locus_imagination
Invisible cities: The tower
Newport: Towards City Spires 2010.
This photo led to a comment - see below - on the City Spires project for Newport (completion is planned for 2010).
See notes below for compartative skyscraper proposals in Cardiff and Swansea, plus a historical glance back to Llandaff Cathedral (1867) and Cardiff Castle (1869) and Cardiff City Hall (1905) tower schemes.
The tower is of course an outstanding architectural type, a signifier of temporal power and authority.
A historical reflection, therefore.
In the case of nineteenth century Industrial South Wales, we see the passage of power and authority from the ecclesiastical (- Llandaff Cathederal restoration), to the secular and industrial capitalist (- even if dressed in historicist garb: Bute's Cardiff Castle restoration scheme and Clock Tower, a patron-architect partnership in the Renaissance tradition; Bute is held by architectural historian Mark Girouard to be the single most important secular patron of architecture in British history; Bute's wealth coming from the land assets and industrial enterprise of the Bute estate), to the civic (Cardiff City Hall Clock Tower, symbolising the triumph of the municipal sphere; Cardiff Civic Centre was the UK's first planned civic centre -- typically "American Wales", its inspiration can be traced back to the 1893 Chicago Exposition, hence the Beaux Arts flavour). (-Note, cf also "Pallas Athena"; a riposte to Bute's indulgent Clock Tower).
In the C21st, we see "post-industrial" urban redevelopment strategies and their "post-modern" architectural monuments placing a new emphasis on height as a sign of desire, prestige and power.
A new matrix of property investment, spectacle, and desire. The market. The shift from social polity to consumption and "lifestyle".
Invisible cities: The tower
Newport: Towards City Spires 2010.
This photo led to a comment - see below - on the City Spires project for Newport (completion is planned for 2010).
See notes below for compartative skyscraper proposals in Cardiff and Swansea, plus a historical glance back to Llandaff Cathedral (1867) and Cardiff Castle (1869) and Cardiff City Hall (1905) tower schemes.
The tower is of course an outstanding architectural type, a signifier of temporal power and authority.
A historical reflection, therefore.
In the case of nineteenth century Industrial South Wales, we see the passage of power and authority from the ecclesiastical (- Llandaff Cathederal restoration), to the secular and industrial capitalist (- even if dressed in historicist garb: Bute's Cardiff Castle restoration scheme and Clock Tower, a patron-architect partnership in the Renaissance tradition; Bute is held by architectural historian Mark Girouard to be the single most important secular patron of architecture in British history; Bute's wealth coming from the land assets and industrial enterprise of the Bute estate), to the civic (Cardiff City Hall Clock Tower, symbolising the triumph of the municipal sphere; Cardiff Civic Centre was the UK's first planned civic centre -- typically "American Wales", its inspiration can be traced back to the 1893 Chicago Exposition, hence the Beaux Arts flavour). (-Note, cf also "Pallas Athena"; a riposte to Bute's indulgent Clock Tower).
In the C21st, we see "post-industrial" urban redevelopment strategies and their "post-modern" architectural monuments placing a new emphasis on height as a sign of desire, prestige and power.
A new matrix of property investment, spectacle, and desire. The market. The shift from social polity to consumption and "lifestyle".