Filed under: Articles and writing
Apparently it was too close to call. The judges deliberated for three hours as to which of the six shortlisted finalists should be given the prestigious title of NCE Graduate of the Year 2008. In the end, the very deserving winner was Emma Kent and Eiffelover was relegated to joint runner up: i.e. Joint Best Loser – which has all the advantages of being a finalist without the obligations of being the winner. So congratulations to the winner, thanks to the NCE, and thank you to the judges, who, through their choice, allowed me to retain my anonymity when shopping in the supermarket.
The Smallest Cinema in the World is now open. The Cinema, conceived by artist Annika Eriksson as a venue for films that she is making about Regent’s Park, was designed by a team from Hopkins Architects and Expedition Engineering. The Cinema is mobile so that visitors will have to penetrate deep into the park to find it.
Filed under: Education
This videocast by Sir Ken Robinson is from the TED series.
The Smallest Cinema in the World will be a mobile structure. It will be towed to different locations in Regent’s Park throughout the summer. This is possible because the base of the cinema, hidden behind those beautiful shells, is a trailer.
I want to compile a list of other mobile or demountable structures that will be in London this summer. I will start the ball rolling with:
Tonkin Liu’s signature pavilion for this year’s London Festival of Architecture.
Filed under: Architectonic, Architecture, Exhibitions, Life in Paris, Paris buildings and structures
The Richard Rogers exhibition at the Pompidou centre is now over. I went once and meant to go back as there was so much to take in (and I seem to get exhibition fatigue after about an hour and a half) but alas I didn’t get the chance.
Highlights were the 1:2 scale bright pink models of one of the Heathrow T5 connections, the exquisite 3d-printed model of the Barcelona Bullring and the original competition drawings for the Pompidou – how apt to see them in the finished building.
A few belated few pickies then:-
Antwerp Law Courts
3D Print of Barcelona Bullring
Credits
I am currently preparing a presentation about the density of cities and in particular, how housing should be organised. Here are a some snippets gathered here for my research…
From Rogers’ ‘Cities for a Small Planet‘
(Rogers and Gumuchdjian, 1997, Faber)
“To being our position-fixing aboard our Spacesip Earth wemust first acknowledge that the abundance of immediately consumable, obviously disarable or utterly essential resources have been sufficient until now to allow us to carry on despite our ignorance. Being eventually exhaustible and spoilable, they have been adequate only up to this critical moment. This cushion-for-error of humanity’s survival and growth up to now was apparently provided just as a bird inside of the egg is provided with liquid nutriment to develop it to a certain point” Buckminster Fuller, Operation Manual for Planet Earth (Pg1/1)
”We will leave this city not less but greater, etter and more beautiful than it was left to us” – Athenian oath pledged by new citizens (Pg 1/16)
Filed under: Architecture, Engineering, Travel | Tags: Architecture, Engineering, eurostar, st pancras, train travel
For all the publicity in London about the opening of the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, passengers leaving Paris on its inaugural day wouldn’t have been any the wiser. The lack of Parisian interest in the new London terminal was underlined by the ticket prices: while it would have cost me over £100 to book a place on a train leaving St.Pancras that day, the cost of a ticket in the other direction was just £29! I can forgive the lack of excitement from that end of the line however. When it comes to high speed train networks, France’s is in its late twenties whilst Britain’s is still teething.
Until yesterday, once the tunnel had been crossed and England reached, passengers were treated to a short stretch of tantalizing high-speed rail (the first part of the new link has been in use for some time now) before the trains slowed to a dismal trundle on the old line. Well, no more. Unfortunately it was dark so I did not get to see all that pristine Kent countryside that had seen routes for the line changed so many times. Before I knew it, a tunnel under the Thames, then we appeared to be over-ground and then back under again. We popped up for air again at what I guess was the building site for Stratford International before tunneling our way under North London. I remember five years ago a friend of mine living in Highbury had complained of rumbling under his basement flat for a period of about a week or so. He found out, from the council I believe, that those noises had been the tunnel digging machines digging those very tunnels that I was zooming through significantly faster.
The train popped of the ground one last time and we were cruising into the magnificently lit train station. Words do not do justice to what an amazing site the new station is. Passengers off the train for the first time on these platforms walked in eerie gob-smacked silence. The train shed, with its arches of ‘heritage Barlow blue’ which soar over the tracks to support 18 000 panes of self cleaning glass, makes for quite a destination. Indeed there were plenty of people there who had just come for the opening. At the end of the platforms they posed for photos beneath the 9m tall sculpture of a couple kissing. Europe’s longest champagne bar was not long enough to accommodate the masses who came to toast the new station.
