Context / Oslo, Norway

Norway is a country dictated by the harsh expansive wilderness, spread over an area almost the size of Japan with a relatively low population of almost 5 million people. The area is deeply cut by the long, narrow inlets of fjords and dominated by a mountainous terrain containing some of the world's largest glaciers, making only 3% of the entire country arable for cultivation. Historically, Norway has been mired in poverty, dependent on the export of natural resources (fishing, whaling & timber), without developing urbanization, and in political subjection to it's Scandinavian neighbors. The Norwegian people, isolated and callous, worked through the impossible extremes of nature, developing a symbiotic relationship with the surrounding environment and created a nationalistic attitude for the future. By the end of the 19th century, Norway saw a new level of independence with the introduction of a parliamentary government leading to peaceful secession from Sweden in 1905.

“The nature of Norway is nature untamed by cultivation. Here in Norway nature is the norm, whereas in many other places it is the cultivated land that people take for granted.”

— Sverre Fehn, Architect

A stave church near Oslo, dating back to the year 1200.

The Viking ship, Oseberg, dating back to 834 AD

Although considered small on the global spectrum, with a population of around one million people, the modern city of Oslo dominates the Norwegian landscape as the capital and most populous city in Norway. Without the grandeur of many larger European capitals, Oslo offers spacious park areas and forests, all within sight and sound of the sea, creating a level of connection to the surrounding context rarely seen in a modern city. Originally created as a fjord settlement during the Viking age, Oslo would not become a capital city until the 17th century, following a disastrous fire and while under Danish rule. The rebuilt capital city would be renamed Christiana, after the Danish King Christian IV, until 1905 when Norway broke with Sweden, reinstating the traditional name of Oslo twenty years later.

View of tram line in front of Oslo Central Station and Jernbanetorget (The Railway Square)

Karl Johans Gate, Oslo's main street and pedestrian area

New residential and commerical developments on Aker Brygge, an old industrial pier

Considered one of the most expensive cities in the world, Oslo has gone through a rapid modernization in the past 50 years. Building from a profitable timber trade of last century, Norway has invested heavily into the oil industry, developing a national wealth that has created the internationalization of Norwegian culture and a growing Norwegian self-confidence that has transformed Oslo into the fastest growing city in Europe. New cultural, residential and commercial development projects are now seen going up throughout the city, especially around the once diminishing harbor area. A chance for the once struggling nation to embrace recent financial success and intuitive contextural relationships, creating a new urban form.

View of Oslo Harbour, Aker Brygge in the distance

The Radhus (Oslo Town Hall) near Oslo Harbour

Case Study / DR Concert Hall

South of the capital city, Ørestad is a developing urban quarter growing out of a metro line placed between Copenhagen's historical downtown district and the city's international airport, located on the island of Amager. Burdened with low economic growth and high unemployment at the end of the 1980s, the Danish Parliament passed the 'Act of Ørestad' in 1992 (first Act of Parliament in thirty years where the state was involvement in a major new urban development project), creating the idea for a new major urban development scheme that would act as a 'city annex' attracting innovative national and international ventures, supported by a series of important infrastructure investments including a new metro line and the Øresund Link (tunnel/bridge project to Malmö, Sweden). Financing such an expansive project would be inspired by the English New Town principles, to which new infrastructure be subsidized by the incremental land value created by the very same Metro. By building Ørestad, Copenhagen not only financed the Metro, but also a new urban quarter that would usher Copenhagen out of financial crisis and create a testing ground to display the city's new ideas in architecture and city planning. In 1994, the winning project of an international architectural competition by a Finnish-Danish architecture studio (KHR Arkitekter) revealed an overall masterplan for Ørestad, dividing the area into four smaller districts, focused on integrating a highly-dense and modern city with the surrounding natural environment, forming attractive recreational access and sustainable planning to future residents / companies of the area.

“It is the intention to give full artistic freedom concerning architectural form, so that the new city quarter of Ørestad will boast state-of- the-art within architecture and art during the building years.”

— Masterplan competition stipulations for Ørestad

Area of Ørestad's urban quarter between Copenhagen's historic downtown area and the international airport. Red area locates Ørestad North or 'University District'.

KHR Arkitekter's masterplan for the University of Copenhagen and Ørestad North, 1997

Located off the first new Metro stop from Copenhagen, Ørestad North (University District) is the most developed of the four areas of Ørestad. Focused around the masterplan's idea of a central "village green", the Landscape Canal and the north-south-oriented University Canal define the new urban construction of The University of Copenhagen-southern campus. Each building would ensure contact to a functional outdoor space and the strong axis of the artificial University Canal, creating a powerful pedestrian hierarchy with a connection to nature. In 1999, state-owned Danish media company (DR) decided to join Ørestad North's campus to concentrate all of the company's activities from the metropolitan area into one address. DR Byen (DR's new headquarters, referred to as 'DR City') is a four-component complex that would account for all Danish Radio’s offices, TV, radio, and orchestra productions under one roof, even including a new state-of-the-art concert hall (Koncerthuset) for the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, further advancing Ørestad's goal of promoting progressive arts and technologies in the region. Unfortunately, DR Byen's construction process accumulated a range of controversial public outcries over budgetary concerns, allegedly due to the complexity of the concert hall, leading to high-profile resignations and drastic cutbacks in DR staff and public funding. In all, the entire project would cost almost three times as much as budgeted (up to $300 million), making the DR Concert Hall one of the most expensive concert halls ever built.

Back in 2002, Jean Nouvel would win the competition to design the 590,000-square-foot concert hall, as the fourth and final segment to the DR Byen project. As the yet-to-be-finished 'gate to Ørestad', the site would prove to be problematic as it was clustered on a barren site in an emerging neighborhood, wedged between the new elevated metro and the remaining unfinished DR Byen projects. The architect would react with caution to the untested local conditions, as it was not reliable to judge the newly built-up surroundings with an urban potential that is impossible to evaluate. With no urban response, the question had to be switched. How can this project contribute to and survive the future of this site? According to Nouvel, the response would be the mystery of uncertainty. "The proposal consists of materializing the territory and providing it with the scale of an exceptional urban facility. It will be a volume that will allow its interior to be guessed."

Sitting behind the dematerialized envelope of blue glass-fiber skin that is draped over a commanding steel structural frame, the theater becomes an architectural anomaly. One that seeks to hide behind a curtain, but still calls for attention. Nouvel’s design approach, both the container and the auditoriums and spaces within assume a vastly different character depending on the time of day you visit. During the day, the project sits as the figurehead of North Ørestad's artificial canal, caging a shadowy figure that cannot be accessed with public intrusion, only to open at night as an ethereal object with the glitz of lights and images on the screened envelope, becoming a beacon of light 148 ft up in the air, calling to oncoming visitors. It is an urban alarm clock that can't be set, only to awake the surrounding context when it wishes. The only problem is the site has not fully awoken to the theater's tantalizing images, a stark opposition to the sterile desolation around it with swaths of undeveloped land with tufts of grass and mounds of dirt extending around it.

“Building in emerging neighborhoods is a risk that has often proved fatal in recent years. When there is no built environment upon which to found our work, when we cannot evaluate a neighborhood’s future potential, we have to turn the question around: what qualities can we bring to this future? We can respond positively to an uncertainty by using its most positive attribute, that is, mystery. Mystery is never far from seduction.”

— Jean Nouvel, Architect

Model displaying the interior workings of theater

DR Concert Hall  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — DR Concert Hall / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Royal Danish Playhouse & Copenhagen Opera House

For centuries, Copenhagen had depended on its Inner Harbor (Inderhavnen) and the strong maritime network the area has served to the Baltic Sea. Developed as a deep channel that cuts between two islands, the harbor was the center of urban activity, teeming with lively, exotic, dirty, and sometimes dangerous elements. But by the second half of the 20th century, the shipping industry had changed with new technologies and greater demands on urban infrastructure. Proximity to the downtown was becoming obsolete as goods were packed into huge steel containers stacked by cranes the size of buildings on the decks of giant freighters, demanding enormous ports with vast areas of land for daily operations. Copenhagen and virtually every large historical port city had developed similar symptoms: dilapidated docks, abandoned warehouses, and fences sealing downtown off from the quieted waters. The great urban project of the postindustrial age was to heal the coastal scar left by the evacuated maritime industry.

In 2000, the municipality of Copenhagen initiated a development strategy for the entire harbor area, divided into three geographical sections, each analyzed by a separate design studio. Henning Larsen Architects was commissioned to analyze the Inderhavnen area and outline different alternative solutions to exhibit the possibilities of new urban growth on the waterfront. The conclusion of the work relied on mixing residential and commercial buildings with emphasis on large public cultural institutions to create a dynamic city life. Functionally, no building was permitted to "turn its back" to the harbor, complimenting already defined plans of public promenades and squares along the entire harbor fairway with the purpose of stressing and strengthening waterfront activities. The large cultural 'magnets' would later be defined as the Royal Danish Playhouse and the Copenhagen Opera House.

“In our opinion this would create a rich variety in the urban environment, and by adding quality and coherence to the areas the harbor would provide an attraction to the citizens of Copenhagen as well as to visitors from all over the world.”

— Henning Larsens Architects

Henning Larsen's proposal for Copenhagen's Inner Harbor

Two of Copenhagen's most significant urban redevelopment projects would assist in Henning Larsen's proposed master plan for Inderhavnen - the 'car-free zones' of Strøget and Nyhavn. The sequence of streets known collectively as Strøget was the beginning of a successful string of pedestrian-only streets developed in the 1960's that became a strong reaction to the congested automobile culture in downtown Copenhagen. Evolved from one clogged traffic artery, the city began systematically banishing cars from gracious squares and narrow streets that had degenerated over time, encouraging people to commute by foot or bicycle again. A controversial plan at the time, it is now one of the longest pedestrian streets in Europe and is considered a highly influential study in contemporary urban design (influenced by Danish architect and urban planner Jan Gehl). The sequence of streets is a major pedestrian boulevard through the center of Copenhagen, from Radhuspladsen (City Hall Square) to the large bustling square of Kongens Nlytorv (King's New Square). Nyhavn, one of the oldest waterfront districts in the city, soon would follow the trend. In the 1980s the large car-park and once-forlorn canal of Nyhavn was incrementally converted into a pedestrian area that was immediately invaded by cafés and shops, full up all year round, becoming Copenhagen’s most often portrayed public space and a catalyst to the harbor's waterfront development.

“When Strøget in Copenhagen was changed into a pedestrian street in 1962, it was after much debate and with considerable reservations. If, at the time, anyone had predicted that the city center would have six times as many car-free areas 34 years later, and that car traffic and parking possibilities would be substantially reduced, it would have been met with a great deal of skepticism. That life in the city center could flourish markedly would simply have been too unbelievable.”

— Jan Gehl, 'Public Spaces Public Life'

Amagertorv Square, part of the Strøget pedestrian zone

Bars and restaurants lining the northern side of Nyhavn

Diagram showing the uninterrupted path of car-free zones from City Hall Square to Kvæsthusbroen. A total distance of 2350m (7710 ft).

The Playhouse

Since the 1880s, the Royal Danish Theatre had sought to relieve a congested home theater - the Old Stage - by expanding the Royal Playhouse drama company into a new building that would showcase the city's latest trends in acting. A suitable site and proper financing would not develop until around 2000 when international ferry operations would be relocated from Kvæsthusbroen Landing Stage, near Nyhavn, to a new DFDS terminal in the northern part of Copenhagen harbor. This relocation made the site at Kvæsthusbroen open to new development, later sold by Port of Copenhagen, Ltd. to the Danish Ministry of Culture, creating the possibility of building a new public arts center on the waterfront, eventually becoming the new Royal Danish Playhouse. After winning an international design competition, Danish architectural practice Lundgaard and Tranberg was chosen for the task, with construction beginning in 2004.

The building's design acknowledges three important site features: a revitalized Nyhavn region with heavy pedestrian traffic, a strong promenade along the Inderhavnenwaterfront, and panoramic views of Copenhagen's historic skyline. The harbor becomes the important component as the architects chose to move the theater forward into the harbor (about 40% of the building projecting over the water), with the visitors entering on gently sloping ramps, which, besides being the point of arrival, serve as a promenade pivoting around the playhouse, diverting pedestrians onto a raised 150m long walkway that affords panoramic views of the harbor and hosts an open cafe/restaurant. The tripartite abstract composition of the playhouse benefits the siting, as the continuous horizontal upper storey of private functions cantilever out above the water, creating a tall glazed public foyer that invites shelter and integration of the waterfront's broad promenade public space, injecting new life into the central part of the inner harbor that forms the continuation of Nyhavn.

View from Kvaesthusgade (north west facade)

While successful on the harbor side, the Royal Danish Theater becomes problematic toward the city, essentially ignoring the urban fabric and turning its back to the historic center of Copenhagen. Although the project follows the master plan's guideline with intention to inject the waterfront with a new cultural venue, when one arrives from the main Avenues of Nyhavn or Sankt Annae Plads, the theater is virtually invisible. Approaching from Nyhavn's pedestrian waterside street, one must turn hard left, up a fairly narrow ramp, to enter, like boarding a ship ready to disembark. There is an urban disconnect when the only truly active elevation is coming from the East (waterside), while others bare disengaging brick walls and the axis of the streets slide right by into the water. However, to the northeast, there are promising developments on the former Kvæsthusbroen Landing Stage called 'Ofelia Beach' that offers temporary outdoor performance stages and lounge areas, activating the theater to an urban/social terrain.

The Opera House

From the playhouse, it’s a short trip by water bus across the inner harbor to the Operaen (Copenhagen Opera House), donated to the Danish state by Denmark's wealthest citizen and shipping mogul, A.P. Møller with the Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation, in 2000. Five years later, the 14-story structure rose up from a former naval base on Holmen Island - once the epicenter of Denmark's military and industrial complexes - in the city harbor, completing the historical axis running through the Queen's palace and the domed Marble Church. As one of the most expensive opera houses ever built (over $450 million) on a significantly visible piece of land in the harbor, the project brought a high-level of controversy, with politicians claiming the full cost of the project would be tax deductible, virtually forcing the government to buy the building, along with community leaders questioning the size and infrastructure needed for such a project. However, it would be the public disputes between Møller and his architects, Henning Larsen Architects, that would garner much of the attention during the construction of Denmark's first opera house. After acquisition of the land, the architecture firm was handed the commission by Møller himself, as they had worked on numerous successful projects in the past. The Danish government, happy to receive such a generous gift, didn't interfere when HLA was awarded the project without an architectural competition, commonly held in grand public projects of this type, or when Møller refused to discuss the design to the public during the four-year construction period. The architect, trying to make sure that the original architectural ideas were carried through the construction process, would consistently have disagreements with the client, who was viewed in the press to have dictatorial control over the entire project until completion in 2005. Henning Larsen would state before the building's grand opening, "What we have now is a compromise which failed, and this makes me sad".

From around the city's harbor waterfront, the Opera advertises itself with a distinctive size and central position in the Copenhagen cityscape. Anchored on a site, once abandoned and neglected for years by the military, that has gone through a metamorphosis. In connection with the new master plan, the existing island was separated by two new 17 meter-wide canals into three islands, accentuating the placement of the Opera House on the central island and emphasizing the maritime location of the structure. In designing the project, key attention is given to the arrival plaza, framed by a 32m long floating roof overhang that draws the public towards a vast transparent foyer looking right over the harbor toward Amalienborg Palace (Queen's Residence). The front of the house is visually integrated in the harbor space, whereas the back of the building, designed as a lower building block, relates to the vernacular structures in the area and to the proposed new apartment blocks on the north and south side of the building. Unfortunately, the location of the project and focus on maritime siting has disconnected the Opera House with downtown Copenhagen. As it stands now, the project sits alone (the proposed residential projects have not gone forward) on three large islands in the middle of Copenhagen's Inner Harbor, with limited access for all forms of transportation. The 'Copenhagen Harbour Bus' is realistically the only option for pedestrians and bikers to reach the Opera island from across the harbor, which can be problematic with certain weather conditions. Additionally, unlike the Royal Danish Playhouse, the Opera House does not allow public access to the building when performances are not showing, with no accessible watering hole (restaurants or cafes) to enjoy the vast arrival plaza on the waterfront, creating a somber environment throughout the day.

Promise of Pedestrian Bridges

Since the completion of the new Copenhagen Opera House, city officials have realized the area's need for connectivity and have been intent on looking for a solution to improve access from central Copenhagen to 'Opera Island' across the harbor. When the Royal Danish Playhouse was completed back in 2008, there was consideration for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge to link the Playhouse with the Opera, however plans to build bridges in the area have met heavy criticism from those living in Christianshavn, who were afraid that they would have a detrimental affect on the characteristic maritime environment of the quarter and that the bridges will mean that sailing boats will no longer have access to the area. After years of various proposals and competitions, with even a underground tunnel considered, the city agreed on a new network of openable pedestrian bridges - a long bridge over the inner harbor and shorter bridges over some of the canals - that would increase access to the Opera and the surrounding Holmen region. The winning designs, slated to begin construction, consist of a longer retractile bridge with a transparent/low profile to allow for views across the harbor, as well as smaller conventional single-leaf and double-leaf bascule structures over the harbor canals. When complete, these connections should transform the Inderhavnen area, finally merging opposing sides of the harbor with a strengthening horizontal movement and indentifying with Copenhagen's urban culture.

Pedestrian Bridge Proposal by Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter, 2007 (not built)

Pedestrian Bridge Proposal by Flint & Neill and Studio Bednarski, start of construction in 2011

Almost sitting in front of each other, these two projects express a growing strategic consensus in urban design that demands the urban waterfront be a public amenity, but deviate on the processes needed to achieve such a goal. Although both are driven by a common client (Royal Danish Theatre) and an idealistic masterplan, one that encourages the assemblage and a focused convergence of cultural institutions, both are developed by contradicting processes - public opinion v. private decision, urban integration v. remote separation, programmatic expression v. grand gestures. But, both share a commonality as lanterns on the waterfront, glowing from within their grand foyers, waiting to attract interest from society and urban growth through the cultural Renaissance of Copenhagen.

Royal Danish Playhouse & Copenhagen Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Copenhagenization / Bicycle-Friendly Infrastructure

Cycling in Copenhagen has become an essential means of transportation and a dominating feature of the urban cityscape, often a powerful visual attribute with cycling popularity leading to congested bike paths throughout the day. The capital city - a city with more bicycles than people - has earned a reputation as one of the most (possibly the most) bicycle-friendly cities in the world. Starting in the 1960s, Copenhagen experienced a decline in utility cycling due to increasing wealth and affordability of motor vehicles. Consequently, with the energy crisis and the growing environmental movement in the 1970s, cycling experienced a renaissance. Danes were restricted in how much they could use the automobile, forcing commuters to began a campaign for better alternative infrastructure and cyclist-friendly policies. Today, the city boasts more than 200 miles of bicycle lanes, with 55% of its 1.8 million inhabitants riding a bike daily (37% from Greater Copenhagen). The city's success in bicycle use can be contributed to a variety of favorable cycling conditions — dense urban proximities, short distances and flat terrain — along with an extensive, well-designed system of wide cycle paths that are often safely separated from main car traffic lanes and occasionally have their own signal systems.

In recent years, Copenhagen has continued to support urban programs that will only help expand the city's sustainable transportation trend. Programs such as an urban bicycle-sharing initiative, a system of 1,000 publically-accessible bicycles - referred to as Bycykler (English: City Bikes) - throughout the city. The scheme would be the world's first large-scale urban bike-share program featuring specially-designed bikes with parts that could not be used on other bikes. The system, funded by commercial sponsors, allows riders to pay a refundable deposit at one of 100 special bike stands and have unlimited use of a bike within a specified area. Also, the City of Copenhagen is currently underway on an extensive network of bike lanes to extend farther out into the suburbs. A network of 13 high-class routes - 'bicycle superhighways' - dedicated to reducing traffic and increase the percentage of suburban commuters cycling to and from the city to over 50 percent. The proposed bike highways will be dotted with pit stops where it will be possible for cyclists to pump their tires and fix their bike chains, as well as synchronized traffic lights prioritizing bicycles over cars, bringing riders from the suburbs into Copenhagen safely and more efficiently.

The term Copenhagenization is a current concept in urban planning and design that relates to the implementation of better pedestrian facilities and segregated bicycle facilities for cycling in cities. Copenhagen's well-developed bicycle culture has given rise to the term, focusing city transport on pedestrian and cycling, rather than the car, and the benefits for street life and the natural environment, the health and fitness of citizens, and the level of amenity in cities. Originally coined by architect Jan Gehl, Urban design consultant and journalist Mikael Colville-Andersen, would popularize the term in this meaning to a broader audience, starting in 2007 with the Copenhagenize blog, that highlights how the bicycle can be an important tool in the creation of livable cities. Currently, this practice has been introduced in other cities - adopting Copenhagen-style bike lanes and bicycle infrastructure - in areas such as Melbourne, as well as New York City Department of Transportation's attempt to re-imagine city streets by introducing designs to improve life for pedestrians and cyclists.

Danish bike culture was put on the world's stage with BIG Architect's Danish pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. The pavilion was designed as a traffic loop created by the motion of city bikes and pedestrians tied in a knot, allowing visitors to gain the experience of urban cycling in Copenhagen by taking one of its 300 free city bikes along the cycle paths which are incorporated throughout the structure. The pavilion’s theme Welfairytales (Welfare + Fairytales) re-launched the bicycle in Shanghai as a symbol of lifestyle and sustainable urban development. When the Expo closed, the pavilion was planned to be moved to another site in Shanghai and function as a transfer point for Shanghai’s new city bikes.

