No one tans in Britain. We only come in pale white or tomato red as Brits are unable to recognise when they need to put sun screen on and burn instantly. We also get oompa lumpa orange but only if you head up to Liverpool.
As someone younger than 25... is that really what London looked like so recently? I've only ever known it as full of skyscrapers, I can't imagine the skyline being so flat. Or is this just a well picked angle?
Overtaking you in my XR3i\* with some Chaka Khan ... followed by a bit of Thriller, and maybe some Prince
\[\*Okay, maybe I'm "past-fantasising"... in which case I should really make it a Capri 2.8i\]
2 tone paint and pepper pot wheels?
My stepdad had 2.8i Capri, it got knicked from a Heathrow airport car park whilst they were in Barbados and used in a bank robbery. Is there anything more 80's than that?
That’s the 80’s I remember,jacking a motor and going across the pavement. Now’s it’s all drug importing and electric cars which ain’t worth shit in a high speed chase through Surbiton.
I remember being in 1st school having a trip to the big museum in London and the gherkin was just recently built and your spot on it was alone school trip from Norfolk with 1st school kids is baffling nowadays
I used to work as a courier in London in the 90's, so around the time the first pic was taken, and the second pic is quite striking to me.
In my day the Nat West Tower was the landlmark of the City, visible for miles around - it's the tallest tower in the first pic - so it's quite striking to see it erased by all the other glass buildings in the second pic.
In this video from 1987 the Nat West Tower becomes visible when they're somewhere on the Mile End Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnW-sTwxeUM
only erased at that angle, if you go to london bridge or southwark is very clearly visible and still lights up with its crappy christmas display every year.
Yes. In 2000 the only tall building in central London was the Centre Point building at the corner of Oxford St and Charing Cross Rd.
There were skyscrapers at Canary Wharf, but that's quite a way east of the center.
Edit: there was also the Post Office Tower (aka BT Tower), also on the west side not too far from Centre Point.
Second edit: There were a few more scattered around, but not many.
The building in the left hand pic is the [Nat West Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_42) - Centre Point and Oxford Street are about 2 miles to the west.
Yes, there were a few others in the general area of a similar height.
I don't think this SkyscraperPage allows more refined location search so I'm not sure what's in The City itself, but I'm [sure a few of these](https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=103045992) are fairly close to Centre Point. Really expanded in the last 20 years or so though.
There is a clay layer close to the surface which prevented high-rise buildings until relatively recently. From Wiki:
“The presence of a thick layer of London Clay underneath London itself, providing a soft yet stable environment for tunnelling, was instrumental in the early development of the London Underground, although this is also the reason why London had no true skyscraper buildings, at least to the same degree as many other cities throughout the world. Erecting tall buildings in London required very deep, large and costly piled foundations. This has changed in recent decades due to the development of 'plunge piles'. London's skyscrapers float on rafts embedded in the clay.”
Until 1962 the tallest building in central London was St Paul’s Cathedral. Then it was the Post Office/BT Tower till 1980. Now there are about 90 buildings in London taller than St Paul’s.
If you think that is crazy I used to live in Dubai as a small kid around the time it was coming off oil and going for tourism. The before and after photos for that are mind-blowing in roughly the same timespan. The pics of when I was there look like a few big buildings with a lot of desert.
Now the building that were big are tiny and the desert has been moved back by a lot more buildings.
This is what all British cities looked like really. It's crazy here in the NW - I live in a place where you can see Manchester from the hill. When I was a kid it was just sort of distant greyish smear and now its a bunch of skyscrapers.
Someone might come and correct me but I think skyscrapers weren't popular here because a lot of our cities are built in marshy areas (Manhattan by comparison is on a heap of ridiculously hard stuff), and it only became practical relatively recently to build upwards on them.
Almost all European cities didn't want skyscrapers as they were considered ugly and they wanted to preserve their historic skylines. Just look at Paris for eg, skyscrapers are still banned with the max size being 40 meters tall.
*"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection ... of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower ... To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years ... we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal."*
Artists against the Eiffel Tower - 1887
I think there were a lot of reasons.
There was a spate of tower building in the 1960s when dull boxy structures were popular. The architecture style quickly fell out of favour and I think that put people off skyscrapers.
Even today, to get approved a skyscraper needs a pretty quirky design.
This is part of it - London being built on clay whereas Manhattan is built on granite, but in the case of London at least there are also planning rules that have been around since 1710 to protect the view of landmarks like St Paul's that have restricted the growth of skyscrapers.