I was grabbed for an interview by BBC Radio London who were broadcasting live from the concourse. I think I ticked a few of their boxes: not only had I just stepped off a train from Paris, but I was an enthusing engineer (and, as a bonus, someone whose father had arranged the medley of French songs played that afternoon by the LSO Brass section as part of the opening celebrations). On air, I was asked about how long it must have taken to paint the roof, a question to which I had no answer but assured them that it must take less time than that for the Forth Rail Bridge.
For me, St Pancras represents the first completed major engineering project university colleagues of mine have been involved with during their summer placements. St Pancras celebrates the engineering of a bygone era, is a fine example of how old can become new, and puts international rail travel back into the national consciousness. Not a bad start!
Filed under: Architecture, Engineering, Travel | Tags: Architecture, eurostar, st pancras, structural engineering, train travel, waterloo
Last Tuesday evening I bid farewell to Waterloo International, the last day that Eurostar will serve this station before it transfers to St Pancras ‘in the (other) heart of London’. Before I even arrived I had fears that the Eurostar staff had packed up and gone as all the signs directing travelers from the Underground up to the terminal had already been whited out. How wrong I was. I arrived on the main station concourse to the sound of live music and the sight of dazzling lights. In the sunken entrance level to the Eurostar terminal, a stage had been set up and a band were playing, none too aptly, “Waterloo Sunset”.
I am happy to admit that I am a station spotter and have long been. It is cooler than being a train spotter as you get to talk about architecture, your subject doesn’t move so you don’t have to stand their waiting for it, there are plenty of food shops so no packed lunches required, and you can wear any clothes you like. This last advantage makes the station spotter hard to spot. I have blended in all these years and have simply thought that I was alone in my pursuit, unaware that other station spotters were all around me. That is until that evening when they showed their true colours and, in droves, they headed down to Waterloo International to wish it farewell.
The police had crowd control measures in place to stop people pushing into the sunken entrance area. If your name wasn’t on the list (read, if you didn’t have a ticket) you weren’t getting in. By the time I got in, the show was wrapping up, leaving only video footage of the new station projected onto the wall. It felt like mass train station hysteria; one woman had a tear in her eye. Staff stood around beaming, journalists were interviewing. With all the publicity for the new St. Pancras terminal, international train travel has recaptured the public’s imagination. But from this train station 81,891,738 travelers over the last thirteen years have already trained it, internationally. And so one can understand people being sad to see it go.
But go where exactly? It is all very well to wish a station farewell but it is not going anywhere. What are they going to do with it? Scuttle it? The plan as I understand it is to make the platforms available for comunter trains to use. But what of the long arrival and departure concourses? When I was twelve or so, I saw an architectural model of the terminal with it’s snake-like blue roof. It is hard to believe that this structure will now lie largely obsolete.
The party was over on the other side of security (the real bouncers). The place has felt tatty for a while now. I can’t imagine the maintenance budget has been kept up in recent months. Shops lay half empty of stock which was annoying as I badly wanted an adaptor. There were girls handing out free cake. Just like at the end of a party.
The squashed arch roof of the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin
I rode the escalator up to the platforms beneath their wonderful blue roof. This Grimshaw structure arches over the three platforms. Like that of the Hauptbahnhof (photo above) in Berlin the curving roof is made from a squashed arch which means that the roof in both Waterloo and at the Hauptbahnhof can cover the tracks without having to rise to high. By contrast the un-squashed arch of St Pancras’ roof soars high above the cityscape. Squashing the arch induces bending in the structure. In both cases the structure follows the exact form of the bending moment diagram giving a very pure structural aesthetic. At the Hauptbahnhof the arch is four-pinned and symmetric. At Waterloo, the designers chopped a third off this symmetric arch, giving it its asymmetric shape.
With the fanfare far behind, I boarded the train and as we pulled out was reminded that it was not the station that was the problem but the line. As the train bumps through Vauxhall, the carriages bottom-out their suspension. We creaked round a sharp left turn and then screeched through Brixton, presumably deafening those on the platform. By Herne Hill, the train slowed further to skateboard speed. However, after forty minutes of this bumping and grinding, a reminder of what the new route will bring, as the the Eurostar joins the already-open section of high speed track and accelerates towards France.
And so Waterloo must close. I am sure that station spotters such as myself will get over it soon enough. The start of services to St Pancras, for example, might offer a suitable distraction. With this opening I am certain that a whole new generation of station spotters will be inspired into being
Every omelette* has a story to tell. The first omelette was in Istanbul. It was on a Wednesday morning, having just arrived by train by a round about route from Paris. I was due to be meeting Dan outside the Agia Sofia mosque at some point in the afternoon, but didn’t feel like sightseeing in between, so I installed myself in front of a tiny street-corner cafe and killed three hours explaining to the owner that I was vegetarian using freshly garnered phrases in Turkish.