BIG's Denmark Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2010 — BIG's Denmark Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2010

Renewable Energy / Wind Power

The world's first carbon-neutral capital by 2025. That is Copenhagen's goal, aiming to turn 50% of Danish electricity consumption into offshore wind power (currently around 25%). The capital city has always been recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly cities in the world, with much of the city's success attributed to strong community leadership combined with a sound national policy. Concerned with the relatively huge carbon dioxide emissions of their coal-fired electrical power plants back in the 1970s (along with the oil crisis), the Danish government rapidly supported broad initiatives that have supported clean and renewable alternatives to energy production, such as wind energy development, resulting in a dramatic reduction in the cost of electricity and pollution. Wind power was an obvious choice looking at Denmark's geographical location which has very large offshore wind resources, and large areas of sea territory with a shallow water depth where siting is most feasible. Economically, the Danish system created one of the first viable wind technology industries in the world by providing 30% of initial investment capital cost to green firms in the early years which was gradually reduced to zero. On a smaller scale, tax deductions were offered to families if they generated, or participated in cooperatives that generated wind energy within their own or neighboring municipality, creating a grassroots investment in wind power that would finance 86% of all wind turbines in Denmark. Today, almost half of the wind turbines placed around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers, producing a successful and profitable industry that continually reinvests in itselft, continually creating more efficient technologies.

In 2000, the city of Copenhagen took part in a large offshore wind farm project called Middelgruden, built one mile (2km) off the coastline of the capital city in the Øresund strait of the North Sea. Clearly visible from Copenhagen, the project is the world's largest offshore farm, consisting of a slightly curved line of 20 turbines, each 365 ft tall with a rotor diameter of 250 ft. Together, the project produces 40 MW of energy, or enough to power 3% of the city of Copenhagen. Financially, the ownership of the project is shared equally between the Copenhagen Utility and a wind-energy cooperative of over 8,500 indviduals that financed their half by purchasing shares. The success of this bold project, along with the direct location and public backing, states the importance of wind power in Denmark.

Context / Copenhagen, Denmark

A 1000-year-old harbor town located in the Øresund Region of Denmark, Copenhagen has been viewed as a metaphorical bridge between Northern Europe and Scandinavia. It is a city that transcends from its historical appeal of copper spires, cobbled squares and pastel-colored town houses, to a thriving modern metropolis of cutting edge designers, efficient transport systems and environmental awareness. Before becoming the capital and largest metropolitan area in Denmark the city originated, like so many other Scandinavian cities, as a small fishing village; with it's occupants taking advantage of the sheltered waters around a region called Slotsholmen Island. By the 12th century, Slotsholmen had been fortified by Bishop Absalon (Danish archbishop renowned as the founder of Copenhagen) in keeping with the settlements growing aspirations and important commercial status, a status signified by it's name, Komandshavn, the "port of the merchants", later amended to Kobenhavn. After the coronation of Christian IV of Denmark in 1596, the city was significantly enlarged by the addition of new city districts and modern fortifications, along with the construction of numerous significant civic buildings designed to enhance his pretige. By the time of his death, Copenhagen had become the centre of trade and power in Northern Europe. However, destruction would soon follow, as large fires and a British bombardment/invasion would ravage the urban fabric for more than a century. With most of the medieval town destroyed, city planners used the dramatic increase of free space to update the urban infrastructure, as well as expand the city centre into new territories for housing, emerging as a major European capital once again.

Copper statue of Bishop Absalon in front of St. Nikolaj Church

Pastel-colored town houses in Copenhagen's Christianshavn district

Sometimes referred to as "the City of Spires", Copenhagen is known for its horizontal skyline, only broken by spires at churches and castles. Walking through the city, you realize that Copenhagen has a multitude of districts/neighborhoods that create a dense urban fabric, each representing its time and own distinctive character, but all sharing a common denominator: water. Whether it be near a medieval canal, artificial lake, old harbor, beach shoreline, artificial island or even the strait of Øresund, the city is immersed by maritime culture. This ongoing relationship with the city's aquatic context, along with narrow medieval street grids, can prove to be difficult in terms of access and traffic infastructure, which explains the city's car congestion problems and emphasis on more sustainable (pedestrian/bicycle) modes of transportation. In fact, ever since city planners turned Copenhagen's traditional main street (Strøget) into a pedestrian thoroughfare in 1962, the public has gradually turned away from the car, adding more pedestrian-only or pedestrian-priority streets and turning parking lots into public squares. The broad expanse of relaxed, traffic-free environments, lead to a refreshing world of lively streets, colorful squares and hidden corners, where pedestrians are the priority. The resulting effect has kept Copenhagen's horizontal skyline low-slung and densely spaced, honoring a human scale and kept residents safe from the blistering cold winds the city occasionally faces, while successfully animating a new urban culture and attracting more residents to live closer to the city center (now 70% of the population live in urban area) - eliminating a dependence on the car. In 1992, as the city limits started to expand, construction began on a major new underground Copenhagen Metro train system. Completed in 2002 (while more expansions are currently underway), the added rail system only reinforces the attitude of the city, creating an inheritably pedestrian city.

Copenhagen's historic harbor district - Nyhavn

There is no doubt that the last ten years of the city's development and expansive building activity in Copenhagen will stand out as a very important decade in the city's history. As the government has decided to keep the historical center free of large high-density buildings, several areas will see massive urban development. Former industrial and harbor areas have already been converted into city districts and whole new neighborhoods have emerged, consisting of numerous innovative housing schemes and commercial buildings, changing the city's skyline and feeding Danish design aspirations. In addition, public spaces and sustainable ideas (long associated with Copenhagen's design practices) have increasingly come to play a key role in the evolution of the city. Ørestad is one of those recent developments, located on the island of Amager near Copenhagen Airport (the largest in Scandinavia), it currently boasts one of the largest malls in Scandinavia and a variety of office and academic buildings, such as IT University and a high school. Connected primarily through the new Metro train system, the area is also a redefinition of suburban lifestyles with residential complexes that challenge conventional thinking by combining the splendors of the suburban backyard with the social richness of urban density. When construction is finished, Ørestad is expected to house up to 20,000 new inhabitants and provide up to 80,000 new jobs.

Residential and Academic Developments along Ørestad's Metro line

BIG's 8HOUSE on the outermost tip of Ørestad

Office Developments in Copenhagen's Havnestaden District

ROTCH CASE STUDY / THE CONCERTGEBOUW

Before becoming the cultural capital of Europe in 2002, the city pressed through a 30-year-long process of economic and urban change. The 1972 Structure Plan had strived to alleviate an obvious struggle between the old town and surrounding boroughs while retaining historical value, introducing urban renewal philosophies to a stagnent city. The plan initiated a number of policies aimed at increasing the quality of low-cost housing standards, also laying out guidlines for redeveloping the city center and rethinking its traffic flow. At the same time, the city’s infastructure was upgraded, most notably sanitising the famous canals.

Concertgebouw / The composition of the project positions the new Concert Hall against the background of the three famous mediaeval towers of the city center: the Cathedral, the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady. — Concertgebouw / The composition of the project positions the new Concert Hall against the background of the three famous mediaeval towers of the city center: the Cathedral, the Belfry and the Church of Our Lady.

For 2002, the European Union selected Bruges, along with Salamanca, as co-selections for the European Capital of Culture (an over-30 year socio-economic program that promotes cultural aspirations and development within the host city). The aim of the year-long celebration was to submerge Bruges into the heart of contemporary cultural Europe and break free of its languid canals and medieval charm. The capital of Western Flanders would spend over $118 million on new construction / restoration projects throughout the city, along with an operational budget of $36 million, providing musical, sculptural, scenic, literary and theatrics in numerous different sites. The prominent venue would be a new 150,000 sqft performing arts center (Concertgebouw) located just inside the historic city center on a fomer large market space (the Zand), hoping to attract a larger cultural audience and attract international attention. The inauguration of the new venue in Febuarary 2002 would symbolically start Bruge’s year of culture that would eventually attract over 1.5 million new visitors.

Apart from building the Concertgebouw and renovating its urban center, Bruges has also adopted other architectural projects for the event. Although they are rather small in scope, they are nonetheless clearly in tune with the firm intention of the European Capital of Culture to link the heritage of the past to that of the present. At the site of Burg squarelies the contemporary villa by the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. The covered passage suggests both the famous Bruges lace and also the fourth side of the square where it occupies a place of honour. The footbridge by Dutch designers West 8 has the same intention. The construction leaves a pure, natural expression, with the organic nature of the bridge allows the structure to gently site itself within Koning Albert Park for pedestrians and cyclists connecting Kanaaleiland banks and the historic city center, following the traditional route of the night watchman’s round. Thus modern architecture serves ancient traditions.

The Large Fountain ‘The Bathing Ladies’ (1985) by De Puydt and Canestraro in the Zand

The selected site for the Concert Hall - one with a turbulent piece of urban history - can be seen to a certain extent undefined. The Zand has existed since the sixteenth century as a large market square just inside the historic city perimeter. Around 1840 it became home to two iterations of the city’s main railway station, which in 1940 was relocated south, just outside the edge of the historical city center. Furthermore, the growth of automobile transport would change the city’s infrastructure needs and lead to the old rail line to be replaced by a major roadway, effectively separating the western end of the city center. From 1978 - 82, following the Structural Plan, the road dividing The Zand was moved underground to a tunnel offering direct access to underground parking, on top of which part of the Concert Hall now stands. As the construction of the tunnel did help alleviate the connection between the eastern and western sides of the square, the interstitial zone between The Zand and the current train station were designed as a public park (Albert I Park) - itself divided by car traffic. The northern and southern edges were left largely open due to the tunnel’s superstructures, resulting in the design of the square failing to define a spatial entity. Regardless, The Zand remains a major public thoroughfare, accommodating various civic functions, such as hosting weekly food markets, annual fairs and music concerts.

The immediate proximity of the historic city center, the presence of an underground car park, the direct link to the city’s ring-road and ease of access from the whole region were the arguments for the correct choice of The Zand. In 1998 a closed architectural competition for the new concert hall would commence, with participation from seven architects around the world. The competition and its outcome generated a lively public response that indicated how closely views on the city’s identity were bound up with appreciations of its architecture (both from the present and the past). After an initial selection round the jury would choose the design of Robbrecht Daem, two Ghent-based architects.

South facade of Concertgebouw facing Koning Albert Park

Bruges / City Diagram (red indicates the Concertgebouw

The architects solution would focus on three keys areas: contextual siting, aesthetic identity and functional force; respecting the linkages between Bruges and Albert Park. As you approach, the building and site seem to overlap and merge, allowing the adjacent park to continue up, into and through the Concertgebouw. Numerous performance spaces are included in the building program in order to accommodate all types of events, which includes the Concert Hall (1289 seats), the Chamber Music Hall (320 seats) and various reception rooms. The small music hall is brought forward toward The Zand and lifted above the ground plane in order to balance the composition of the building’s distinctive shape and introduce a ‘lantern’ tower that is intended to redefine the character of the public square, evoking the image of an Italian campanile, while allowing visitors the ability to see panoramic views of the historic city. It is evident that a clear decision had been made by the designers to establish an articulated southern edge to an ambiguous site, while the bulk of the structure’s mass is removed from the square, dictated by the parking underneath. The southern edge is further defined by the addition of a new bus station with a 280 foot canopy just west of the concert hall.