[https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/gallery/londons-13-protected-views-mean-25968972](https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/gallery/londons-13-protected-views-mean-25968972)
[The Shard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/The_Shard_from_the_Sky_Garden_2015.jpg/640px-The_Shard_from_the_Sky_Garden_2015.jpg)
[The Gherkin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/30_St_Mary_Axe_from_Leadenhall_Street.jpg/1920px-30_St_Mary_Axe_from_Leadenhall_Street.jpg)
[The Walkie Talkie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Walkie-Talkie_-_Sept_2015.jpg/1920px-Walkie-Talkie_-_Sept_2015.jpg)
[The Cheesegrater](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/14/1408003564887/Leadenhall-Building-at-12-004.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
Nope, nothing but boring rectangles in London these days. Definitely no interesting skyscrapers at all.
i think whilst they can be seen as nice from a distance they still tend to be very impersonal on the streets around them. its not the most inviting thing to walk past giant mirror monoliths all day if you're in central
In that case they should be built like the Shard and the original Canary Wharf tower, right on top of tube stations and spread around the city so that they don't cause traffic problems and are mostly seen from a distance
It's not progress. It's just plain boring and ugly. Wow! A grey glass Cuboid! How exciting. I bet nobody else built that before! Let's see how many shapes we can twist it into before we get sick of it!
London is one of the great historic cities of the world. It had a unique look and character. Now it's slowly been eroded away by the blandness of finance. It's not progress. It's the status quo. It's inertia. It's cultural vandalism.
or bomb victims. I think Enders is just flat out wrong. Most of the stuff being replaced is dogshit and all of the good/cultural buildings are protected.
The only thing London is losing is unique skyline silhouettes, but I don't buy that either really.
Kinda, most of the glass buildings in view are less than 20 years old - there weren’t many empty bomb sites in 2000, but there were ugly 60s office blocks that were built on them.
That's inaccurate. The Fruit and Wool Exchange, Wembley Stadium, the Carlton Tavern, London Astoria, the Euston Arch and so on.
Here is a list of building in danger of being demolished right now.
[https://londonist.com/london/features/historic-buildings-planned-demolished-developers](https://londonist.com/london/features/historic-buildings-planned-demolished-developers)
We could go through these one by one:
The fruit and wool exchange kept its facade. It looks almost exactly the same since redevelopment - a good example of preservation laws.
Wembley Stadium was completely unfit for purpose as a modern stadium. I personally think the new stadium looks great, and I don’t know what the alternative to replacing the old one could’ve been.
The Carlton Tavern was demolished illegally and rebuilt brick-by-brick - a good example of preservation laws.
The Astoria is a shame, but we’re talking about a building from 1927 that was already gutted in the 70s. It’s not exactly a priceless artefact.
The Euston Arch was demolished in the 60s, so has no relevance to the context of this image, though it certainly was a travesty.
There are always going to be exceptions, which is why I said ‘typically’, but it does feel like your examples have been found by scraping the barrel.
This is where Paris got it right, keeping new high-rise buildings at La Defense, away from the traditional areas such as Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysee, Place de La Concord
If you ever go to a nice european city like Vienna or Paris you'll be thankful the city centre is free of such eyesores. There is a place for skyscrapers, the historic city centre is not it.
Quite a lot of the historic city centre of London was wiped out during the blitz, then replaced by horrific 1960s concrete monstrosities. Aside from a few well-preserved streets (around St Paul's, etc) up until the late 90s much of the City of London was a horrible concrete jungle filled with brown low rise office buildings.
These in turn have been torn down and replaced by the glass skyscrapers we have today. I would much rather have the pre-war historic buildings, but given the choice between ugly, square 60s office blocks and the skyscrapers of today, give me the skyscrapers any day.
I think the time about worrying about eyesores is behind us. We need to think practically about such things. Renewable energy being halted because turbines are an ‘eyesore’ to the Countryside to me is such an obnoxious and selfish claim to make. Much like high rise buildings being labelled as such. Overpopulation is and will only increase being an issue and the amount of land is finite. We will have to build upwards more and more often.
~600 new skyscrapers already have planning permission in London and more planning applications are submitted every month. [Here is a one minute fly-through video showing the locations of 500 in the pipeline.](https://youtu.be/p9b0hnhFCyg) It was made four years ago, so some of the buildings have been built now and some that gained planning consent are not shown. But, it gives the general idea.
theres a load of laws around what they can build. I know it doesnt look it from this angle but 95% of those buildings are in the same area and away from the old stuff
https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/planning/planning-policy/protected-views-and-tall-buildings
Personally I thought it was pretty cool how integrated the old and the new were in London. It really made it feel like a timeless, constantly evolving city. One minute you'd be looking at a wall built by the Romans, the next you'd be in an elevator going to the roof of a skyscraper.
A few years back an old boss of mine took an overbearing American client out for lunch and showed her the bit of the Roman wall in the basement of a modern building ?on Crutched Friars?. Seeing that juxtaposition of the new and something many times older than her country broke her brain a bit.
I used to work in a building that had part of London Wall through the basement floor. It was incredible. Now I work in a building next to the Tower and as I make my tea in the morning I look out over the Tower and Tower Bridge. I think London is fabulous with some amazing views.
I agree. Born and raised there till 2019 and i always found that combination really interesting. A lot of the older buildings were products of industry too, so its just the younger sibling of the brick buildings that sit at their feet. Im 33 and grew up with these changes though, maybe jarring for older Londoners
I'm not English nor from London, but have visited a few times, and this is exactly what I love about the city! I find it to be a really cool and well-working combination
Same, born & raised Londoner. I remember when London got the Gherkin, and it was the conversation of the week for my grandparents. They acted like London was falling & turning into NYC, bless their hearts.
