Sold down the river
Twenty years ago much of the Thames lay derelict and neglected. Now London's historic riverscape is fast disappearing under exclusive developments and architectural setpieces. Are we loving the Thames to death?
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From Battersea Bridge, look east and you can see Albion Wharf, Norman Foster's latest residential project, a 10-storey silver zeppelin glinting in the sun. In itself this is perhaps an intriguing object with its rippling skin and curvaceous form, but it demonstrates the trouble with the new generation of riverside apartments. It represents both a jump of scale and the rapid process of filling in the remaining gap sites along the Thames, to create what will soon be a continuous strip of buildings. Which, in effect, turns the Thames into a kind of culvert.
Ten floors sounds modest enough set against the 49-floor tower planned for Vauxhall, but Albion Wharf and many other schemes like it form the backdrop to the network of two-storey terraced streets immediately inland. Walking down one of them with the back side of Albion Wharf looming over you like an ocean liner in dry dock, is to have your nose rubbed in the fact that there is a private party going on to which you have not been invited, another London very near by in which you are not welcome.
From: observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,958130,00.html
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(Albion Riverside is an 11-storey sinuous building of aluminium and glass that contains 186 apartments and penthouses sold at prices from £250,000 up to almost £10 million, plus shops, a restaurant, art gallery, swimming pool and gymnasium for the use of residents.)
From: www.homedesignawards.com/homebuilder/homebuilder_2005/Cat...
Sold down the river
Twenty years ago much of the Thames lay derelict and neglected. Now London's historic riverscape is fast disappearing under exclusive developments and architectural setpieces. Are we loving the Thames to death?
[ . . . ]
From Battersea Bridge, look east and you can see Albion Wharf, Norman Foster's latest residential project, a 10-storey silver zeppelin glinting in the sun. In itself this is perhaps an intriguing object with its rippling skin and curvaceous form, but it demonstrates the trouble with the new generation of riverside apartments. It represents both a jump of scale and the rapid process of filling in the remaining gap sites along the Thames, to create what will soon be a continuous strip of buildings. Which, in effect, turns the Thames into a kind of culvert.
Ten floors sounds modest enough set against the 49-floor tower planned for Vauxhall, but Albion Wharf and many other schemes like it form the backdrop to the network of two-storey terraced streets immediately inland. Walking down one of them with the back side of Albion Wharf looming over you like an ocean liner in dry dock, is to have your nose rubbed in the fact that there is a private party going on to which you have not been invited, another London very near by in which you are not welcome.
From: observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,958130,00.html
*************
(Albion Riverside is an 11-storey sinuous building of aluminium and glass that contains 186 apartments and penthouses sold at prices from £250,000 up to almost £10 million, plus shops, a restaurant, art gallery, swimming pool and gymnasium for the use of residents.)
From: www.homedesignawards.com/homebuilder/homebuilder_2005/Cat...