“People may not know what country Bruges is in, but they know what it’s famous for. So we can start from this historical, cultural expression - and respect that - but let’s not stop with that; let’s not keep the place as a museum.”

— Hugo de Greef, theatre director and advisor for international cultural policy

The building’s mass is imposing with a monolithic and composed sculptural appearance, making no attempt at transparency or lightness. The volume is materialised in a heavy terracotta cloak made from ceramic tiles whose red colour speaks with the city’s roofscape, acting as a piece of drapery reinforced by the scale-like tectonic tiles. When facing the park, the facade peals away, perforated by windows that open onto smaller private spaces behind the skin and enters into an intimate relationship with the surrounding landscape. The Concert Hall has established itself as a building that questions the city’s identity in a historicised context, creating a place that is anchored into the city and makes sense of an undefined site. It offers a place that reestablishes old urban linkages and creates contemporary cultural relationships, allowing visitors to re-examine the city in the present.

Concertgebouw / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Context / Bruges, Belgium

Notably referred to as ‘The Venice of the North’, Bruges has enjoyed a long and successful economic history as a strategic trading center dating back to the 12th century when a natural channel (the Zwin inlet) emerged off the Flemish coast, allowing the medieval city direct access to the North Sea coast. For the following three centuries Bruges’ urban fabric morphed into a cultural condenser, eagerly welcoming foreign merchants as the epicenter for established northern and southern trade routes. The populat ion of Bruges would grow exponentially around this period (doubling the size of London), creating a considerable exchange of influential ideas leading to a surge in artistic and scientific achievement, known for techniques in weaving/spinning, oil-painting, architecture and the printing press (first book printed in English was published by William Caxton in Bruges). However, by the early 1500s, the Zwin channel would begin to silt and the immediate decline in the city’s economic activity would soon follow. Regardless of rapid maritime modernization to the area and a re-establishment of an oceanic connection, by 1900 Bruges had lost three-quarters of its population, with the majority of foreign trading houses moving to neighboring Antwerp. What was left behind was a preserved, but aging medieval city center. Following the city’s incorporation into Belgium from the United Provinces of the Netherlands, a collection of English aristocrats influenced by the city’s historical and cultural significance, founded the Society for History and Antiquities of Bruges and West Flanders that focused on renewed interest in the artistic heritage of Bruges, including the restoration of historic buildings (some resulting in the construction of pure copies of lost historic buildings) following the destruction of both world wars.

Belfry of Bruges on Markt (Market Square)

Around 1880, Belgian writer/poet Georges Rodenbach published “Bruges the Dead”, a novel that would describe the town’s abandonment and alerted a growing tourist enterprise to its preserved architectural charm. That, along with the proximity to the Waterloo battlefield, would influence vast numbers of curious, wealthy visitors, bringing much-needed business into Bruges and sealed its fate as a town frozen in time. Through the last century, with some economic vitality, Bruges has had to grapple with the controversal notion of falseness in the urban fabric and the discrepancy between the city center’s artifical architecture versus the more vibrant reality of the surounding industrious suburbs. Once again the city has been commercially exploited; not as a maritime center that had secured economic and contextural opportunities, but as a well-consolidated tourist phenomenon feeding off historical ambience. However, local discussions began to give voice to a concern that evassive tourism has menaced the city’s true heritage, leading to the introduction of ideas on contemporary architecure and the arrival of the European Capital of Culture.

Vignettes / The Centre Pompidou

“The centre is like a huge spaceship made of glass, steel and coloured tubing that landed unexpectedly in the heart of the Paris, and where it would very quickly set deep roots.”

— Renzo Piano, architect

“The one thing we knew about this age is it’s all about change, if there’s one constant, it’s change ... So we said that we’d make massive floors, which were the size of two football pitches with no vertical interruptions, structure on the outside, mechanical service on the outside, people’s movement on the outside and theoretically you can do anything you want on those floors.”

— Richard Rogers, architect

Birmingham, UK / Global City, Local Heart

On a day trip to the city of Birmingham in England, intent on seeing the Bullring shopping centre and Future Systems' Seifridges building, I had discovered a large construction project underway in Centenary Square - the largest public square in the heart of Birmingham. Interestingly, this urban square hosts, or adjoins, numerous performance halls and cultural institutions of the city: The Repertory Theatre, Symphony Hall, International Convention Centre (ICC), Town Hall, Central Library, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the Baskerville House (Civic Centre). Originally designed in the early 20th century, the city council envisioned this area as a grand civic scheme - an urban territory for grand buildings and significant institutions. Today, Birmingham has grown to the second largest British city outside the capital London, densifying the urban core and expanding its metropolitan limits. The growing city fabric and condension of the city's cultural institutions has created a lack of cohesion and clear identity on Centenary Square, creating a strip-mall of grand buildings with little connection to the surrounding city.

The library as viewed from Centenary Square / August 2011 — The library as viewed from Centenary Square / August 2011

View towards the East of Centenary Square, Symphony Hall

When the Birmingham Central Library decided on relocating due to physical restraints, the original plan was to build a new library in the emerging Eastside district by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, focused on urban linkages and public activity. However, financial concerns and reservations about the location would sink the project. Years later, a new site would emerge on Centenary Square, between the Repertory Theatre and Baskerville House, as the new home for the library. Shrouded in banners proclaiming "Birmingham: Global City, Local Heart", the project is viewed by council leaders as the "the flagship for the regeneration of Birmingham", hoping to highlight the city's intellectual and cultural credentials and draw more visitors to the city. Nearing completion by 2013, the Library of Birmingham will tower over Centenary Square with capacity to accommodate more than three million visitors a year, making the structure Britain's largest public library and a clear sign of the continuing global renaissance in the construction of grand civic building. The architects of the project, Mecanoo, explains that their design, projecting a delicate glass/filigree skin inspired by the artisan tradition of the industrial city, will "transform the square into one with three distinct realms: monumental, cultural and entertainment."

You can checkout a flythrough video of the project design here.

Case Study / The Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is an architectural apparatus, a constantly evolving combination of moving parts throughout history, all having a particular function and parti. Formerly referred to as Covent Garden Theatre, the siting of the project goes back to 1732, but the most crucial component of the project goes back even further. London's Covent Garden was thought to originated as a medieval convent garden belonging to Westminster's abbey of St Peters around 1000AD, but the area may have gone back another 400 years as a Saxon port town outside the walls of post-Roman London. However, the true nature of the site would not come until 1536, when the estate was handed over to John Russell (the first Earl of Bedford), beginning a more commercial view of land development and establishing a landlord/tenant relationship that would last until the 1950s. On the twenty acre site, Russell built a perimeter wall and family home, which would later develop into one of London's first planned suburbs.

Francis Russell, the fourth Earl of Bedford, was committed to developing the London estate for more wealthy tenants, bringing in acclaimed architect Inigo Jones, known for introducing England to Italian Renaissance architecture. Jones would influence the entire site, as his building scheme called for a large open piazza, informed by his knowledge of urban planning in Italy (particularly Livorno's Piazza Grande in Tuscany). The piazza was unadorned and open to the public, with a rebuilt church of St Pauls to the west side, residences with a lower arcade to the north and east, and the wall of Bedford House to the south. Though the building of urban squares became common thereafter in London, most were smaller private squares, while the infusion of this classical device in Covent Garden became a way of life in which the open square developed into a popular public meeting place. Since the estate was not at a convenient distance to any market facilities in London, the Earl of Bedford permitted a small market in the Piazza, against the garden wall of Bedford House, for the residences of Covent Garden to gain access to fresh food and other materials. By 1666, the Great Fire of London would render the city virtually uninhabitable and its traditional markets were destroyed, establishing the market at Covent Garden as an 'official' market space. Almost a hundred years later, the market would occupy much of the Piazza and become the largest fruit and vegetable market in the country and only privately owned market in the London area.

Above:: Plan of Covent Garden estate within the perimeter wall in 1613; Below:: View of Covent Garden Piazza in 1720

Theatre to Covent Garden

Before the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, theatre activity flourished across the Thames in the far-reaching Southwark area, as such activity was viewed as encouragement for bad behavior in the city of London. However, there were some rogue establishments in the city, including a small venue off Drury Lane called the Cockpit, which brought in much business until Parliamentary troops demolished it years later. The Cockpit would become the seed, which eventually would sprout various performance venues in the Covent Garden area up until today. After the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the Crown would grant only two licenses for the erection of a playhouse in London, permitting the production of plays in the city, but with no other licenses issued until 1843. This monopoly would prove beneficial for the two recipients, who both would settle near the area (Theatre Royal and Covent Garden Theatre), making the only two theatres in London permitted to stage plays in Covent Garden. The Covent Garden Theatre would establish a strong foothold in the area with such exclusivity until it was destroyed by fire in 1808. Ironically, by the time of the fire, opera and pantomime became a more fashionable performance, making the rebuilt Theatre, modeled on the Temple of Minerva in Athens, more focused on opera configuration. Almost 50 years later, gas lighting would be the catalyst for destroying the theatre once again, only to be rebuilt to its current iteration eight months later, led by the efforts of architect E.M. Barry. After the fire of 1856, the management of Covent Garden Theatre took the opportunity, when planning the new building, to take a lease on some adjoining land. They asked their architect, E.M. Barry, to design a private flower market that would sit on the entirety of the site, next to the new theatre. Barry would take advantage of the new building techniques using iron and glass, demonstrated in the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition, creating a diverse pair of buildings in entirely opposing building styles. The Floral Hall would eventually be an economic failure for the owners, but it would create the first representative connection between the Opera House and the Covent Garden Market.

Diagram : Various historical iterations of the Covent Garden Theatre (which had burnt down twice in under a century) with emphasis on access and entry sequences.

The Market

By 1751, Covent Garden's Piazza would become completely consumed by trading activity, though permanent shed structures would only occupy the southern side. A century later, the market had grown substantially forcing the Bedford estate to include a permanent market presence in the square to create an impression of order and appease the traders. Charles Fowler would be commissioned for the task, designing a neo-classical market building at the center of the square, substantially what we can see today. Later, the market would face another test with the emergence of industrial activity and the railway, which would be the catalyst for a dramatic population explosion in London. The market's urban seclusion in the narrow streets of Covent Garden would eventually hurt the market with no city plans to create a direct connection to a main rail station, meaning that the greater volume of fruit and vegetables coming in to London by rail had to be loaded to wagons for road transportation, creating major traffic congestion and major access problems. By the end of the 19th century, there was growing criticism of the Bedford Estate's ownership and misuse of the market, as well as raising residential voices criticizing the location of the market bringing in too much traffic and noise. It became an inevitable conclusion that the market would one day have to be relocated outside the central area of London and placed in the hands of another authority, like so many other markets in the area. The estate would eventually sell the property in 1918 to the Covent Garden Estate Company, who had considered removing the church and opera house to accommodate a much larger market space and alleviate trader congestion. However, not much would change until 1973 when the London municipal authorities took on the market and established the Covent Garden Market Authority, which would finally move the market to a site at Nine Elms in south-west London. The shift left an urban void in one of London's prized central areas, a subject of much debate for decades between developers, politicians and community leaders. There would eventually be development plans to raze most of the neighborhood to build a large corporate/commercial element, but economic recessions and public outcry would halt that progress until the 1990s.

