Page 9 of 10
London, England
And if you see no hope for me, I still see hope for you in the high rise of the morning
This is not my first time to London and it is hard to imagine that it will be my last. London remains one of the great places in the world for anyone into architecture, art, history and urbanism. If they ever got themselves an NHL team it might just be in the running to be the most perfect place on earth.
To start the two pages (yes, two pages) of London pictures, we'll start somewhere familiar. This is deep inside Herzog and de Meuron's landmark Tate Modern, a beautiful museum with collections and exhibitions that often (but not always) live up to some pretty steep expectations.
The last time that I was in London was two years ago, when Renzo Piano's Shard towered over the London Bridge Station but wasn't yet ready for visitors. Now it’s very ready. The building is the tallest in Europe at just about 1000 feet, or (for a local reference) roughly the height of Christian de Portzamparc’s One 57 tower near Central Park. There is an enclosed observation deck which is interesting enough, but the real magic takes place up the stairs to the 72nd floor. There an open air observation deck lets you see lots of sharp glassy parts of the shard, as well as straight up to the utilitarian looking and generally pointless pointy part of the tower’s summit. As for the views, they’re ok. That’s not a knock against The Shard but rather a knock against London, a city that is almost always experienced best close up at street level than it is from such great heights.
The other new observation tower in London is, well, pretty damn awful. Designed by artist Anish Kapoor (who I generally really like) and super engineer Cecil Balmond (who is also normally very talented), the ArcelMittal Orbit was promised to be in league with the Eiffel Tower but is more likely to end with a far darker fate. There are a few real problems with it and it starts with its location. The tower was designed and built for London’s 2012 Summer Olympics and its located right near the stadium. That was great for the Olympics, but otherwise its location at Stratford is out in Zone 3 of the Underground, so far away from anything that an observation deck makes no sense at all. Even on a clear day, all you can see is a distant, distant London skyline, just enough to remind you exactly how far away you are from anything worth seeing. Then there is the design. It’s a bit of a mess that looks best from the ground but provides no great visitor experience at all. You start underneath a solid, depressing cone, then take an elevator up to two levels of bad views and lost opportunities, then descend along a winding staircase. That staircase is the most painful part- it is wholly wrapped in a perforated metal too dense to give you any sense of openness. I find it hard to imagine that this will stay open that much longer, on a day when there were lines at The Shard and the London Eye, there were far, far more staff members than visitors at the ArcelMittal Orbit and none of those visitors left looking happy.
This was not my first trip on the London Eye (or whatever it’s called now), or my second, or even my third (it was my fourth, ok), but every time around that great big wheel, the same thoughts pop into my head. The first one is that London looks better from the ground than from the air, while the second thought is always that the best view from the London Eye (or whatever it’s called now) is of the other parts of the London Eye (or whatever it’s called now).
What better way to wipe clean all of that negativity about the ArcelMittal Orbit than to than to think about the devastation of World War I. Surrounding the walls of the Tower of London (where Anne Boleyn, Walter Raleigh and Rudolph Hess all served time) was a temporary art installation by Paul Cummins called “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.” As you likely already know, 2014 is the one hundredth anniversary of the start of mechanized warfare and to mark the occasion, 888,246 ceramic poppies surround the tower. And if you think that 888,246 is a weird and arbitrary number, it most certainly isn’t. Each red ceramic poppy represents one British death in World War I, one life needlessly lost for questionable political gains.
Philosophically the idea of a royal family chosen by god is something that to me makes no sense in a modern era, or, well, ever. If I lived in England and paid taxes I think I would be far more vocal and militant about it. Hereditary privilege endorsed and funded by the state is an outdated idea like slavery that was never a good idea to begin with. One of the reasons that otherwise sane sounding people support the continuation of the British monarchy is that it brings in lots of tourist dollars, which I guess now makes me part of the problem. After all these visits to London, I finally gave in and toured Buckingham Palace, the London home of Queen Elizabeth II and all of those who spend their days fulfilling her mission to be queen of all she surveys.
The palace itself is actually quite interesting and extremely insulated. You enter from the south side (after security) and everyone gets headphones, meaning that no one is paying attention to where they’re walking. After a few rooms you enter a massive exterior court and then the heart of the state rooms of the palace, with staircases and painting of royals and all sorts of overdecorated rooms in all directions. The audio tour was focused on a theme of life as a royal child, with constant reminders and a special exhibit showing old toys and creepy communion gowns worn by people lucky enough to be born into boundless state wealth. It was far less interesting than the history of the palace, at least to me. At the end of the tour, visitors find themselves outside in the sprawling private grounds, where the presence of the city is felt and heard but not seen, a fitting end for a palace built for rulers who also need to be protected from the very people they rule.
