St. Pauls // London Info Centre
On Thursday after our tour of Fleet St., a few of us walked around the area some more. We then returned to St. Paul's to take another look at it. Upon walking around, I saw a glimpse of what I then thought was the work of Daniel Libeskind. I later discovered that it was not, but just an imitation of his work by another British firm Make Architects.
On to the design aspect... I really enjoyed the contrast between the very clean, modern form and the classic cathedral. I think one of the things that I have learned from architecture at poly is that it is important not to simply immitate architecture from before our time, even if it is beautiful. The truth is that a building like St. Paul's cannot and should not have competition for attention, St. Paul's will always win. Using extreme contrast in this case is the most effective way of complementing the cathedral. It is simple and clean, and doesn't try to take anything away from the beauty of St. Pauls.
Paternoster Vents
This past Thursday, our GRC class took a tour of Fleet St. The first destination on the tour was St. Paul's Cathedral. After walking around the cathedral for a bit, we headed off to the next destination. Before doing so, however, we passed these two massive sculptures. I was extremely excited, because I recognized these as the work of one of my favorite British architects, Thomas Heatherwick. I have browsed his website several times, so immediately recognized this piece immediately. It was a delightful surprise!
The sculpture was initially designed to hide a cooling system for an underground substation.The form was inspired by paper folding, which makes me happy, as one of the first projects first year architecture students do involves paper folding.
To check out the paternoster vents and any other projects by Heatherwick, take a gander at the link below:
http://www.heatherwick.com/paternoster-vents/