“All night long on the great main roads the rumble of the heavy wagons seldom ceases and before daylight the market is crowded. The very unloading of these waggons is in itself a wonder, and the wall-like regularity with which cabbages, cauliflowers, turnips are built up to a neight of some 12ft is nothing short of marvelous.”

— Charles Dickens

View of the congestion from Covent Garden Market in 1968

Current view of pedestrian-friendly Covent Garden Market

Opera House Renovation and Expansion

After the market had moved and much debate about the future of the existing context, the Opera House was deemed worthy of conservation and was never in any real trouble from urban redevelopment, but it would lose a strong connection to the commercial vibrance of the surrounding area. Regardless, the building itself needed a major structural and programmatic overhaul. In 1975, the English government gave land adjacent to the Royal Opera House for a long-overdue modernization, refurbishment, and extension. By 1995, the newly-formed National Lottery provided a controversial financial grant, enabling the company to embark upon a major $360 million reconstruction of the building led by architects Dixon Jones BDP, taking five years between 1996 and 2000. Meanwhile, plans were already underway for the restoration of Fowler's market building to become a 'showpiece' of commercial activity.

Dixon Jones approached the redesign of the Royal Opera House in a spirit of connectivity and access; a building that would be deliberately unmonumental, changing the image of a forbidding 19th century building into a welcoming 21st century arts center, inviting a bigger and broader audience into the complex. The reconfigured opera house would neither be seen as bombastic or a patch-up project, but as a collective grouping or an 'urban village' of buildings radiating from E.M. Barry's neo-classical building fronting Bow Street, connecting with the shops, cafes and street theatre of Covent Garden piazza. The glass-laden Floral Hall, once left to decay as an ornate storage room, became the central artery of the project, turned into a vast public foyer that connects visitors from both the Piazza and Bow Street. Though some critics would compare it to an elaborate shopping mall and news of continuous delays, spiraling costs, resignations and threatened walkouts; the project achieved substantial success. Upon completion, the Covent Garden area achieved a sort of Disney/Times Square rejuvenation, with a home-grown urban metamorphosis driven by 'new media' commercial activity of fashion and food, along with positive connections to anchored institutions (ROH). Ironically, Covent Garden now fulfills many of the discarded intentions of the 1980s planners, but without the disadvantages they had in mind of urban gentrification.

“There was talk....of the Opera House being moved out of town, as happened in Paris. We didn’t want that. The fruit and vegetable market had already gone from Covent Garden and we felt that sooner or later central London would be stripped of the very buildings and attractions that gave it a life worth living.”

— Jeremy Dixon, architect

Exploded Axonometric of the renovated Royal Opera House by Stephen Biesty

View of Royal Opera House from Covent Garden Market

Comparison of the Piazza arcades in the north-eastern corner of the square (1700 v. 2011)

Royal Ballet School

After the successful renovation and rejuvenation of Covent Gardens, the Royal Ballet Upper School chose to make the long awaited relocation to Covent Garden. For more than 60 years, the Royal Ballet has been the resident ballet company at the Royal Opera House and finally, in 2003, the school finished a newly constructed 4-storey studio complex on Floral Street, north of the ROH. Three years later, a foot bridge would be constructed between the school and the Opera Ho

use for the Ballet students, faculty, and staff; creating a direct link from the school's studios to the stage of the opera house. Coined the 'Bridge of Aspiration' by Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the bridge was designed as a connection with a simple, but strong architectural statement—one that would provide an integrated link between the buildings while giving Floral Street a prominent identity. The basic concept of the serpentine construction was to project an effect of movement as a physical link, from both the interior and exterior. A sculptural contortion 50ft above the narrow streets in Covent Garden, the Bridge of Aspiration confronts a series of contextual issues, and is legible both as a fully integrated component of the buildings it links, and as an independent architectural element.

Royal Ballet Upper School's 'Bridge of Aspiration'

The relationship between the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden is a symbiotic one, with two unrelated components existing together in an unbiased environment, but still dependent upon each other. Through multiple historical iterations, ROH has learned to adapt to the pedestrian-friendly environment, while still providing that cornerstone anchor that Covent Garden market depends upon. The design of the renovated Royal Opera House is not so much a one-off cultural monument as a city block, criss-crossed with pedestrian walks and access points, but is not an overwhelming feature even though it is built on the scale of a nuclear power station. Furthermore, the Covent Garden neighborhood is really not an ideal site for any prominent public institution, with unrelenting narrow streets (no public bus routes), lack of connectivity to infrastructure and no visual association, but the Royal Opera House and many other theatres seem to work within the context's strict guidelines. You could argue that both the market area and ROH could not flourish without Covent Garden underground station, bringing in the only direct link from greater-London and a point of reference to the area's meandering attitude. The interesting thing is that the Opera House is where it's always been, in the very heart of London and not set on a cultural desert island.

Diagram: Displays the original Covent Garden site parti in the contemporary urban fabric.

“By the time I entered the competition ... English architects were finally caught up in a discussion of how we might build sensitively in old city centres, how we could be ‘contextual’ and how we might marry architectural history with present-day practice.”

— Jeremy Dixon, architect

Royal Opera House  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Royal Opera House / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / The National Theater

You could say that the marriage of the National Theatre and Southbank London has been a long and rigorous journey. In fact, it had taken over a hundred years for the idea of a subsidized national theatre company to even exist in London, from a proposal by London publisher Effingham Wilson in 1848 to passage of law in 1949 (National Theatre Bill), but to build a theatre expressly planned for the purpose took even longer. To gain interest, the project had been dressed up at different times in the propaganda of imperial grandeur - 'a national shrine in the capital of an empire' - and the rhetoric of social concern - 'a people's theatre'. In the middle of public debates to finance the theatre, the first site was acquired in 1937, located in Kensington by Cromwell Gardens opposite the V&A Museum, ready for construction until the beginning of the Second World War indefinitely delayed the project. In 1942, the London County Council (LCC) negotiated an agreement whereby the Kensington site is exchanged for a new site on the war-devastated industrial land on the South Bank along the River Thames, designated as one of the country’s first comprehensive postwar redevelopment areas designed by architect Charles Holden. The scheme would later receive little attention, as it was almost immediately superseded by plans to develop the area as the site of the Festival of Britain.

“Do the English people want a national theater? Of course they do not. They never want anything. They got the British Museum, the National Gallery, and Westminster Abbey, but they never wanted them. But once these things stood as mysterious phenomena that had come to them, they were quite proud of them, and felt that the place would be incomplete without them.”

— Bernard Shaw (playwright, served on London County Council)

Views of post-war Waterloo Bridge and South End sites

Map showing bomb-damaged buildings following the Second World War. (Red circle indicates future site of National Theatre) Images from London Metropolitan Archives. — Map showing bomb-damaged buildings following the Second World War. (Red circle indicates future site of National Theatre) Images from London Metropolitan Archives.

Festival of Britain

Conceived as a national exhibition to celebrate Britain’s post-war rejuvenation, the Festival of Britain was the brainchild of British newspaper editor Gerald Barry, referring to it as ‘tonic for the nation’. The layout of the South Bank site, overseen by appointed architect Hugh Casson, was intended to showcase the principles of urban planning that would feature better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities following the war. Predominately, this included buildings in the International Modernist style, with asymmetrical levels of buildings, elevated walkways, expulsion of ornament and avoidance of a street grid. The resulting construction effort of the South Bank site opened up a new public space in the city, including a riverside walkway, where there previously had been industrial warehouses. Opened in 1951, the project seemed to be a success, attracting around 8 million visitors in a five-month period, however there had been some opposition to the project from those who believed that the money would have been better spent on housing. After the Festival’s opening, National Theatre’s proposed new building planned to join the grounds with a foundation stone laid on a site next to Festival Hall; however, by next year it was determined that the theater should occupy a better site and all the festival grounds, excluding the Royal Festival Hall, would later be destroyed by the incoming Churchill government, which believed the Festival’s style too 'socialist'.

Current view of Southbank Centre's River Walk (former site of Festival)

NTOP (National Theatre and Opera House)

While still looking for a permanent home, the National Theatre company negotiated a deal with the Governors of the Old Vic theatre in 1962 to establish a temporary home for operations. By the next year, one of Britain’s leading Modernist architects, Denys Lasdun, was chosen to design the new theater on another South Bank site, just upstream from the Royal Festival grounds, between Hungerford and Westminster Bridges on Jubilee Gardens. Of interviewing Lasdun for the job, Lord Cottesloe, the Chairman of the Arts Council and the South Bank Board, wrote “the committee was particularly impressed when he said he knew nothing about designing theatres and would have to sit down and learn what was needed from our committee.” While focused on client discussions and program experimentation, Lasdun brought his own idea of the ‘urban landscape’ from previous experiences that had fused civic architecture with the public realm, encapsulating his vision of a theatrical space.

When design work commenced, a new National Opera House program was introduced on behalf of the client, and it was agreed they should stand together on a site next to the Thames in front of the recently constructed Shell Tower. Using the new high-profile project as a distillation of Lasdun’s notion of public architecture, he believed rather than being treated as individual objects, the National Theatre and National Opera House (NTOP) should blend together as a continuous horizontal range of urban landscape terraces or ‘strata’, creating a grand metropolitan composition that was conceived on the scale and function of the immediate context (Chamber’s Somerset House, etc.) and promoted human relationships. By creating a rhythmic construction of artificial hills and valleys, it opened up the entire length of the South Bank for public use, while experiencing the magnificent views of both the Thames river and surrounding city. Despite a widespread favorable reception to the design in 1966, the opera house was dropped from the new building scheme on the grounds of budgetary concerns. (the Sadler's Wells Company, due to be housed there, eventually moved to the Coliseum in Trafalgar Square to become the English National Opera). The resulting amputated building would be dwarfed in size by the Shell Tower and surrounding site, unacceptable to Lasdun and the client.

“A horizontal plane or series of horizontal planes is the first essential in any system of formal arrangement intended to embrace the activities of organized or collective life”

— Le Corbusier

Proposal by Denys Lasdun for the National Theatre and Opera House in front of Shell Tower

Waterloo Bridge Site

The situation was quickly redeemed at the beginning of 1967 when a new riverside site, just east of Waterloo Bridge (referred to as Prince’s Meadow), was offered by the Greater London Council. The new site would suit the scale of the new smaller project and Lasdun would carry over his design methodologies from the original proposal, but the new site required new responses, and it presented some difficulties. Among them were the problems of access and orientation. Here the presence of a new object proved decisive: Waterloo Bridge. This was the most prominent feature close to the site and was the link back to the West End and Greater London. Lasdun took advantage of this urban connection and christened it the 'umbilical chord' as if the life of the Theatre depended on it. Not only would Waterloo bridge’s elevated street manifest into a physical connection to one of the theatre’s ‘urban terraces’, establishing a direct pedestrian path of entry, but it also constituted a boundary to define a public courtyard and entry on the ground floor, orienting the project’s axis toward the bridge at a 45 degree angle. With that, the logic of internal functions and external access would remain the same as the NTOP, with production areas to the rear, foyers facing the water for view and auditorium for assembly in between. The focus on Lasdun’s stratification of foyers along the waterfront would prove beneficial not just for views, but for emphasizing a strong linear public passage along the river, composing a walkable boulevard that the Festival of Britain complex once championed along the Thames.

