Category: Architecture

Reflections from One New Change

Rootling through the photo-archives, as I have been doing a lot lately, I came across a directory devoted to One New Change, and the views out over London you can photo from it.

Views like this:

Clear enough. Sky, very clear.

But then, I came upon this photo:

Weird. It’s some kind of reflection, obviously, but what it is reflected in? What was I doing to get that? I set the problem to one side and forgot about it.

But then, a few weeks later I think, I went back to the same directory, and came upon the answer. Because, here (below) was the same photo, with me merely holding the camera differently:

I photoed the photo where the reflected scene is horizontal from a similar spot, but with the camera turned round about two hundred and eighty degrees from how it looks in one immediately above.

Here’s another version of the above that makes everything clearer, by supplying some context:

That photo also shows how the top of One New Change itself looks.

You know me. I don’t just like to show you my favourite photos. My favourite photos are often puzzles, photos that make you, and for that matter me, ask: What’s that? And I want to find out, by looking at other photos taken at the same time, and then I want to explain them all to you, with all those other photos included in the posting.

Also, modern architecture is shiny.

Two Big Thing alignments in one photo

This afternoon, I found myself at Oval Tube, seeing a man about a mobile phone. The weather was filthy, just short of actual heavy rain, so you’d think there’d not be a lot of photo-fun to be had, but actually I photoed several things of note.

The photos describe just one of these circumstances.

Okay. First, I’ve arrived at Oval tube (by bus rather than by tube ut the point is that’s where I was), and I crossed the road in the direction of the City of London, that being the direction we’re now looking:

Now, here comes the kill shot, the photo this posting is all about. I’m zooming in on the what you can only see above in the far distance:

Forget the filthy weather. Just look at what we’re seeing there. There are two major Big Thing alignments happening there, in just the one photo. Top right, Shard next to Strata. (Strata is the official name of the one with three holes in the top. The unofficial name is something like “Razor”, but that’s never really caught on, because too few people in London care about this Thing to bother naming it.)

And the other Big Thing alignment, below and to the left of the centre of the photo, is the Walkie-Talkie and the Scalpel. (Another version of this same alignment, from the actual Oval, can be seen in this posting.

I did two further photos of each separate alignment there, but separate photos defeats the point of what is really happening here, which is that both are in the same scene and the same photo.

Besides which, I already blogged about the Strata/Shard alignment, in this posting from 2014. Click on that and you’ll see that what I was looking for then was to get the Shard right behind the Strata.

I just copied this posting over from the Old Blog, so I could link back to it without inflicting upon you the Screen of the Red Death. You’re welcome.

However, there seems to be a problem with that earlier posting, which is that I appear to be in the wrong place, according to the map there. In the above photo, the Shard is alongside the Strata. The actual Shard is further away and a lot taller. In order to see the Shard above the Strata, I needed to be further away. Yes, I just checked the original directory of photos (actually photoed in 2012 (from which those photos for the 2014 were selected)). To get those I was actually nearer to Stockwell tube, i.e. much further away. So it wasn’t that I didn’t notice that both alignments were photoable in one photo; I wasn’t in the right place to see it.

Besides which, in 2012, and for matter in 2014, there was no Scalpel. It wasn’t finished until 2018. So, the other alignment was not then seeable from anywhere. I almost certainly have photos to prove that, but this posting is already way out of control, and needs to stop, now.

Two people and two things I am missing

From the photo-archives, December 2014:

That’s a photo of two of my favourite people, GodDaughter2 and GodDaughter2’s Mum, walking by the sea, somewhere on the coast of Brittany. Think of this photo as my version of what we are all going through now, not being able to socialise with those we would most like to be socialising with.

Here are a couple more Things I’ll miss:

Those are the Twin Towers of Quimper Cathedral, all photoed on the same trip, in December of 2014 and January of 2015. Quimper being the city in Brittany where they all lived for quite a while. But that while is now gone, so no more trips to Quimper for me.

Think of these four photos as photos of Quimper Cathedral, that being what they are.

The London City Island cluster from across the River

Last year, at the end of July, I went on an expedition out East, to the Dome and related attractions and excitements, and this evening I was looking through all the photos from that expedition, some of which I’ve shown here already. And, I found myself rather liking these two photos, both of the London City Island tower cluster, on the other side of the River from where I was:

This cluster is just the the other side of the River Lea (the final meanderings of which create the island in question), from Canning Town Station. The one on the right photoed about forty minutes of wandering downstream after the the one on the left.

In the second and smaller of the two images in this 2015 posting from the Old Blog, now here, you can see an aerial fake-photo of how they then merely reckoned it would look. By now, it’ll be finished and occupied.