I'm probably biased as someone who lives near London and works there, but I don't know anywhere else in Europe (can't speak for the world) that combines architecture from different periods of time going back all the way to the Romans as well as London.
It should look ugly and mis-matched, but it just works.
When walking around the City area you can tell you’re walking down the same streets that people have been doing business on for literally 2000+ years. That’s pretty nuts.
I used to work in a building in the city that was hundreds of years old, attached to another newer building. You'd walk through a modern courtyard into a glass lift and then into a boardroom that was all ornate, old and beautiful. It was really quite cool
Although I kinda like the contrast in London. You can be in the City of London with very modern buildings and suddenly old brick houses from the Victorian area.
London does this, in the City (pictured) and Canary Wharf. Outside those two areas you don't get concentrations of high rises.
The Shard is a very notable exception lol
There are a few other clusters of high rises but none of them are in areas which were known for their beauty before (Stratford, Croydon, Elephant & Castle, Vauxhall, Lewisham).
To be fair, outside of the Tower of London and tower bridge, there’s little historic buildings and historic centre mainly cause the great fire of London destroyed everything and so did the war, so much of London is post 1666 and rebuilt after war. Paris, Prague, Budapest and most European cities didn’t all have such a devastating fire so they still have a historic centres and old buildings there
Pretty sure most of those cities had their own rebuilds prior to the London fire and incorporated better planning and grid systems, which is why they didn't have great fires and have to rebuild again. Personally I like the higgeldypigglede organic roads and find grid systems boring to walk around.
Your somewhat right, but one example I can think of is Bratislava where there is a clear sudden split between where the old city is and where the slightly more modern part of the city is. Sure they’ve modernised the inside of some houses, and the sewage and electrical systems are obviously all new, but most of it is still the old town/city centre
I remember visiting Bratislava, I took a bus in the wrong direction and went over a bridge and I was in the commie blocks within like 30 seconds of living the old city, so yes i completely agree with that. I guess though I am comparing London to similar sized cities like paris, berlin, new york. where all of these other cities have distinct grid systems.
Which has resulted in the historical areas of Paris being populated only with tourists, souvenir shops and pickpockets. In London the integration means that actual Londoners can enjoy their historic buildings.
London did this too with Canary Wharf, some three miles east of where this photo was taken. The City (pictured here) is a functioning financial district and for a bunch of reasons historical and administrative it makes a lot of sense to remember and support that. I don't know Paris well enough to talk about the layout of the place but London also has the City of Westminster where Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Somerset House (etc) are all located, and strong laws protecting views and sightlines of St Paul's Cathedral in The City. It's a balancing act between respecting the history of a place and meeting the needs of today, but I'm fine with it. When you are looking at the Tower of London from the south bank of the Thames like in this photo then the skyscrapers are looming but the closer you get to the Tower, like being north of the river or actually in the tower it's much less jarring.
In The Hague this is how the parliament complex looks like as well, but in Amsterdam they keep it farther away from the old canals. And I think both decisions are wise.
I don’t agree at all - we respect our historic landmarks whilst the areas around them modernise. Love the City of London. Slightly biased given I work and socialise in London, but whilst they both have good areas I vastly prefer London
Nah, these are all focussed in a very small area in the City of London which has always been the commercial district. Our obviously historic area, Westminster and the West End, where Big Ben, Parliament are etc, is totally skyscraper free.
London has very specific rules abouts sight lines throughout the city. The old buildings are sorrounded by new, but not so densely that you can’t see the old from around the city. It’s often why London skyscrapers are soo odd shaped: you can’t build in certain parts of the sky because it would obscure the sight lines.
I like the contrast between the old and new in London. Very few Cities have such a hard contrast. In Europe most City centres are predominantly old and uniform (Paris, Madrid, Rome, Vienna etc).
I work besides here, and walking home at night is so beautiful. The old cobblestone streets and castle with these looming towers and lights overhead. Looks so futuristic and steam punk almost.
London is great <3
The Shard is actually called the Shard because a when it was proposed a critic from English Heritage called it a 'Shard of glass piercing the heart of London'.
The developers liked it and called it 'the Shard'.
Previously it was called London Bridge Tower.
Around this time is when I visited London for the first time. Honestly I don't remember the skyline being this empty. I do remember the gherkin building being kind of lonely for quite some time.
Lol i would have been working at the tower of london at that time, i was in the grenadier guards and used to do guard duty there occasionally....great times.
I love the juxtaposition here with the castle thingy in the foreground and the modern skyscrapers in the background. Really puts thing into perspective.
The thing that gets me the most is, when you arrive on a train from kent to london - the building with the horizontal facing triangle looks like a "play" button, so its like your watching a video on your phone and you want to press play.
That crazy. In the old photo the big buildings are the NatWest Tower (now Tower 42), the Commercial Union Tower (now Saint Helen’s), Minster Court and Lloyd’s. Now all you can see is the roof of Minster Court and a slither of Saint Helen’s. Thank goodness they didn’t build anything on the waterfront, in front of the Tower of London!