From the moment that he had been offered the site, Lasdun had been immediately impressed by the relationship to the city’s viewscape. Even though the new site was only about a mile up the river, it had a more natural relationship to significant urban conditions, such as St. Paul's Cathedral to the east, Somerset House across the river and Waterloo Bridge, connecting the West End theatre district. Lasdun referred to these perspective relationships as ‘the triangle’, influencing a triangular geometry felt in every facet and angle of the National Theatre. The idea of view was a crucial site component in connecting to nature and urban context, making the aesthetically-dominate horizontal levels such a significant component to the theatre design, as vertical obstruction was kept to a minimum. Urbanistically, the bands are seen as hovering landscapes set aside for the rituals of public life, opening out its contents to the passerby. They extend into the context as they flow down towards the river, connect with Waterloo Bridge or with the upper levels of Southbank Centre, to welcome those who wish to enter the site. The Theatre’s ‘strata’ becomes public property in the full-sense, with the city as a living scene in the background.

“.... The National Theatre must be its own advertisement - must impose itself on public notice, not by posters and column advertisements in the newspaper, but by he very fact of its ample, dignified and liberal existence. It must bulk large in the social and intellectual life of London. It must not even have the air of appealing to a specially literary and cultured class. It must appeal to the whole community.”

— Harley Granville- Barker, ‘A National Theatre’

View of National Theatre after completion in 1977

Theatre Upgrade

Recently, after over 30 years of operation, the National Theatre began investigating opportunities to subtly transform and extend the building’s relationship with its site. The priorities were three-fold: expand participation and education activities, explore ways in which the building could respond to the dramatically changing environment of the South Bank neighborhood, and to develop a more environmentlly sustainable solution for the project. The conservation management plan, led by Haworth Tompkins Architects (also responsible for the recent Young Vic refurbishment), is an incremental process, broken down into different phases to allow for continued building operation. Currently scheduled to begin next year, the plan will look at various problematic areas throughout the building, including the riverfront north façade and rear connection on the south façade, both with great need for improvement. Currently, a small service yard lot (a remnant of Lasdun’s original entry-driveway design) disconnects the highly-active pedestrian waterfront from the theatre; while on the other end, due to Lasdun’s focus on the waterfront and the programmatic needs of theatre’s production spaces, the southern face of the building is without a public connection. The proposed plan calls for the existing service yard to be transformed into a new cafe and bar, with the existing bookshop to be relocated to the south of the site, providing transparency to the river walk and a clearer entrance sequence to the foyers, opening up the north-east corner of the theatre. Along with receiving the bookshop, the southern part of the site will receive a new glass-fronted production section, giving passers-by views of scenery construction and a programmatic connection toward the Southbank community. Other plans include: a new education centre to welcome 50,000 more people, the creation of a public roof garden beside the Lyttleton fly tower, and the refurbishment of Cottesloe theatre. When completed, the renovations should help improve the building's public connection, open its interior, provide facilities for new operations and radically improve its environmental performance.

Service yard on north section of the theatre, disrupting pedestrian flow along the Southbank river walk.

Proposal by Haworth Tompkins architects for the existing service yard to be transformed into a new cafe and bar, allowing transparency and access to the theatre's northern elevation.

Proposal by Haworth Tompkins architects to create a public roof garden beside the Lyttleton fly tower

Doon Street Development

The Doon Street site (South of the National Theatre) has remained largely untouched as a brownfield/temporary car park for over 50 years. Currently, a partnership between Coin Street Community Builders and Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands Architects are proposing a controversial new mixed-use development that will potentially introduce numerous new programmatic elements to London’s South Bank and neighboring National Theatre, including an indoor public swimming pool/leisure center, ground floor retail facilities, residential tower, education/office space, and a new headquarters for Rambert Dance Company. Contextually, the new development would seek to improve accessibility and connections to the various pedestrian routes that converge around the site including Waterloo Bridge, the ‘Bullring’, Southbank Centre and the River Walk. Along with provide the community swimming pool and indoor leisure facilities residents have long desired, plus studios for the Rambert Dance Company, one of Britain’s leading contemporary dance companies. However, to make the project stack up economically and subsidise the costs of the public swimming pool - a notoriously expensive enterprise, the scheme will have to incorporate office space and private apartments in a 43-story tower, which has made the project a very controversial topic in the city and continues to remain in limbo.

Rendering of North Elevation, with the proposed residential tower growing between the National Theatre and IBM Building (also designed by Lasdun), a reminder of the original scheme for the NTOP. (Image provided by Coin Street Community Builders)

View of Doon Street Development (before/after) and its affect on the National Theatre's southern elevation.

When visiting the site - at first glance - it was predictable how the exposed concrete structure would be judged by many passersby, with comparisons to bunkers and car parks, and grumbles about public spending and institutionalized culture. Most notoriously, Prince Charles described the building in 1988 as "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting". Even hearing passing tour guides refer to it as “one of London’s ugliest buildings” was not too shocking, maybe even plausibly right. However, that is a pure aesthetic judgment, but does not justify the theatre’s current success, both economically and urbanistically. In fact, its success constitutes a virtual demonstration of Lasdun’s urban landscape philosophy; a building as a microcosm of the city with strong contextual connections that evokes a sense of time, place and people engaged in creating space and form. These powerful forms generate a recurring theme since antiquity, by reiterating a link between scenography and urbanism, city and platforms with stages and auditoria. The shared ground creates an energetic voice, but the connections to the urban composition – both visually and physically – feed that energy, giving the project a timeless relevance.

Site Diagram  /  Displaying what Lasdun referred to as 'the triangle' - the Theatre's response to other points of monumental intensity in the cityscape. Also reveals previous proposed sites for the National Theatre within th… — Site Diagram / Displaying what Lasdun referred to as 'the triangle' - the Theatre's response to other points of monumental intensity in the cityscape. Also reveals previous proposed sites for the National Theatre within the old grounds of the Festival of Britain (Blue Region).

“One of the fascinating things about the National Theatre is the way it demonstrates how a public building can be designed as a setting for numbers of people; it’s deliberately been made incomplete without people ... I know of no other theatre where the audience are given such a sense of being actors contributing to a festive occasion.”

— J.M. Richards, architecture critic

National Theatre  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — National Theatre / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Case Study / Tate Modern

Bankside. For centuries, this area south of the Thames River had been synonymous with industry, entertainment (Rose and Globe theaters) and a brimming population living in poor conditions. Yet, once the theaters left and harbor activity moved east of the city, this once bustling district laid dormant. Years after the Great War, new infrastructure was needed and a baffling decision was made to build an oil-fired power station directly opposite St Paul's Cathedral, typical of the casual urbanism you would not find in many European countries except Britain. The outcome was a simply detailed functional brick shed, coined the 'cathedral of pure energy' by architect Giles Gilbert Scott to draw comparison to London's famous cathedral. Towering over the Thames, staring down the city of London, the power station soon became one of the city's most emblematic structures, active for more than thirty years until rising oil prices led it to shutdown in 1981, leaving the perceptible building vacant and slowly decaying. Bankside's urban fabric needed a new catalyst.

Coinciding with the power station shutdown, the Tate Gallery was working with architect James Stirling on a new master plan focusing on expansion of the overburdened facilities around their Millbank location. Following review of the proposal, the Tate trustees agreed the current site would not provide sufficient new exhibition space for present and anticipated needs of the gallery, concluding that a second site in London would have to be found. Luckily, Bankside had some available property. As Tate Trustee, Michael Craig-Martin explains, "The new site (the old power station) answered all the criteria governing the search: an unparalleled large-scale central London location, excellent transport facilities, the possibility of a riverboat connection with the gallery at Millbank, and immediate availability for development". An open international competition proceeded, particularly questioning how to deal with the existing building and it's position in the urban context. Nearly 150 architects entered the competition, but the eventual architect (H&dM) would have the only proposal that completely accepted the existing building - it's form, it's materials and it's industrial characteristics. By re-using the existing power station, the architects argued that the Tate was free from the need to create the memorable, signature form that is deemed essential in contemporary cultural design. They simply borrow it from the old building - with adaptations - and concentrate on the qualities and connections of public spaces.

Millennium Bridge and St Pauls Cathedral

Completed in 2000, the $208 million dollar project was the first new national museum built within Britain in the last hundred years and the first in London devoted solely to modern art. Tate Modern would be the cornerstone to an urban regeneration strategy, created by the Southwark Council, aimed at improving the accessibility of the area and its immediate environment as well as pulling investment into the area. Developments, such as the Bankside Pier (with ferry service) and Bankside Riverwalk manifested the area into an accessibility nexus, the center of a linear sweep along the Thames connecting destinations East (Tower Bridge, Tower of London) and West (South Bank, Westminster) of the site. Perhaps the most important connection would come months later, as the highly publicized Millennium Bridge (the first new central London river crossing in over a hundred years) opened, physically bringing together ideas of old and new, north and south, art and commerce, and the two visual landmarks of St. Paul's Cathedral in the city and Bankside's Tate Modern. Two days later, the steel suspension structure would shut down due to instability caused by heavy pedestrian traffic and not reopen for another year and a half.

Entry to Turbine Hall from the West, slipping below the building

Regardless of the bad news, Tate Modern surpassed expectations with more than five million visitors in the first year, making it one of the most visited modern art galleries in the world (note: museum offers free admission) and one of London's top destinations, basically overnight. However, a year later, attendance numbers would begin to slump after the initial first-year rush by 32%, despite popularity of the big-name temporary exhibits. A Tate spokeswoman would say the figures from 2002 signaled a "natural leveling-off", but it's coincidental those numbers coincided with the bridge closure, showing the significance of this crucial connection. After the bridge was reopened, visitor numbers would rebound to the current high levels the museum enjoys today. The key component in the project's success has been the potential of the redundant Turbine Hall itself, transformed into a covered street, like a city square, within the museum. I hesitate to use the phrase 'public space' to describe such a programmatic force, as it still is governed by Tate's rules and regulations. However, it is still an uniquely important urban space, drawing visitors in with the idea of an accessible place of refuge that can change character according to the time of day, the quality of light and the number of visitors. It's appeal is it's welcoming nature and easy access, offering the community a place for congregation and performance, including the popular Unilever Series, an annual commission to make interactive art specifically for the Turbine Hall. However, although hugely popular within the community, some critics would have reservations with the Turbine Hall embodying a place of art and performance:

“You feel very small in the face of the magnitude of this cathedral. It sends messages for miles: This is important, this is a sacred place, everything here is sacred. Things that are sacred aren’t questioned, and that’s the problem.”