London is fast become a city not so much of towers, but of tower clusters. The Big Things of the City have now coalesced into one big lump. Docklands ditto. Battersea is heading that way. Soon there’ll be another cluster, upstream from Tate Modern. In the years to come, it may join up with the nearby cluster around the old Shell Building at Waterloo, next to the Wheel.

The light wasn’t that good when I photoed the above photos, but you can see what I want you to see. What I like about this London City Island cluster is that, well, I like it. Its basic job is to fit lots of people into a small area, without excessive cost or bother in the form of “architecture” – unfunctional curves and weird shapes of various sorts, or strange structural illogicalities. This isn’t Starchitecture. It’s a collection of Machines for Living In. But, because the design of all the blocks has been made, as it were, to “rhyme”, the effect is rather pleasing, unlike the usual London cluster mess. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mind cluster messes. They’re very London. But I’m glad that one of these clusters is a bit more aesthetically coordinated, because it makes a change. The bright colours of each of the towers adds to the air of a group of buildings all designed at the same time. In London, this seldom seems to happen.

But, if you come back at me and say it’s just ugly lumps, in the usual London way, well, so be it, I won’t argue. Like I say, basically these are Machines for Living In. What they do for London is accommodate more people in comfort. How it all looks is somewhat beside that point.

But, I like the way it looks.

China Monty

Last night, as already mentioned earlier today, I went to Sainsburys in Wilton Road. On my way there, I passed the Royal Trinity Hospice charity shop, also in Wilton Road, where I photoed thus, through the its annoyingly shiny shop window:

On the left, a very reflection-ridden photo of a generic beefeater jug, and a Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery jug. On the right, a better close-up of the Monty jug. Well, I think they’re jugs. I couldn’t see if there were handles on the back. But they sure look like they’re one of these and one of these.

And if that’s right, then they are both products of that exact same pottery enterprise, Royal Doulton, that used to be at that China Works place I’ve just recently been out photoing.

When I photoed these jugs last night, I did not know this.

Somewhat more seriously, I think it worth asking why public statues are not more realistic, in this exact sort of highly colourful way. Why, to put it another way, were these guys (on of them being Monty again) were not done in a similar way to the way that the above items of pottery were done?

Is it that statues please people by being very obviously statues, and not actual people? Too realistic, and statues would freak people out. I’m more sure that this is an interesting question than I am about the answer. Maybe it’s just that people have got used to statues being monochrome, and they expect them to go on being that way. Maybe they tried doing them in colour, but people complained that they looked too much like china jugs, rather than like proper statues.

But as the technology of this kind of thing gets better, and as colourful architecture becomes more of a regular thing, will public statues suddenly become colourful also, again?

Two cats and a squirrel above the China Works Tower front door

I posted earlier in the week about the China Works Tower. By the time I visited it, I had already read this:

Here, a group of carved figures examine an impressive collection of pots and vases — striking relief created by master craftsman George Tinworth in around 1878. Look a little closer, and what is thought to be leading female artist of her time Hannah Bolton Barlow can be spied seated with her pet cat under her stool.

So, I was ready with my camera for this detail of the building in particular.

Here’s the entire relief on top of the original entrance:

And here I am, looking a little closer like they said, at Hannah Bolton Barlow and her cat:

Who the bloke in the hat might be, I do not know, or all the others.

But also, look at that big vase to the left of her as we look. That’s definitely a lion, and on the narrow bit at the top, I believe I see a squirrel.

It’s like these pottery people had seen The Internet coming, and knew just how to get noticed by it.

The China Works Tower

A while back I was walking along by the River, just upstream from Lambeth Bridge, and photoed this photo (number 5 of these) of the China Works Tower (thank you commenter Alastair for identifying it):

Also a while ago now, I went back there, yes, to photo stuff like all the signs at the other end of that link, but basically to check out this China Works building from close-up:

In an earlier posting here about would-be applier of architectural decoration Adam Nathaniel Furman, I said:

Furman intends to apply ornament with colourful abandon.

But, not the old sort of ornament that the Victorians liked to do, and against whom the original Modernists reacted with such disgust. …

Well, the above photos are of just this old sort of ornament, the sort that Furman doesn’t want to do. But, technologically, he intends to use very similar techniques. Ceramics. Also known as: China. (Odd that, naming a material after the big old country where they got the idea from. Are there any strange things called, in foreign parts, Britain or England? So, how’s your meat? Okay, but it could use a dash of Britain. Your skirt’s falling down, try using an England.)

This China Works Tower is surrounded and jostled aggressively by modern buildings, designed by the sort of people who grew up believing all the old sort of ornament to be an aesthetic abomination, or at the very least an aesthetic dead-end.