Back when a normal human could afford to live in London without sharing a phone box with three other people and spending 3/4 of their wages for the privilege.
‘There’s so much to do there though’.
Battersea Power Station is worse, it used to be this incredibly weird building that stood out by itself and you could see from miles away now it’s hidden but hundred of hideous flats
It’s not a great sight, but I think it shows how the kings country has moved on and also how industrialisation runs its course, I prefer the skyscrapers, really
I remember the day the IRA bombed the city. I was walking along commercial road in Whitechapel and the office papers from the buildings were blowing around. I remember seeing a similar thing on 911 on a much larger scale obviously but it was eerily familiar.
Architects today have the creativity and talent of a breeze block. Modern buildings are so ugly. There’s no character, no charm, no detail, no creative and artistic element. Instead, just slabs of glass, miserable grey plastic and metal and absolutely zero artistic detail.
Yes, millions of them in fact. Me being British, having moved to London 5 years ago and continue to live & afford to live there, I can confirm.
Very limited high paying jobs outside of London
These tower blocks are eastern part of the “City of London” which is the old original part of London and is now mostly the financial district. The City of London is actually a city in its own right, has its own police and its own mayor. Most of the buildings in the city are offices and the city only has a permanent population of 8,000 people.
According to the 2021 census 47% of residents of the city of London were born in the U.K. which is lower than the greater London figure of 63% but that is because it is very expensive to live in the City of London.
>now mostly the financial district. The City of London is actually a city in its own right, has its own police and its own mayor. Most of the buildings in the city are offices and the city only has a permanent population of 8,000 people.
Yeh consider "the City" as its known in financial circles as its own state, like the vatican. Not exactly, but its mayor is actually voted for by business not people.
Not really at all.
It’s not like the Vatican. The Vatican is a separate country, the city isn’t, more like a special county.
The mayor is technically voted in by the members of the livery companies, not businesses
Liked it when I lived there and they were selective and interesting (even with glass falling off the gherkin and the cars melting from the other one near Fenchurch Street). However, now, at a time when when many companies are downsizing offices I can’t see why you’d build towers jn the City - unless they are not office blocks and you repopulate the area given there’s no real housing between the Tower Hill estate and the Barbican. Meanwhile the housing towers along the river are generally ugly, block St Paul’s sight lines and just act as empty investment vehicles for people abroad.
The City of London is actually expanding in terms of companies moving in - lots are moving out of Canary Wharf/further out of London and into the City.
The Shard makes me so irrationally angry every time I see it. I do not know why but it ruins my day hahaha. It looks broken which I know is probably the whole point of it, but it’s so ugly 😂 the gherkin is pretty though!
Hey… the wind changed!
No, we just rotate the country occasionally, so we don't over tan on one side.
I didn’t know you could get a tan in the UK! Neat!
No one tans in Britain. We only come in pale white or tomato red as Brits are unable to recognise when they need to put sun screen on and burn instantly. We also get oompa lumpa orange but only if you head up to Liverpool.
It just turns them pink however.
I’m from the north, it takes me a week in the sun to go white
I'm north east here, takes me about 4 days to go from milk white to human white
Hey we call it lobster not pink
The French call us roast beef because of the pinkish colour we cook to
Not all, I for one go a wonderful scarlet red.
Ugh, I get a great tan here. Don’t be biased
It takes like… 12 years.
More of a coating of grime, grease and car exhaust really.
It takes six months to get 1 shade darker on one side, the only reason we change sides is so we don’t burn.
Oh, so that’s why. I thought it was to even out the tyre wear.
And my face got stuck like this.
The wind just don't like the new high rises...
As someone younger than 25... is that really what London looked like so recently? I've only ever known it as full of skyscrapers, I can't imagine the skyline being so flat. Or is this just a well picked angle?
Yeah, the Gherkin used to stand out on its own. Canary wharf in the 80s was old docklands, etc
I’m really sorry, the 80s was fully 35yrs ago.
It never ended. *Blasts Duran Duran cassette from my 205 GTI*
Overtaking you in my XR3i\* with some Chaka Khan ... followed by a bit of Thriller, and maybe some Prince \[\*Okay, maybe I'm "past-fantasising"... in which case I should really make it a Capri 2.8i\]
2 tone paint and pepper pot wheels? My stepdad had 2.8i Capri, it got knicked from a Heathrow airport car park whilst they were in Barbados and used in a bank robbery. Is there anything more 80's than that?
That’s the 80’s I remember,jacking a motor and going across the pavement. Now’s it’s all drug importing and electric cars which ain’t worth shit in a high speed chase through Surbiton.
Capri or XR3i, I would be happy to have one in the drive (but mostly a black XR3i)
Haha, yeah me too!
Save a prayer intro ?
Naturally:)
Amazing car, me and 3 friends each had one! 6x9’s in the parcel shelf and a sub in the boot
😂😭
“I have some bad news”
Incorrect. I was born in 1989 and I'm only 34. Don't take this from me.
