Lately there has been a lot of talk about the view of St. Paul’s and how the construction of Renzo Piano’s Shard tower is ruining the view from from Parliament Hill– one of the sacred view corridors of London (defined in Protecting London’s strategic views).
But what about the opposite view? Instead of looking AT St. Paul’s, what about the view looking AWAY from St. Paul’s? The path that takes one to the Thames from St. Paul’s is a highly-designed affair that leads down Peter’s Hill to the Millennium Bridge and the Tate Modern beyond. It’s a beautiful axial relationship reinforced through a clever landscape design by Charles Funke Associates that creates a variety of well-used public spaces. The long straight sightline afforded by this relationship allows the sort of visual alignment not often seen in London’s organic street pattern. Let’s take a look now- what is in this view?
Yes. Strata Tower is directly the Tate. Not just any tower but a building voted as Britain’s worst of 2010. I’m not sure how I didn’t notice this before but I was quite disappointed when I did.
I love that view of Tate Modern from St Pauls and regularly visit it since Ken Livingstone started running a decent bus services there. However the Charles Funke landscaping is awful. Really dangerous steps that I am particularly aware of when with my partially-sighted father (I’m not a Health and Safety nut – honest!).
The bridge is lovely though strange how it was the Caro/Foster design until it wobbled and became the Arups bridge. A low point in architect-engineer relations.
Strata tower? Words fail me!