Omelette number two was rustled up in Coffee Nadiri. After spending our first night in Tehran in a soulless 4 star hotel, we relocated to a much more friendly place down the road, hotel Nadiri. During afternoons and evenings, the tea room underneath is humming with young people. It is a pleasant respite from Tehran’s bustling streets. But if you are looking for a dose of coffee before noon then is to the sister establishment Coffee Nadiri in an alley around the corner that you must go. It is in this small tiled room that we first saw an omelette cooking technique that we would see all over Iran. Omelette was apparently the only foodstuff on Coffee Nadiri’s menu, and the smart khaki-trousered proprietor had all the components and tools laid out before him. Arriving at opening time, as we did, we got to see the chef/manager’s entire routine. After sweeping out the tiled floors and feeding the budgie, the delicious corrugated bread is delivered. The tea samovars are prepared (Dan will surely write his own post about the tea routine), tomatoes are diced and onions are chopped and the cooking starts. Into an aluminum pan goes butter, the eggs and the tomatoes. The pan is tossed about using a spanner and then when the concoction is just ready, the hot pan is put on a tray with a hunk of delicious bread. Simple but very tasty.
Omelette number three was out East. We had arrived in Gorgon and felt a long way off the tourist track. We had found the town’s bazaar and over the road a tiny cafe with a spiral staircase up to a balcony overlooking the market. By now we had our Persian ordering phrases down to a T, so to speak, and a tomato ‘kuku’ was sent up to us. Here, the same delicious corrugated bread, but this time accompanied by some raw onion. Eating the onion was a mistake – I didn’t speak to a girl for almost a week!
Omelette number four was part of a wonderful spread cooked up for us by Katy’s mother. We had met Katy and her family on the train down from Istanbul and they had invited us to spend several days with them in their home city Shahrud. We took them up on the offer, and Katy’s mum had plenty of time to cook up an unending supply of vegetarian food to expand our stomachs. The omelette in this spead is vegetable flavoured and situated over to the left. In the middle is a leeky rice dish. It is cooked in a butter-lined pan in the oven so that the outside forms a tasty crust. The whole lot is turned over when served up. Bottom left is a soft flat bread. It appears that when we crossed the mountains between Gorgon and Shahrud, the corrugated bread got left behind. Just off to the right is my favourite iranian dish, kashka bademjum. Bademjum is aubergine, and kashka appears to be untranslatable but available in Iranian shops in London I am told. Also of note is the bowl of green leaves at the top, made up entirely of fresh herbs. And in the jug at the top right, doukh, a sour yoghurt drink. We stayed with Katy for three days, and each mealtime, a spread of these proportions was unveiled. Quite incredible!
Omelette number four in this hall of fame was found in a posh hotel in Yazd. I say found because it took us a long time to track one down. We had been up early touring this extraordinary desert town’s streets before the tourist hoards hit and were suddenly hit by a burning hunger. But none of the restaurants we found would sell us anything vegetarian. We were directed down the street to a breakfast place that looked like it would never arrive. In the end we gave up and walked into the brand new and completely empty Hotel Dad. We asked the receptionist if an omelette could be prepared for us even though we weren’t guests. They were only to happy to pamper us and direct us to this enormous and empty dining room. There we sat for half an hour ( I am sure that they were waiting for the eggs to be laid ) while at least five different waiters brought out drinks and bits of cutlery one by one. Eventually, our food arrived, but rather than the queen of omelets that we had been expecting, a fired egg in tomato sauce arrived. I would say I was a little disappointed not to score an omelette but it was the tastiest fried egg in tomato sauce that I have ever had.
Omelette number five signalled our return to Europe. I had tried to return to the cafe in Istanbul where I had spent three hours ordering my meal last time. This time I tried to speed things up by showing the man a picture on my camera of the omelette that he had cooked me four weeks before, but he just didn’t get it and kept trying to take a photo of me instead. So it was that we had arrived in Budapest after two days of train through Bulgaria and Romania and were pretty desperate for an egg fix. Budapest being the train hub that it is, I had past through the city several times on my travels and without a map, I have always been able to find my way through the back streets to this luxurious breakfast place. That morning was no exception, and in travel-grimey clothes we sat amongst the well groomed and ate an omelette that must have cost more than all the omelettes we had in Iran combined.
Omelette number six was a rather sad affair. Not only was it on the last day of our trip, in Zurich, it was also rubbish. Just look at the bread! Give me Coffee Nadiri any day of the week!
*Being a vegetarian traveller in Iran is not impossible but it is not either. Omelette was about the best source of protein we could lay our hands on. Hence the obsession.
*posts about will also appear on the blog Tehran Taxi which we will soon have underway