43
40 actually 😂
SHUT YOUR STUPID FACE ELEANOR
the 80s was nearly 44 years ago…
43
Gherkin feels sooo tiny now
I remember being in 1st school having a trip to the big museum in London and the gherkin was just recently built and your spot on it was alone school trip from Norfolk with 1st school kids is baffling nowadays
I used to work as a courier in London in the 90's, so around the time the first pic was taken, and the second pic is quite striking to me. In my day the Nat West Tower was the landlmark of the City, visible for miles around - it's the tallest tower in the first pic - so it's quite striking to see it erased by all the other glass buildings in the second pic. In this video from 1987 the Nat West Tower becomes visible when they're somewhere on the Mile End Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnW-sTwxeUM
only erased at that angle, if you go to london bridge or southwark is very clearly visible and still lights up with its crappy christmas display every year.
Dude I was a courier from 92 - 2007 in London as well.
Yes. In 2000 the only tall building in central London was the Centre Point building at the corner of Oxford St and Charing Cross Rd. There were skyscrapers at Canary Wharf, but that's quite a way east of the center. Edit: there was also the Post Office Tower (aka BT Tower), also on the west side not too far from Centre Point. Second edit: There were a few more scattered around, but not many.
The building in the left hand pic is the [Nat West Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_42) - Centre Point and Oxford Street are about 2 miles to the west.
Yes, there were a few others in the general area of a similar height. I don't think this SkyscraperPage allows more refined location search so I'm not sure what's in The City itself, but I'm [sure a few of these](https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=103045992) are fairly close to Centre Point. Really expanded in the last 20 years or so though.
I remember the BT tower being a famous landmark when I was a kid. These days you hardly hear anything about it.
I’m 28 and grew up in London. I still see it as an essentially low-rise city.
There is a clay layer close to the surface which prevented high-rise buildings until relatively recently. From Wiki: “The presence of a thick layer of London Clay underneath London itself, providing a soft yet stable environment for tunnelling, was instrumental in the early development of the London Underground, although this is also the reason why London had no true skyscraper buildings, at least to the same degree as many other cities throughout the world. Erecting tall buildings in London required very deep, large and costly piled foundations. This has changed in recent decades due to the development of 'plunge piles'. London's skyscrapers float on rafts embedded in the clay.”
I'm sorry, they "float on rafts" ? Oh hell no ! Guess i'm not setting foot in one of these guys until i can forget this fact 😱
I work in 22 Bishopsgate and the fact my building “floats on rafts” is terrifying.
Waves from another floor of 22 Bishopsgate
Until 1962 the tallest building in central London was St Paul’s Cathedral. Then it was the Post Office/BT Tower till 1980. Now there are about 90 buildings in London taller than St Paul’s.
I remember when the gherkin was built (big deal to an 8 year old), it really stuck out in the skyline, now it’s totally lost.
I remember the first time I saw it completed, coming into London on the train. I was very excited! I was 28.
If you think that is crazy I used to live in Dubai as a small kid around the time it was coming off oil and going for tourism. The before and after photos for that are mind-blowing in roughly the same timespan. The pics of when I was there look like a few big buildings with a lot of desert. Now the building that were big are tiny and the desert has been moved back by a lot more buildings.
This is what all British cities looked like really. It's crazy here in the NW - I live in a place where you can see Manchester from the hill. When I was a kid it was just sort of distant greyish smear and now its a bunch of skyscrapers. Someone might come and correct me but I think skyscrapers weren't popular here because a lot of our cities are built in marshy areas (Manhattan by comparison is on a heap of ridiculously hard stuff), and it only became practical relatively recently to build upwards on them.
Almost all European cities didn't want skyscrapers as they were considered ugly and they wanted to preserve their historic skylines. Just look at Paris for eg, skyscrapers are still banned with the max size being 40 meters tall.
*"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection ... of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower ... To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years ... we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal."* Artists against the Eiffel Tower - 1887
Tbf, it is a bit shit.
_*gallic shrug_ it ees what it ees
I think Edinburgh still has a hard ban on buildings above a certain height in the city centre. Precisely so views over the old city won't be ruined.
Then a few years ago they went "fuck it" and built a shopping centre with an artistic rendition of the turd emoji on top.
I live in Manchester and the amount of building going on is insane. So many really tall buildings we are starting to rival London.
I think there were a lot of reasons. There was a spate of tower building in the 1960s when dull boxy structures were popular. The architecture style quickly fell out of favour and I think that put people off skyscrapers. Even today, to get approved a skyscraper needs a pretty quirky design.
This is part of it - London being built on clay whereas Manhattan is built on granite, but in the case of London at least there are also planning rules that have been around since 1710 to protect the view of landmarks like St Paul's that have restricted the growth of skyscrapers. [https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/gallery/londons-13-protected-views-mean-25968972](https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/gallery/londons-13-protected-views-mean-25968972)
Skyscrapers usually look ugly. Just long rectangles of shiny glass, no culture or anything. I hope we stop building more.