— Jake Chapman, artist

Like all great modern successes, there is always a bigger, bolder sequel on the horizon. With a rocky world economy and ongoing government cutbacks in arts financing, the Tate Modern is ready to grow. What was once part of the museum's original plan in 2000, the extension realizes the further potential of the site and of the existing building itself. New plans (coined the Tate Modern Project) are being developed to take over the subterranean oil tanks of the former power station from which the new building will rise to the south of the Turbine Hall, as EDF Energy (operators of the electric substation) completed work to modernize the station's equipment, allowing them to use a smaller amount of space in the building and freeing up vital space for Tate Modern to expand. Breaking ground this past Spring, the 11-story addition will create new gallery and social spaces to relieve the overcrowded existing building and respond to the changing nature of art, with facilities for new media and raw spaces where special installations by artists and performances will take place. The proposal, putting all of the new development south of the original building, begins to structure a duality, defining the boundary of Tate's public center. To the north, the articulation of the landscape is much more expansive and public, with vast views of the city and river edge, occupied by movement of thousands of people from the bridge, ferry and riverwalk. To the south, a new development aimed at developing a dramatic change in scale and character, creating an 'external room' with a natural canopy and smaller, humanistic spaces to be shared between the surrounding local community.

“It is a cultural landmark and global icon and I’m delighted to support its much-needed expansion. Not only will it add to the excitement around the 2012 Games, it will extend the potential benefits of this great temple of art even further south into the Bankside area.”

— Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

New Commercial Development and Pedestrian Access South of Tate Modern

With the redeployment of the power station as a modern museum and an eagerly-awaited significant addition, along with developing vital connections along and across the Thames, Bankside's office and residential developments have begun to transform, as evidence in the improvements to both the public and private developments immediately South of Tate Modern that have successfully considered architect Richard Roger's urban study schemes for the area. However, a broader plan was needed to determine a smart-growth strategy for the entire Bankside Triangle area. Commissioned by 'Better Bankside' in collaboration with other broad groups in the area, architects Witherford Watson Mann developed Bankside Urban Forest, a coordinated urban design framework consisting of an evolutionary and fragmentary process that resists over-inscription of public space and focuses on investment in pocket parks, cultivating good relations with small businesses, changing the balance between vehicles and pedestrians, bringing scale and humanity to harsh areas, and offering continuing discoveries in it's street patterns. Inspired by the strengths of Bankside's labyrinthine set of streets and built structures, the idea of 'Forest Space' has always had an association with a sense of freedom and permeability, a place that can be entered and exited at any point, offering a diverse set of paths and activities. Considered as 'clearing' in the forest, Tate Modern was the ideal location to plant the first seeds of the forest, already projecting influence on the planning of the new southern addition and surrounding area.

““It shows that among the botched public works, overruns and administrative failures, things can be made on time, to cost, and can be popular without being crass””

— Andrew Marr, BBC News reporter

Tate Modern Museum  /  Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement — Tate Modern Museum / Site analysis of access, circulation, new development, and points of social engagement

Transformation of urban districts - from industry to culture - is a commonality in today’s city redevelopment strategies. However, Tate’s successful development and appeal has come from accepting past contextual assignments inherent in the Tate’s projection, appealing not to the eternity of the Ages, but to the continually shifting present. The architects and planners took the old power station site, recalling the fate of the grimy industrial area and - instead of throwing it away - enhanced crucial urban connectivity, embracing it as a past projection onto a modern city, organizing a region with meandering streets, clusters of diverse spaces, and overlapping development patterns. Now, with a proposed addition underway and focus on Urban Forest’s micro-development strategies, a new direct North/South route will develop from crossing the Millennium Bridge, through the Turbine Hall, and into the heart of Southwark. This improvement will assist in creating a spine of human experiences and connectivity – helping to link the South Bank region and the city beyond, providing a catalyst for the further regeneration of the entire area.

Case Study / London

Three Projects :: Tate Modern, National Theatre, and the Royal Opera House

In a city over-saturated with noteworthy cultural institutions and theatrical palaces, three organizations stand above the rest in terms of national prominence and cultural significance; each representing a different time and medium of performance. Although not identical in action and form, these groups separately manifested and evolved into an edifice that symbolize a city that is world renown for cultural performances, making major contributions to the urban psyche of an area with unprecedented historical value, each growing out of the time, place and culture in which it was conceived. Research will look at numerous aspects of each projects including: historical conception and contextual development, urban access, architectural relationships, cultural activity, and proposed future modifications.

The Serpentine Pavilion / Peter Zumthor

The 2011 Serpentine Gallery`s Pavilion in Hyde Park is the 11th installment in the Gallery's annual summer series, seen as one of the world's most ambitious architectural programs of its kind, even with some concern, as it relies on established architects/designers as an invitation-only commission. The Serpentine's Pavilion, conceived in 2000 by Gallery Director Julia Peyton-Jones, is sited on the Gallery's lawn for three months and the immediacy of the commission - a maximum of six months from invitation to completion - provides a unique model worldwide. This years installation was designed by Pritzker Prize award-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, which will be the architect's first completed building in the UK and includes a specially created garden by the influential Dutch designer Piet Oudolf (High Line, Millennium Park, among others). Zumthor's Serpentine Pavilion will operate as a public space and as a venue for Park Nights, the Gallery's program of public talks and events. Park Nights will culminate in the annual Serpentine Gallery Marathon in October.

The concept of this year's pavilion is the Hortus Conclusus, a Latin term literally meaning 'enclosed garden', or as Zumthor puts it, "a contemplative room, a garden within a garden". The building's design acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise, traffic and smells of London.

With this Pavilion, as with previous structures such as the famous Thermal Baths (Vals, Switzerland) or the Bruder Klaus Chapel (Mechernich, Germany), Zumthor has emphasised the role the senses and emotions play in the architectural experience, from the precise yet simple composition and presence of the materials, to the handling of scale and the effect of light, creating contemplative spaces that evoke a spiritual dimension of our physical environment. The construction is made of a lightweight timber frame wrapped with scrim and coated with Idenden. Exterior and interior walls have staggered doorways that offer multiple paths for visitors to follow, gently guiding them to a central inner garden, the heart and focus of the intervention. The covered walkways and seating surrounding this central space create a serene, contemplative environment from which visitors look onto the richly planted sunlit garden with a patch of sky gloriously framed like a giant oil painting above your head.

In creating the central garden, Piet Oudolf emphasized the natural architecture of plants, using expressive drifts of grasses and herbaceous perennials to create gardens that evolve in form throughout the lives of the plants. These are chosen for their structure, form, texture and color, showcasing many different varieties in his compositions. He has pioneered an approach to gardening that embraces the full life-cycle of plants. He states, "My work aims to bring nature back into human surroundings and this pavilion provides the opportunity for people to reflect and relax in a contemplative garden away from the busy metropolis".

“A garden is the most intimate landscape ensemble I know of. It is close to us. There we cultivate the plants we need. A garden requires care and protection. And so we encircle it, we defend it and fend for it. We give it shelter. The garden turns into a place.”

— Peter Zumthor

V&A / Architecture Gallery

When traveling, there is always a place or event that far exceeds expectations and makes a trip far more noteworthy. Overshadowed by so many other museums and attractions in the culturally-packed city, V&A is that place. The Victoria and Albert Museum (named after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, abbreviated as the V&A), located in the London borough of Kensington, is said to be the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects in 145 galleries. Founded in 1852, its collection spans 5,000 years of design, from the cultures of Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The holdings of ceramics, glass, textiles, costumes, silver, ironwork, jewellery, furniture, medieval objects, sculpture, prints and printmaking, drawings and photographs are among the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

The Architecture gallery in the V&A Museum is especially important (well, maybe just to me) because it is the UK's only permanent Architecture gallery, including a major partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The gallery is divided on three principles: moments of conception, idea of function and use, and exploration into style and aesthetics. What makes this gallery so unique to me is the focus on process and 'conception' in architecture, which display those early stages of development that are so crucial and unique in the design practice. The gallery includes process sketches and drawings accessed through pullout drawers, plus accompanied study models, along with their finalized counterparts, to numerous significant projects in the last few centuries. You can see a video of the Curator of Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Abraham Thomas, discuss the Architecture gallery here.

The partnership with RIBA allows the gallery to produce temporary exhibits that deal with contemporary culture and ideas in London and throughout the world, along with lectures and conversations with current leading scholars and designers. What caught my eye was a symposium held at the V&A Museum in 2009, entitled "Sustaining Identity: Symposium II", which focused on the resistance to the icon and incorporation of local identity in architectural design. A review of the symposium was published in the V&A Online Journal (Issue no.3, spring 2011), entitled "Not quite Vegemite: An architectural resistance to the icon" by Ian Tocher.

“Is there an architecture of resistance that stands in the face of commercial globalisation: that rejects the iconic image; that celebrates the spirit of individual place?”

— Ian Tocher

The event was centered around what cultural organization UNESCO coined as ‘whole life sustainability', or architecture to ‘incorporate local identity into the design process'. UNESCO argues that the idea of sustainable architecture should be widened to include the way a building relates to its social, cultural and geographic situation. Major architects from around the world - the USA, Chile, South Africa, Australia, Finland, the UK, Spain, India - provided case studies of architecture that related to their local contexts. The key-note speaker, Finish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, criticized much of today’s architecture as ‘mere representation' with no substance to relate to the local context.

This symposium seems to have addressed an important issue in contemporary architecture, but a clear definition of what exactly 'sustaining identities' means in architectural practice is still far from clear. Tocher states, "It was noticeable that while many speakers criticised the proliferation of computer-designed, so-called ‘iconic’ buildings throughout the world, plonked down in our cities without any thought to their context, no-one seemed prepared to give any specific examples. Sean Godsell made a useful point - anything has got the potential to become iconic – he gave the example of the Australian savoury spread, Vegemite – but, he argued, architects should not deliberately set out to create an icon, that will only lead to stupid buildings".

“Today’s fashionable architecture seeks to seduce our eye but it rarely contributes to the integrity and meaning of its setting”

— Juhani Pallasmaa

CCTV / Surveillance for All

One of the common stories throughout London is the massive extent the city relies on surveillance equipment on a daily basis. Walking around the city, you do notice a larger than usual amount of video cameras watching silently from so many London street corners. The common statistic that gets thrown around in many discussions is a quote from The Sunday Times from almost two years ago and is referred “to the results of a study by the Government's privacy watchdog” (the Office of the Information Commissioner), which “found that a single person can be caught on a national network of 4.2 million CCTV cameras an average 300 times a day”. This statistic has been praised by activists in the campaign against surveillance and what they see as the erosion of liberty. But this seems like a highly dubious estimate, based on a count on two London streets nearly a decade ago. There are no official statistics on the numbers of cameras operated by homeowners and shopkeepers, cameras the 4.2 million figure purports to include. All that can be known with any degree of certainty is the number of cameras used by the 428 local borough authorities throughout the country, which operates nearly 60,000 cameras in 2009. In addition to those cameras, the observation centers of many boroughs also monitor the footage of cameras owned by private citizens, who pay the boroughs a fee for the monitoring service.