The most aggressive architectural jostler is a fire station, immediately the other side of a very narrow road. Which happens to be the start of Lambeth High Street, which is odd but there you go. Here are photos I took of all that jostling, with the fire station in the middle photo here:

You can see the white roof of the fire station in the photo at the top of this posting.

Luckily, the China Works Tower is not entirely isolated, and is hence not totally smothered by later buildings. It was once only a small part of a bigger collection of buildings, and a decent chunk of those earlier buildings remains, attached to the Tower and keeping it company:

There was a lot of sunshine and shade colliding on the facade of the Tower, so that doesn’t look so good there. But the blander, less decorated and bigger stretch of the old building was easier to photo, as you can see.

I shouldn’t grumble too much. At least the Tower survived, along with a chunk of the earlier buildings it presided over. The Tower was the architectural advert, so to speak, for a real business, one that survived longer than most Victorian-era enterprises, way past World War 2. And then the Tower was saved by an early manifestation of the Conservation Movement, in the form of two rich fogeys, aesthetically speaking. The link above, in paragraph one of this, concerning the history of this place and what they’re now doing with it is well worth a follow, so here is that link again.

I wouldn’t want London to consist only of such ornamented antiquities, but I am glad that quite a lot of such oddities still survive, and that they now look like having a decent future, to follow their distinguished past. And I am glad to have lived long enough to have experienced a time when this past can be easily learned about. During the last century, I would see such a building, wonder about it for about one minute, and then forget it and move on to the next equally baffling oddity.

Blotting out the face with reflections at the top of the Tate Modern Extension

Here are some photoer photos I photoed almost three years ago now, at the top of the Tate Modern Extension. They are all of the same person, taken one after another:

I think that what she’s doing here is a selfie with the Big Things of the City of London behind her. It’s because it’s a selfie rather than a straight photo of the view that she is facing us.

When photoer photoing, I am always on the lookout for ways for faces to be blocked out. The camera itself, smartphone (as above) or just a regular camera, often does this by getting in the way. Bags and coats often oblige. Lately, of course, there have been masks. Simplest of all is just photoing from behind the photoer. But simple can be ever so slightly dull, and that particular dullness was avoided this time.

What blots out this lady’s face is that she is behind a window, and the reflections in the glass of what is behind me do the job. Well, mostly. If you knew her already you might recognise her from the last one. But I doubt a face recognition computer could make much sense of it.

This Tate Modern Extension summit is a fabulous place for photoing, for me. Other photoers, great views out over the middle of London, often combinable in the same photo. Terrific. And with windows on three sides of the room at the top, and the viewing platform all around the outside, the reflections and combinations and complications are often mind-boggling. Just explaining what’s going on in the above photos would take another screen’s worth of prattle, and you’d probably be none the wiser.

And don’t get me started on those big spots on the windows. They add a whole extra dimension to everything.

The only way to explain all these complications and ramifications is to have a mass gallery, with lots of photos of photoers and of the place itself, to the point where you can all see for yourselves what’s going on, and why everything looks the way it does. But not today.

Quota photo of the BT Tower advertising Follicular Lymphoma

Haven’t had many quota photos here lately, have I? But I am now about to go on what could be a long photo-walk, and don’t want to be worrying about not yet having stuck anything up here.

So:

Photoed from the top of my block of flats, last November. Ah, those were the days, when people worried about lots of diseases instead of just the one.

What is Follicular Lymphoma?

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a slow-growing type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It develops when B-cells (also called B-lymphocytes) become abnormal. B-cells are white blood cells that fight infection.

The abnormal B-cells (lymphoma cells) usually build up in lymph nodes, but they can affect other parts of the body.

Have a nice day. I intend to.

Pigeon scaring spikes just beyond Tower Bridge

In the summer of 2012, I was on the far side of Tower Bridge, about to cross it and walk back home along the South Bank, and my photo-archive tells me exactly what I was seeing, and thinking about it.

I started noticing how the sun was catching the pigeon scaring spikes:

And then came the kill shot, the artistic climax, the one where it was all effect and no context. Don’t bother clicking on any of the other photos in this posting if you’re not inclined, but at least feast your eyes for a few seconds on this:

It’s not regular sculpture, but it is sculpture, I think. I also photoed the nearby girl and dolphin, which is regular sculpture. I prefer the anti-pigeon spikes.

Because I knew that this could actually use a bit of context, here are three more of the photos I photoed, after that best in show shot above:

I also photoed a couple of pigeons, that had apparently not been scared, but you all know what pigeons look like. It’s those spikes that were so photoable.

These spikes are now a feature of London life. They’ve put spikes on top of my block of flats.