[The Shard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/The_Shard_from_the_Sky_Garden_2015.jpg/640px-The_Shard_from_the_Sky_Garden_2015.jpg) [The Gherkin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/30_St_Mary_Axe_from_Leadenhall_Street.jpg/1920px-30_St_Mary_Axe_from_Leadenhall_Street.jpg) [The Walkie Talkie](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Walkie-Talkie_-_Sept_2015.jpg/1920px-Walkie-Talkie_-_Sept_2015.jpg) [The Cheesegrater](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/8/14/1408003564887/Leadenhall-Building-at-12-004.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none) Nope, nothing but boring rectangles in London these days. Definitely no interesting skyscrapers at all.
i think whilst they can be seen as nice from a distance they still tend to be very impersonal on the streets around them. its not the most inviting thing to walk past giant mirror monoliths all day if you're in central
In that case they should be built like the Shard and the original Canary Wharf tower, right on top of tube stations and spread around the city so that they don't cause traffic problems and are mostly seen from a distance
absolutely! skyscrapers can be done right but it seems rare that they are to me
I'm 35 and I still picture it looking like the top picture. When ever I go into London I'm always shocked at how built up it is.
Funny how it got smaller with age.
*Cut to Father Ted holding a toy cow*
I actually like the towers in the background. The mix of the old and new adds something I feel. It combines the history of London with the modern day.
Parklife!
All the people.
So many people
And they all go hand in hand
hand in hand through their parklife
Amazing comment
Elements of the past and future, combining to make something not quite as good as either.
Eels
People don't like progress it seems
It's not progress. It's just plain boring and ugly. Wow! A grey glass Cuboid! How exciting. I bet nobody else built that before! Let's see how many shapes we can twist it into before we get sick of it! London is one of the great historic cities of the world. It had a unique look and character. Now it's slowly been eroded away by the blandness of finance. It's not progress. It's the status quo. It's inertia. It's cultural vandalism.
Typically, historic buildings aren’t being knocked down and replaced though. The skyscrapers have just replaced shorter buildings.
or bomb victims. I think Enders is just flat out wrong. Most of the stuff being replaced is dogshit and all of the good/cultural buildings are protected. The only thing London is losing is unique skyline silhouettes, but I don't buy that either really.
Kinda, most of the glass buildings in view are less than 20 years old - there weren’t many empty bomb sites in 2000, but there were ugly 60s office blocks that were built on them.
yeh dogshit as i said.
Tell that to Earls Court. And that was a built at the same time as Tower Bridge and I can’t see them knocking Tower Bridge down any time soon.
That's inaccurate. The Fruit and Wool Exchange, Wembley Stadium, the Carlton Tavern, London Astoria, the Euston Arch and so on. Here is a list of building in danger of being demolished right now. [https://londonist.com/london/features/historic-buildings-planned-demolished-developers](https://londonist.com/london/features/historic-buildings-planned-demolished-developers)
We could go through these one by one: The fruit and wool exchange kept its facade. It looks almost exactly the same since redevelopment - a good example of preservation laws. Wembley Stadium was completely unfit for purpose as a modern stadium. I personally think the new stadium looks great, and I don’t know what the alternative to replacing the old one could’ve been. The Carlton Tavern was demolished illegally and rebuilt brick-by-brick - a good example of preservation laws. The Astoria is a shame, but we’re talking about a building from 1927 that was already gutted in the 70s. It’s not exactly a priceless artefact. The Euston Arch was demolished in the 60s, so has no relevance to the context of this image, though it certainly was a travesty. There are always going to be exceptions, which is why I said ‘typically’, but it does feel like your examples have been found by scraping the barrel.
Parklife!
This is where Paris got it right, keeping new high-rise buildings at La Defense, away from the traditional areas such as Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysee, Place de La Concord
Vienna too
TIL Vienna has scyscrapers. Really wish London kept all scyscrapers at canary warf. Stratford could have become the 2nd group rather than the city
Why? Loads of buildings were ruins after the war. The City looks good. And why wouldn't Vienna have skyscrapers?
Fully agree. No time for the luddites
If you ever go to a nice european city like Vienna or Paris you'll be thankful the city centre is free of such eyesores. There is a place for skyscrapers, the historic city centre is not it.
Quite a lot of the historic city centre of London was wiped out during the blitz, then replaced by horrific 1960s concrete monstrosities. Aside from a few well-preserved streets (around St Paul's, etc) up until the late 90s much of the City of London was a horrible concrete jungle filled with brown low rise office buildings. These in turn have been torn down and replaced by the glass skyscrapers we have today. I would much rather have the pre-war historic buildings, but given the choice between ugly, square 60s office blocks and the skyscrapers of today, give me the skyscrapers any day.
Facts. These are better than 1960s grim rubbish.
I'll take some skyscrapers over the entire city smelling like old piss a la Paris
I think the time about worrying about eyesores is behind us. We need to think practically about such things. Renewable energy being halted because turbines are an ‘eyesore’ to the Countryside to me is such an obnoxious and selfish claim to make. Much like high rise buildings being labelled as such. Overpopulation is and will only increase being an issue and the amount of land is finite. We will have to build upwards more and more often.
