January 2010 Archives

The battle to stop Heathrow's third runway is hotting up. Greenpeace today launched an architecture competition to design an "impenetrable fortress" on a piece of land fated for Heathrow's third runway. 

The site in question (above) is a 0.4ha piece of land in the tiny village of Sipson on which Greenpeace plans to build a zero-carbon structure on the site to defend it from the bulldozers. The "Airplot" campaign is welcoming designs from both architecture experts and from the general public. Amongst the 'experts' who will ultimately judge the winner of the competition is impressionist Alastair McGowan.

Even without the fortress the campaigners have tried to make it as difficult as possible for bailiffs to seize the piece of land. Over 66,000 people now own part of it, which means they will each have to be served with eviction notices once the bulldozers are due to come in. If all that effort isn't enough to stop the new runway then there is always the fact that one of the trees on the land has already been "sponsored" by David Cameron.

However, "local" campaigners including David Beckham, Teddy Sheringham and Ray "The Daddy" Winstone oppose the demolition of the stadium, hoping that it would become "bigger and better" than before. Problem is that it's been closed for a while, and, as one of our researchers can testify, even on the penultimate meet before closure, the "crowds" were fairly thin on the ground. 

In this month's Red Book update we make a series of predictions about the residential market in the year ahead. One of them predicts the dominance of the market in the short term by the cash-rich. Put simply, the road to home ownership for most people starts with a mortgage. Pre Lehmans they were giving them away, now you'll have to stump up between 20% and 30% for the deposit. If you're cash-rich, like Hong Kong based billionaire Joseph Lau, who paid £33 million for a house in Eaton Square last weekend, you probably don't even know what a mortgage is. The Standard has the story.

Bishopsgate Goodsyard is now a step closer to realising development. The site has been screaming out 'Develop Me!' for 40 years now where it has laid unused and dormant. The site to the north of the city and Liverpool Street covers a huge area (shown below).

The Mayor of London along with Hackney and Tower Hamlets Councils have now approved new planning guidance (it's a neck breaker!) that will shape its future with outline visions of up to 2,000 new homes, community facilities and employment space. The local authorities and the GLA have worked closely with the landowners and future developers Ballymore and Hammerson as well as urban designers Terry Farrell and Partners to produce the planning guidance.

An exciting feature of the proposed development will be the creation of a high-level public park above the listed Braithwaite Viaduct. This will create a Shoreditch version of the famous New York High Line park, which completed last year and has been a huge success. Somehow though I doubt it will match up to New York's High Line, this is 1.45miles long and pictured (below).

The new Shoreditch high Street station on the East London Line extension is set to open this summer and will surely be a catalyst for regeneration. Although not exactly pleasent to look at the moment it has been designed so buildings can be built on top of and around it.  

The question remains then: how long will it be until the Bishopsgate Goodsyard is developed and Shoreditch High Street Station is surrounded by high rise developments? The picture below shows the vision. Quite a while I would say.

This is the site of LandSec's Park House development on Oxford Street:

As you can see it's yet to start, due in no small part to opposition by law firm Fladgate Fielder who have offices near the site. They claimed that the noise of construction would be "three years of hell", Mr Justice Collins, at the subsequent court hearing disagreed however and works should start here at the end of the year. But the site will still generate an income. How so? In early October of last year the developer was granted planning permission for the temporary use of the site for "large entertainment uses". One idea was an ice rink but the latest plan is for a Dinosaurs Unleashed Exhibition. The attraction is to have 24 full sized, animatronic dinosaurs including T-Rex, triceratops, diplodocus and stegosaurus. Punters will be able to dig for dino bones, design a dinosaur on a touch screen, run down an interactive track to leave dino footprints and put themselves in a virtual prehistoric aquarium using green-screen technology. Blimey. All this'll kick off at the end of the month, tickets around £15 a pop.

To the north of the proposed Three Houses development and west of The Shard stands this building:

King's College London's Capital House. It doesn't have a "funky" name and with the best will in the world the architecture could not be described as cutting edge. All that, however, is about to change. The college plans to demolish the current building and erect a 28 storey, SPPARC designed, 500 bed student hostel on site called The Quill: