occupants being moved into portacabins for a while (presumably not at gunpoint).

Suitably attired in hard hats and high-vis jackets, we went up a floor, and wandered right round the curve of the building to see the end flats, which are being fitted out first as show-flats for the sales people. A total of 69 flats will be available, mixed from studio to 3-beds.

As the building is directly over the famous Barbican art centre, they have to work around music concerts, so that their drilling works on the solid concrete structures don’t disturb the more delicate tones being created below.

The most spectacular part of the development though is the top floor, where each flat had an arched roof which is nearly double story in height. The larger flats will retain the full height in places, while a mezzanine floor will be installed in places. Most residents will have a bedroom with a huge curved ceiling over them.

Another impressive aspect are the very wide doors which slide open to let people on to the balcony. They are part of the listed aspect of the building and will be restored as originals – although that means they can’t be double-glazed either. The balconies also fail current building codes – and the barrier is deemed too low now, so a thin wire barrier will be added to bring them in line with the regulations. A bit petty, but that is red-tape for you.

It was a very interesting view of the estate, and I can’t help but be a bit envious of the people who will be able to afford the properties there.

Oh, and the Sculpture Court will finally start living up to its name – and will become an area for changing displays of art work.

Thanks to Londonist for the invite, and United Houses and tta group for taking us around.

A few more photos at my usual Flickr account.

Last night I popped along to a lecture on Brutalism and Militarised Space hosted by the Art and Architecture organisation. The event was based around three speakers followed by a short Q&A session and was a mixture of talking about military spaces, the melancholy design in architecture and a project to recreate four lost pubs in the Barbican.

It was an interesting talk – although I got a bit lost in some of Rory O’Callaghan’s talk about how architecture reflected the emotions of war.

However, the bit which really made me Googling away this morning was a comment by Mathew Flintham about a village which sits inside an MOD firing range – and hence all the residents have to enter and leave by a very strict timetable otherwise they could be traveling through a live firing range.

Despite the tight security and travel restrictions, people love to live there, and the village has a population of around 200 souls – after all, when you have an army protecting your homes there isn’t a lot of hassle with crime or unruly behaviour.

It is also very difficult to visit the village, as you need a prior invitation and have your name passed to the MOD checkpoints – and naturally your visit has to conform to their armaments testing regime.

What they do have though – is a heritage centre, the Foulness Heritage Centre which opened a few years ago – as the site, the Isle of Foulness has a long history, and thanks to the lack of development on the land it is an archeology delight. The heritage centre is also open to the public on the 1st Sunday of the month during the summer months – so that is coincidentally the only time you can visit the village without a prior invitation.

I think I shall pay a visit next summer – as it sounds like a very interesting place, and quite unique in the UK.

Incidentally – I was going to make a quip at the talk about living in such a military environment about the trains running on time – and to my great delight, I learnt in my research today that the estate actually does have a private railway!

There is a moderately interesting exhibition on improving open spaces in London – currently being shown in Somerset House. It is full of lots of BIG signs and fluffy filler which doesn’t actually tell you anything – and a rather weird video about trying to improve the Aldgate area for pedestrians.

However, it does give you a quick overview of the current thoughts going on to improve some areas, mainly towards the East of London.

Most interesting to me, was a lectern in a very dark room with a single poor light which illuminated a book describing plans to improve the Embankment in central London. Damn difficult to read in the exhibition, it was nonetheless worth persevering with as the information is quite good. The basic core plan is to remove the central separator in the road and squash the lanes slightly – which frees up more space to be widen the pedestrian route and make it more appealing.

There are also three very large (A3) posters explaining the plans – you can tear off a copy and read it later. A rear exhibition has a load of postcards showing images of areas where planning will take place, and I took a few which showed places I might want to have a look at in the near future anyway.

One thing which – again – annoyed me was one exhibit condemning the riverside developments of the 1990s in the docklands, and as I saw recently in the Building Centre, they don’t actually explain what is wrong with them or how they would change things. I really worry that they want to impose unsustainable “social developments” onto the riverside which will look good for a few months, and end up looking tired and scruffy as the councils lack the funds to maintain them.

I live in a riverside apartment, and we have a wonderful, wide riverside footpath which seems to be enjoyed by loads of people (inc me) throughout the year. Indeed, it is the local council owned properties which block off riverside access, not the 90s developments which the planners seem to loathe.

Hopefully I will get to meet some of these “concerned planners” in the future and find out what it is about the developments they seem to dislike so much and how they would fund their unspecified vision.

A final note, the exhibition is very “arty” and not hugely informative – go in, read the signs, grab the tear off sheets (vastly more informative) and wander round – but don’t expect to spend more than 20 minutes there, and that is presuming you read the books on the lecterns in the second space.

Next time dear exhibitors – put up more maps and plans – and fewer weird videos.

London Architecture Diary

The ever excellent Building Centre in central London (just off Tottenham Court Road) is hosting an exhibition about plans for waterfront living and transport in the city. Not just the obvious river Thames and Lee Valley, but also several other smaller tributary rivers in the London area.

There are a few mockups of housing developments dotted around the exhibition, including one which looks suspiciously like it was borrowed from a recent exhibition in Canary Wharf for the Wood Wharf development. More interesting, are the wall panels which line the place and detail all the development plans and the thinking behind them.

A very good – and free – catalogue is also available.

I think there is a bit too much emphasis on 3rd party planning of community areas – as in my experience such things invariably fall flat on their face and end up derelict. Put up simple riverside paths and open areas and leave it at that. Too often a regeneration is carried out with loads of cash poured into little used facilities which then have to be maintained by cash strapped and generally disinterested councils.

Also – alas – some people tend to abuse these facilities, and their antics can turn a pleasant open area into a no-go zone. Where I live, a public seating facility was provided right by the riverside and it was covered in graffiti within weeks, and most weekends during the summer it is overrun by drunk teenagers making a mess and nuisance to the local residents (who actually paid for the seating area).

I love having walks along the riverside and would never support blocking them off – but there needs to be a balance set between the rights of the general public to enjoy the spaces on their day off work – and the rights of the people who live there every single day, and who often paid for the facilities to be provided in the first place through the housing development they live in.

Even if you don’t go for the exhibition itself, the place is worth a visit for the incredible scale model of London showing all the new developments going on all over the city.

 

Rather irritatingly, they have just redesigned their website – and I am sure I saw something on there about a forthcoming exhibition which will really excite me – all about subterranean London. It doesn’t seem to be on there anymore, so I shall just have to keep a close eye out for it.

The Building Centre