Landscape Matters Issue 4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 9
‘But this sort of thing is happening to every city skyline in the
world’, you might say.That is largely true but there are cities
with coherent skyline policies: Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen,
Edinburgh, Florence, and Rome. So why not London?The skylines
of the Gulf states are models to avoid.
1. Matchbox architecture Southbank Place
(2016-22, and masterplanned by Squire and
Partners). Like tall plants in a herbaceous
border, tall buildings should not be on the
riverfront
2. St George Wharf Tower, Vauxhall, car
crash architecture
3. Southbank Place: empty streets but for
security officers
4. The City of London’s ‘larkitecture’
The problem is that in London skyline policy rests with a
development industry which has, at best, zilch interest in
public spaces and how they look and work as part of a urban
composition. Development is led by financiers, surveyors,
architects and planners.They’re all needed, of course. But a
significant professional skill is absent from the top table: the
ability to relate the design of buildings and other structures
to their context and to each other, conceived historically,
geographically, ecologically, scenically, socially and with regard
to a strategic vision for London’s urban landscape.
A rare example of getting it right, is the recent ministerial
decision to refuse permission for no. 8 Albert Embankment,
which involved two towers upto 26 storeys high on the site
of the former London Fire Brigade Headquarters next to the
southern bridgehead of Lambeth Bridge.The ministerial refusal
was because of the harm of the proposals to the Palace of
Westminster World Heritage Site, and to the nearby Lambeth
conservation areas, including Lambeth Palace.
This absence of care also applies at ground level.
The Garden Bridge is a case in point. Forty-five million pounds
and considerable talent was invested in an aborted project.
London would benefit from a well-planted bridge with no
motorised vehicles.The fundamental problems were: the bridge
was in the wrong place; it would not have connected an origin to a
destination; and it would have been slap in the middle of a reach
of the river with very high scenic quality, the Canaletto view of St
Paul’s. The most publicised image of the bridge was a birdseye
view that might appeal to the trainee helicopter pilots, who love
following the river, but would be otherwise unseen. If a little
expert time had been invested in these contextual issues London
would now have a worthy successor to the famous Old London
Bridge which stood from 1209–1831.
4
