‘Consult the Genius of the Place’, now expressed as ‘design with sensitivity to context’ is the Single Agreed Law of landscape design. It embodies the conviction that we should, as NT Newton put it in the title of a book on the history…
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Posts on Skyline Policy (+ see introduction to skyline policy)
London Skyline to be wrecked by 22 Bishopsgate skyscraper?
Peter Hitchins wrote this week (at the foot of a blog post) that ‘Approval has now been given for the building of a vast new concrete slab in the heart of London, 22 Bishopsgate. You may like this sort of thing…
Posted in skyline policy
Piano’s Paddington Skyscraper
Renzo Piano has designed a Skyscraper for Paddington. Simon Jenkins calls it the Paddington Pole and comments that ‘Unlike the Shard, the Pole appears to have all the subtlety of a cigarette.’ I see it as the Paddington Pepperpot and…
London’s Green Infrastructure Plan for 2050
The London Branch of the UK Landscape Institute made these London_2050_green_infrastructure_2014_landscape_comment.pdf recommendations: SUMMARY of LI London Branch Recommendations 1. Make it clear that the principles of green infrastructure planning apply to the whole of London, not only to vegetated ‘greenspace’.…
Simon Jenkins on London’s skyline landscape and architecture
Simon Jenkis argues that ‘London today has the only skyline in the western world that is unzoned and unplanned. I once asked Johnson’s deputy mayor for planning (yes, there is one), Sir Edward Lister, how many towers he thought appropriate…
Posted in skyline policy
The landscape architecture of tall buildings in London
When the Walkie Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) was nearing completion it attracted publicity for its capacity to fry eggs on the pavement. Rafael Viñoly’s great facade behaved like a solar mirror, as shown in the below video. The sun shade…
Posted in skyline policy
Greenwich Peninsula skyline landscape architecture London
This witty and perceptive cutting is from the Friends of Greenwich Park Newsletter (No. 70 Summer 2015). The underlying problem is that neither the newly-Royal Borough of Greenwich nor the Greater London Authority has anything which a serious commentator would…
Posted in skyline policy
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