13 January 2008

Day @ Greenwich

Spend yesterday at Greenwich walking around in the area, looking at the Market and visiting some great Historical sites. Greenwich has a nice small town feel and you almost forget that your still in London.
Myself at the Greenwich university. The building which was formerly the Greenwich Hospital was designed by Christopher Wren (the great London architect who designed among other important buildings St Paul's Cathedral )

The next two pictures show two parts of the building that was planned by Christopher Wren but were not executed by him -
The Painted Hall (which was painted by James Thornhill)
And the Queen's Chapel.

As you walk away from the River and up the hill towards the Greenwich Park you first come across the Queen's House (considered a very important building in British architectural history) designed by English Renaissance architect Inigo Jones, the building now houses the National Maritime Museum (I have to go back to see this from the inside!)This is one of the collonades that were added to the original Queen's house during an extension w from 1807 (designed by London Docks architect Daniel Asher Alexander).

This is an amazing space and is identical to one of the spaces that was designed by our group for a project in Brasilia at the Berlage Institute last year. This is the same building seen from the park (in the distance tall buildings of Canary Wharf)

And my last stop for the day was to see the most famous site of Greenwich - the marking of the Greenwich Meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time at the Royal Observatory at the top of the hill inside the park.

The place was full of Tourists especially Indian tourists clicking their usual goofy poses [that they save for sites of any touristic significance : ) ]

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Also part of the Royal Observatory is this exciting small project by the architects I'm currently working for - Allies and Morrison Architects.This strange looking truncated cone houses a new planetarium and aligns itself to the Meridian line.

These are some of the reasons why I think this is a really interesting project -
*Sensitivity towards the listed heritage buildings around *The simplicity and abstraction of its form
* the way it shapes and uses the landscape around it

07 January 2008

The Diana Memorial

Was at Hyde Park today and walked past the Diana Memorial. This has to be the best memorial I have seen. It has a great spirit, I really like its soothing curves, light contours and sound of the water.

It's designed by the London office of Landscape designer - Kathryn Gustafson


Strand Station

The great thing about staying in a city like London is the joy of stumbling upon pieces of it's past. Earlier today I walked by the Strand station that has been abandoned since the last 10 years.Curiously enough though the name board still says 'Strand station' it was renamed 'Aldwych' from way back in 1915.

03 January 2008

Happy 2008!!!

Wish you all a great year ahead!!

Ice skating outside the Natural History Museum, London

A Google map tracing my travels across the globe


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  • In Red cities where I have lived (more than one month);
  • In Blue cities that I have visited