Kata and I decided to go downtown today (the commercial part of downtown) as we had a package to pick up from the Galleria Tuck Shop post office... (1) and on the walk down it brought back to me the quaint nature of the architecture in some parts of London and the way that, due to its very nature, North America cherishes its "older" buildings.
Coming from the UK we have a strange mix of views on architecture, many love the modern buildings that show off the new thinking on style and functionality which attempts to make the smallest impact on the environment whilst still being spectacularly pretty or at the very least impressive. A good example of recent(ish) architecture is the London Gherkin as its fondly, or not so fondly called. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster and was built on the site of the old Baltic Exchange, which was destroyed by the IRA in 1992 (gotta love wikipedia). Its actual name is St Mary Axe, but its nickname shows off the human ability to lampoon any and everything with impunity. An older but still modern building is the Lloyds of London building which has most of what would be internal sturcture, pipework, ductwork and other such things, are on the outside.
Then there's people who hanker after the old. Being the "old world" of course there's lots of really REALLY old buildings hanging around, stuff dating to the Roman era, e.g. the Roman baths in Bath which date to the 1st century AD. There's umpteen stately homes, castles, places of worship, old houses and such, going through many centuries of architectural styles.
OK going a little of message here, but the point is we've lots of nice old stuff and lots of new stuff, much of the new stuff exists thanks to World War 2, when the Luftwaffe bombing campaign destroyed a huge amount of the UK's cities. After the war the government had to rebuild and rehouse millions of people (most of Europe had to do this of course) and in the 50s and 60s a lot of terrible prefabricated housing was constructed, with varying levels of disaster and loss of life.
In London Ontario , as its my main point of reference, in the downtown area there's a large number of businesses using converted town houses for their premises. Most are law firms or financial consultants, some are opticians and architects, there's even a hair salon ironically named "Brunner, Moore & Ross Hairisters" a pun on the other firms which neighbour it which are mostly law firms. Its interesting to see this being done and its due to the London Heritage Council who's job it is to look after the "historical buildings" in London.
I'm pretty sure there's one of these groups in most cities in North America over the age of 100, but its that very aspect that's the weird thing to me. Its the difference in magnitude of the age of the buildings. In the UK 100 years old is nothing for a building, its barely an adult, its had all its wrinkles worked out and its starting to settle in for middle age. In North America 100 years is ancient, its revered and cared for like a fragile treasure.
On Richmond, one of the main streets in London, in the northern part of downtown, there are many bars and restaurants, stores, spas and even a tattoo parlour all in converted town houses. Its sweet and a good use of a premises that long ago stopped being used as a single family home.
The obvious fly in the ointment however is the North American love affair with the Mall, especially strip malls, as they are called, boxy stores that are homogeneous from mall to mall, city to city, country to country (OK mostly the USA and Canada). I guess they're functional and since most of them are built on the outskirts of the city/town they don't need to fit into any pre-existing buildings or have a limited space to be built on (after all Canada and the USA have so much empty space to expand into).
I guess I'll get to see how things continue to develop in the future, if the strip malls continue to proliferate or if people turn against them, what with the inevitable increase in the price of petrol (gasoline).
(1) We are having a problem with the Canada Post parcel delivery side of things, the regular postal worker has the key to our apartment building and generally there's no problem delivering mail to our door when needed (for things that need to be signed for or are too big for the mail box that she'd be delivering). The delivery man who comes in the Canada Post truck however, well he's another story entirely. Now sure our intercom isn't well marked (it was written in ink but since the board is in direct sunlight on the south side of the building its long faded) but, the LCD display does say "enter # and the apartment number to contact residents". Many a cab driver has managed to work this magic out, as have food delivery drivers (for the few times we order out), but the Mail man, well, I don't get it. One day he does it right, but OK, we're out, he doesn't leave a message (its tied into the phone system so it will go to our voicemail) and then we get a delivery card the next day in our mail box. Fine. But then another day, yesterday for example, he didn't even try dialing our apartment, he decided there was no answer and went. In this case the order was one Kata had made with Knit Picks (she's an avid knitter) and they have full tracking on their deliveries, so we discovered that "supposedly" a delivery attempt had been made at 11:00am, which was far from the truth as we were both in the apartment, awake, hanging out waiting to go out for lunch with our friend John aka picard, aka Leschinski Design and we didn't leave until close to 12:30. Its just a galling issue but not a life ruiner.