The only thing that is known is that video surveillance is widely accepted in Britain, viewed as a fact of life rather than an Orwellian intrusion. Britain has enthusiastically embraced video surveillance over the last two decades in an effort to reduce crime. It has approved more cameras per capita than any other European country and is widely reported to have the most of any country in the world, though that comparison is not based on reliable data. After the riots that tore through the UK weeks ago, CCTV showed its power to capture public unrest, but will be tested to bring prosecution to an unprecedented percentage of rioters. Arrests resulting from the CCTV footage were applauded by many Britons, but the cost of each arrest is high. Big Brother Watch estimates that the more than 600 million pounds spent on installing and operating CCTV cameras between 1996 and 2010 could have paid the salaries of some 4,500 extra cops per year. Boots on the street could have been more effective than cameras in staunching the violence of the last few weeks before it had spun out of control. Plus, according to an internal Metropolitan Police report, less than 1 crime was solved per year for every 1000 CCTV cameras in London.

As stated earlier, the exact number of CCTV cameras in the UK is not known for certain because there is no requirement to register CCTV cameras. However, research published in CCTV Image magazine estimates that the number of cameras in the UK is 1.85 million. This works out as an average of one camera for every 32 people in the UK, although the density of cameras varies from place to place to such a degree as to make this figure almost meaningless. The report also claims that the average person on a typical day would be seen by 70 CCTV cameras, although many of these sightings would be brief glimpses from cameras in shops. The City of London, the central business district, has the highest rate per resident, at 86.2 cameras per person, but it is not technically a borough, and the ratio is distorted because so few people live there. Of the residential districts in Greater London, the borough of Wandsworth has the highest number of cameras per person, with just under four cameras per 1,000 people. Its total number of cameras (1,113) is more than the police departments of Boston, Johannesburg and Dublin City Council COMBINED. One of the most dramatic revelations is that both the Shetland Islands Council and Corby Borough Council - among the smallest local authorities in the UK - have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department. False sense of security or crime fighters?

London / Preparing for the 2012 Olympics

The 500 acre Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford (July 2011)

In 2005, the International Olympic Committee decided that London will serve as the host city for the Games of the XXX Olympiad, the Summer Olympic Games of 2012, defeating proposals from Moscow, New York City, Madrid and Paris after four rounds of voting. The successful bid, which focused on sustainability and reuse, was headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe. This will make London the first city to hold the modern Olympic Games three times, having hosted the games previously in 1908 and 1948. The Olympic win prompted a redevelopment of many of the areas of London in which the games are to be held (the vast majority of events will be held in a regenerated area in East London), while the budgetary considerations have generated some criticism.

The 2012 Olympic Games will use a mixture of new venues, existing and historic facilities, and temporary facilities, some of them in well-known locations such as Hyde Park and Horse Guards Parade. In the wake of the problems that plagued the Millennium Dome, the organisers' intention is that there will be no problems after the Games and instead that a "2012 legacy" will be delivered. Some of the new facilities will be reused in their Olympic form, while others, including the 80,000 seat main stadium, will be reduced in size or relocated elsewhere in the UK. The plans are part of the regeneration of Stratford in east London which will be the site of the Olympic Park, and of the neighbouring Lower Lea Valley.

The Olympic Zone will encompass all of the facilities within the 500 acre Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. This park is being developed on existing waste and industrial land and will be an estimated seven minutes by the new Olympic Javelin train from central London. This new development in Eastern London has required the compulsory purchase of some business properties, which are being demolished to make way for Olympic venues and infrastructure improvements. This has caused some controversy, with some of the affected proprietors claiming that the compensation offered is inadequate. In addition, concerns about the development's potential impact on the future of the century-old Manor Garden Allotments have inspired a community campaign, and the demolition of the Clays Lane housing estate was opposed by tenants, as is that of Carpenters Estate.

As many are unaware, the costs of hosting the Games are separate from those for building the venues and infrastructure, and redeveloping the land for the Olympic Park. While the Games are privately funded, the venues and Park costs are met largely by public money. In Spring of 2007, the government announced to thea budget of £5.3 billion ($8.7 billion) to cover building the venues and infrastructure for the Games. On top of this, various other costs including an overall additional contingency fund of £2.7 billion, security and policing costs of £600 million, VAT of £800 million and elite sport and Paralympic funding of nearly £400 million. According to these figures, the total for the Games and the regeneration of the East London area, is £9.345 billion ($15.3 billion). The costs for staging the Games are funded from the private sector by a combination of sponsorship, merchandising, ticketing and broadcast rights. This budget is raised and managed by the London 2012 Organising Committee. According to Games organisers.

Alternative Transportation / Barclays Cycle Hire

One of the common sights you see throughout the city of London are the frequent use of rental bikes with blue logos. These bikes, referred to as Barclays Cycle Hire, are part of a program that is a public bicycle sharing scheme, launched in 2010 within Greater London. The scheme's bicycles are informally referred to as Boris bikes, after Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. The cycle hire opened operations in July 2010 with 5,000 bicycles and 315 docking stations distributed across the City of London and parts of eight London boroughs, with a coverage zone spanning approximately 17 square miles. Currently, there are some 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations throughout the city in the BCH scheme, which has been used for more than 4 million journeys to date and has drastically changed the way Londeners move around the city.

Initially, BCH required initial payment of registration and membership fees to be paid in exchange for an electronic access key, but in December 2010 this was changed to allow casual cycle hires by non-members who have a valid credit card. The project is expected to cost the city £140 million ($231 million) for planning and implementation over six years, and is hoped to be the only Transport for London system to fully fund its annual cost of operation, a goal originally estimated to take two to three years. As you can see, the scheme is sponsored by Barclays bank, which is contributing £25 million (18% of the scheme's total cost) over five years to the project's funding, along with launching a free mobile app called Barclays Bikes. All the bikes and the docking stations are built in Canada and are based on the Bixi cycle rental system that operates in Montreal.

Like most successful projects, credit for developing and enacting the Barclays bicycle share scheme has been a source of controversy. London mayor Boris Johnson claimed credits for the plan, although the initial concept was announced by Johnson's predecessor Ken Livingstone, during the latter's term in office. Johnson has said that he "hoped the bikes would become as common as black cabs and red buses in the capital". Recently, more criticism made some news, as Johnson decided to extend Barclays' sponsorship of London's bike hire scheme without fresh corporate competition. The mayor announced that Barclays would sponsor the bikes for a further three years up to 2018. But some are questioning whether the bank is paying enough and says the sponsorship should be put out to a new competitive tender process in 2015 as originally planned. Added in the new deal was sponsorship of a new cycle superhighway (a costly project that will connect outer boroughs of London) and a guaranteed expansion of the scheme to East london in time for the Olympics. Barclays bank will contribute another £25 million for the deal.

Context / London, England

Aerial of London - toward Westminster — Aerial of London - toward Westminster

Alongside New York and Tokyo, the city of London is a multifaceted global entity, producing one of the world's most influential financial and cultural centers, while commanding governmental decisions as the capital city and largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom. With an official population of around 8 million (14 million in metropolitan area) and hosting the most international visitors of any city in the world, Greater London is considered the largest city in Western Europe and the European Union, making it crowded, vibrant and truly a multicultural city.

While visiting the city, someone had described to me that London was a giant anthill, which I thought was fairly sarcastic, but would later find to be somewhat true. At first glance, the city is not 'tall' by any means compared to other large metropolitan cities, but given the population and infrastructure in the area, it is a very dense and diverse city in terms of living and working in the city. With that, you add the foundation of the urban fabric based on a system setup centuries ago with no grid in sight, the streets become winding and cramped throughout the region, almost giving a claustrophobic feeling in some areas. Finally, the amount of urban strata throughout the more than a millennia of the city's existence, layering and combining the past with the present (including a whole city of tunnels underneath the surface), creates an interesting hybridization of urban development. Add to that, the incredible amount of commuter and visitor population (6 million) with the immediate city population all swarming and navigating throughout the urban framework in shoes, cars, buses or trains. London can be described as an urban ant farm.

History

Located on the River Thames in Southeast England for more than two millennia, London's long history goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire, originally referring to it as Londinium. After the battle of Hastings in 1066, William the conqueror ordered the construction of the White Tower (core of today's Tower of London) and the city's urban sprawl radiated from that point. With this foundation and geographic location, London prospered and increased in global importance throughout the medieval period, surviving devastating challenges like the plagues and the 1666 Great Fire. By 1720 London had 750,000 inhabitants and was the centre of a growing world empire, and it only continued to flourish during the Victorian era of the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution. By the time WWII had began, the population of London had reached around 4 million.

Ruined Roman Wall in London`s Financial District

During World War II, London, as many other British cities, suffered severe damage, being bombed extensively by the Luftwaffe as a part of The Blitz. Using large landmarks, like St. Paul's Cathedral as location devices, German pilots navigated numerous raids, unloading tons of high explosive all over the city. The city suffered severe damage with tens of thousands of buildings destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by war's end. At the end of the war in 1945 planners and politicians eagerly seized the opportunity to reconstruct and modernize London as a city which provided decent standards of living for all, even to demolish buildings that were not deemed unsafe. During the 1950s and 1960s the skyline of London altered dramatically as tower blocks were erected throughout the city, although these later proved unpopular. In a bid to reduce the number of people living in overcrowded housing, a policy was introduced of encouraging people to move into newly built towns surrounding London.

Orientation

The M25 circular motorway encompasses the area broadly regarded as Greater London. Cutting the circle in two is the city's main geographical feature - the River Thames. Within the center of the circle contains a two-centre city, Westminster and The City (historic London). East of Westminster, The City is the capital's financial district, covering roughly the square mile of the original settlement bordered by the ruined roman city walls, with St. Paul's Cathedral at the center. The areas east of the City are collectively known as the East End (home of the new Olympics). The West End, on the city's other flank, is effectively the centre of London currently, and where you'll find iconic landmarks such as Parliament and Trafalgar Square. Historically, The land to the west of the City (part of the parish of Westminster) was prime farming land and made good area for building elaborate structures. The land to the east was flat, marshy and cheap, good for cheap housing and industry, and later for docks. Also the wind blows from west to east, and the Thames (into which the sewage went) flows from west to east, so the West End was up-wind and up-market, the East End was where people worked for a living.

Construction Heavy: One of the many new projects throughout London

On a much larger meaning, London has absorbed numerous surrounding towns and villages over the centuries, including large portions of the surrounding "home counties". The term Greater London embraces Central London together with all the outlying suburbs that lie in one continuous urban sprawl within the lower Thames valley. Today, numerious construction projects litter Greater London, especially in the city centre and East End. Mostly focused on infastructure modernization and expansion, the city is in preperation for the world stage when it hosts the 2012 Summer Olympics. Notable areas of construction include the Bankside area, with new high-end residential buildings and the new Shard London Bridge (to be the tallest structure in the EU), and Stratford City (home of the new Olympic Park).