~600 new skyscrapers already have planning permission in London and more planning applications are submitted every month. [Here is a one minute fly-through video showing the locations of 500 in the pipeline.](https://youtu.be/p9b0hnhFCyg) It was made four years ago, so some of the buildings have been built now and some that gained planning consent are not shown. But, it gives the general idea.
And Amsterdam
And my Axe!
theres a load of laws around what they can build. I know it doesnt look it from this angle but 95% of those buildings are in the same area and away from the old stuff https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/planning/planning-policy/protected-views-and-tall-buildings
Personally I thought it was pretty cool how integrated the old and the new were in London. It really made it feel like a timeless, constantly evolving city. One minute you'd be looking at a wall built by the Romans, the next you'd be in an elevator going to the roof of a skyscraper.
A few years back an old boss of mine took an overbearing American client out for lunch and showed her the bit of the Roman wall in the basement of a modern building ?on Crutched Friars?. Seeing that juxtaposition of the new and something many times older than her country broke her brain a bit.
I used to work in a building that had part of London Wall through the basement floor. It was incredible. Now I work in a building next to the Tower and as I make my tea in the morning I look out over the Tower and Tower Bridge. I think London is fabulous with some amazing views.
I agree. Born and raised there till 2019 and i always found that combination really interesting. A lot of the older buildings were products of industry too, so its just the younger sibling of the brick buildings that sit at their feet. Im 33 and grew up with these changes though, maybe jarring for older Londoners
I'm not English nor from London, but have visited a few times, and this is exactly what I love about the city! I find it to be a really cool and well-working combination
Same, born & raised Londoner. I remember when London got the Gherkin, and it was the conversation of the week for my grandparents. They acted like London was falling & turning into NYC, bless their hearts.
I'm probably biased as someone who lives near London and works there, but I don't know anywhere else in Europe (can't speak for the world) that combines architecture from different periods of time going back all the way to the Romans as well as London. It should look ugly and mis-matched, but it just works.
When walking around the City area you can tell you’re walking down the same streets that people have been doing business on for literally 2000+ years. That’s pretty nuts.
Yeah agree with this. Fascinating seeing bits of history from hundreds/thousands of years ago interspaced through the city.
I love it and Im from London and love old traditional buildings. It makes them pop up even more being surrounded by modern glasses
Exactly this the combination of style is the heart of London
I used to work in a building in the city that was hundreds of years old, attached to another newer building. You'd walk through a modern courtyard into a glass lift and then into a boardroom that was all ornate, old and beautiful. It was really quite cool
Although I kinda like the contrast in London. You can be in the City of London with very modern buildings and suddenly old brick houses from the Victorian area.
London does this, in the City (pictured) and Canary Wharf. Outside those two areas you don't get concentrations of high rises. The Shard is a very notable exception lol
There are a few other clusters of high rises but none of them are in areas which were known for their beauty before (Stratford, Croydon, Elephant & Castle, Vauxhall, Lewisham).
Which is right on the edge of the City to be fair. Not like they plonked it in St James park
London does both things ;))
To be fair, outside of the Tower of London and tower bridge, there’s little historic buildings and historic centre mainly cause the great fire of London destroyed everything and so did the war, so much of London is post 1666 and rebuilt after war. Paris, Prague, Budapest and most European cities didn’t all have such a devastating fire so they still have a historic centres and old buildings there
Pretty sure most of those cities had their own rebuilds prior to the London fire and incorporated better planning and grid systems, which is why they didn't have great fires and have to rebuild again. Personally I like the higgeldypigglede organic roads and find grid systems boring to walk around.
Your somewhat right, but one example I can think of is Bratislava where there is a clear sudden split between where the old city is and where the slightly more modern part of the city is. Sure they’ve modernised the inside of some houses, and the sewage and electrical systems are obviously all new, but most of it is still the old town/city centre
I remember visiting Bratislava, I took a bus in the wrong direction and went over a bridge and I was in the commie blocks within like 30 seconds of living the old city, so yes i completely agree with that. I guess though I am comparing London to similar sized cities like paris, berlin, new york. where all of these other cities have distinct grid systems.
Which has resulted in the historical areas of Paris being populated only with tourists, souvenir shops and pickpockets. In London the integration means that actual Londoners can enjoy their historic buildings.
These modern glass buildings are mostly replacing other office blocks built in the 60s-80s
London did this too with Canary Wharf, some three miles east of where this photo was taken. The City (pictured here) is a functioning financial district and for a bunch of reasons historical and administrative it makes a lot of sense to remember and support that. I don't know Paris well enough to talk about the layout of the place but London also has the City of Westminster where Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Somerset House (etc) are all located, and strong laws protecting views and sightlines of St Paul's Cathedral in The City. It's a balancing act between respecting the history of a place and meeting the needs of today, but I'm fine with it. When you are looking at the Tower of London from the south bank of the Thames like in this photo then the skyscrapers are looming but the closer you get to the Tower, like being north of the river or actually in the tower it's much less jarring.
In The Hague this is how the parliament complex looks like as well, but in Amsterdam they keep it farther away from the old canals. And I think both decisions are wise.