Coming from the UK we have a strange mix of views on architecture, many love the modern buildings that show off the new thinking on style and functionality which attempts to make the smallest impact on the environment whilst still being spectacularly pretty or at the very least impressive. A good example of recent(ish) architecture is the London Gherkin as its fondly, or not so fondly called. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster and was built on the site of the old Baltic Exchange, which was destroyed by the IRA in 1992 (gotta love wikipedia). Its actual name is St Mary Axe, but its nickname shows off the human ability to lampoon any and everything with impunity. An older but still modern building is the Lloyds of London building which has most of what would be internal sturcture, pipework, ductwork and other such things, are on the outside.
Then there's people who hanker after the old. Being the "old world" of course there's lots of really REALLY old buildings hanging around, stuff dating to the Roman era, e.g. the Roman baths in Bath which date to the 1st century AD. There's umpteen stately homes, castles, places of worship, old houses and such, going through many centuries of architectural styles.
OK going a little of message here, but the point is we've lots of nice old stuff and lots of new stuff, much of the new stuff exists thanks to World War 2, when the Luftwaffe bombing campaign destroyed a huge amount of the UK's cities. After the war the government had to rebuild and rehouse millions of people (most of Europe had to do this of course) and in the 50s and 60s a lot of terrible prefabricated housing was constructed, with varying levels of disaster and loss of life.
In London Ontario , as its my main point of reference, in the downtown area there's a large number of businesses using converted town houses for their premises. Most are law firms or financial consultants, some are opticians and architects, there's even a hair salon ironically named "Brunner, Moore & Ross Hairisters" a pun on the other firms which neighbour it which are mostly law firms. Its interesting to see this being done and its due to the London Heritage Council who's job it is to look after the "historical buildings" in London.
I'm pretty sure there's one of these groups in most cities in North America over the age of 100, but its that very aspect that's the weird thing to me. Its the difference in magnitude of the age of the buildings. In the UK 100 years old is nothing for a building, its barely an adult, its had all its wrinkles worked out and its starting to settle in for middle age. In North America 100 years is ancient, its revered and cared for like a fragile treasure.
On Richmond, one of the main streets in London, in the northern part of downtown, there are many bars and restaurants, stores, spas and even a tattoo parlour all in converted town houses. Its sweet and a good use of a premises that long ago stopped being used as a single family home.
The obvious fly in the ointment however is the North American love affair with the Mall, especially strip malls, as they are called, boxy stores that are homogeneous from mall to mall, city to city, country to country (OK mostly the USA and Canada). I guess they're functional and since most of them are built on the outskirts of the city/town they don't need to fit into any pre-existing buildings or have a limited space to be built on (after all Canada and the USA have so much empty space to expand into).
I guess I'll get to see how things continue to develop in the future, if the strip malls continue to proliferate or if people turn against them, what with the inevitable increase in the price of petrol (gasoline).
(1) We are having a problem with the Canada Post parcel delivery side of things, the regular postal worker has the key to our apartment building and generally there's no problem delivering mail to our door when needed (for things that need to be signed for or are too big for the mail box that she'd be delivering). The delivery man who comes in the Canada Post truck however, well he's another story entirely. Now sure our intercom isn't well marked (it was written in ink but since the board is in direct sunlight on the south side of the building its long faded) but, the LCD display does say "enter # and the apartment number to contact residents". Many a cab driver has managed to work this magic out, as have food delivery drivers (for the few times we order out), but the Mail man, well, I don't get it. One day he does it right, but OK, we're out, he doesn't leave a message (its tied into the phone system so it will go to our voicemail) and then we get a delivery card the next day in our mail box. Fine. But then another day, yesterday for example, he didn't even try dialing our apartment, he decided there was no answer and went. In this case the order was one Kata had made with Knit Picks (she's an avid knitter) and they have full tracking on their deliveries, so we discovered that "supposedly" a delivery attempt had been made at 11:00am, which was far from the truth as we were both in the apartment, awake, hanging out waiting to go out for lunch with our friend John aka picard, aka Leschinski Design and we didn't leave until close to 12:30. Its just a galling issue but not a life ruiner.
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