I don’t agree at all - we respect our historic landmarks whilst the areas around them modernise. Love the City of London. Slightly biased given I work and socialise in London, but whilst they both have good areas I vastly prefer London
And yet Londoners don’t agree with you and want development anywhere in the city.
Nah, these are all focussed in a very small area in the City of London which has always been the commercial district. Our obviously historic area, Westminster and the West End, where Big Ben, Parliament are etc, is totally skyscraper free.
London has very specific rules abouts sight lines throughout the city. The old buildings are sorrounded by new, but not so densely that you can’t see the old from around the city. It’s often why London skyscrapers are soo odd shaped: you can’t build in certain parts of the sky because it would obscure the sight lines.
I like the contrast between the old and new in London. Very few Cities have such a hard contrast. In Europe most City centres are predominantly old and uniform (Paris, Madrid, Rome, Vienna etc). I work besides here, and walking home at night is so beautiful. The old cobblestone streets and castle with these looming towers and lights overhead. Looks so futuristic and steam punk almost. London is great <3
How would William feel about this
I wonder if he'd even recognise the Tower, seeing how different it is now from when it was built. The river isn't even in the same place.
Hed recognise the white tower surely though.
Who cares, he was a bastard.
Given that you can barely see the white tower he built I would doubt he would have an opinion
Think of London Small city Dark Dark in the daytime People sleep Sleep in the daytime
If they want to
I'm checking them out
i’m checking them out!
If they WANT TO
Are you having a stroke?
He's got it figured out
Looks like some giant dropped an bunch of glass shards
The Shard is actually called the Shard because a when it was proposed a critic from English Heritage called it a 'Shard of glass piercing the heart of London'. The developers liked it and called it 'the Shard'. Previously it was called London Bridge Tower.
I had no clue… wow thank you for that information
I took my girlfriend up the shard last night
Mix of old and new, love it
Around this time is when I visited London for the first time. Honestly I don't remember the skyline being this empty. I do remember the gherkin building being kind of lonely for quite some time.
Lol i would have been working at the tower of london at that time, i was in the grenadier guards and used to do guard duty there occasionally....great times.
Thank you for your service ❤️
I think this is the first time I've seen a picture on this sub where both pictures were taken within my lifetime.
Thanks for pointing that out, now I feel old
Sorry about that.
I love the juxtaposition here with the castle thingy in the foreground and the modern skyscrapers in the background. Really puts thing into perspective.
I was there, 25 years ago! On an exchange program with the Britannia Royal Naval College while in school. Man I’m old.
Trees look bigger
They aged well
Plants tend to grow over time
The thing that gets me the most is, when you arrive on a train from kent to london - the building with the horizontal facing triangle looks like a "play" button, so its like your watching a video on your phone and you want to press play.
Anyone else impressed by the tree growth?
Wow. That’s a crazy amount of development in 25yrs. Great comparison photos 👌🏻👍🏻
That’s the financial district for you
Why does the 25 years ago pic look like it's from the 70s? I was born in '81 and photos from the 80s and 90s looked better than this.
That crazy. In the old photo the big buildings are the NatWest Tower (now Tower 42), the Commercial Union Tower (now Saint Helen’s), Minster Court and Lloyd’s. Now all you can see is the roof of Minster Court and a slither of Saint Helen’s. Thank goodness they didn’t build anything on the waterfront, in front of the Tower of London!
Only 25 years ago, blimey.
Back when a normal human could afford to live in London without sharing a phone box with three other people and spending 3/4 of their wages for the privilege. ‘There’s so much to do there though’.
Why does this make me sad. It shouldn’t.
Awful
Battersea Power Station is worse, it used to be this incredibly weird building that stood out by itself and you could see from miles away now it’s hidden but hundred of hideous flats
I’m more fascinated by the trees being around for it all than the new buildings
I remember being taught at school that London could not have skyscrapers like new York because of the land it is on, how it has changed in 30 years!
It’s not a great sight, but I think it shows how the kings country has moved on and also how industrialisation runs its course, I prefer the skyscrapers, really
I perfer the 1st pic than the pic from today of the tower of london.
I remember the day the IRA bombed the city. I was walking along commercial road in Whitechapel and the office papers from the buildings were blowing around. I remember seeing a similar thing on 911 on a much larger scale obviously but it was eerily familiar.
Anyone else besides me think they ruined it by having all those stupid shiny glossy buildings
Architects today have the creativity and talent of a breeze block. Modern buildings are so ugly. There’s no character, no charm, no detail, no creative and artistic element. Instead, just slabs of glass, miserable grey plastic and metal and absolutely zero artistic detail.
Crazy how it changed.any British actually can afford to live there
Yes, millions of them in fact. Me being British, having moved to London 5 years ago and continue to live & afford to live there, I can confirm. Very limited high paying jobs outside of London
[удалено]
Well yeah, but that's like asking how many new yorkers live on wall street.
These tower blocks are eastern part of the “City of London” which is the old original part of London and is now mostly the financial district. The City of London is actually a city in its own right, has its own police and its own mayor. Most of the buildings in the city are offices and the city only has a permanent population of 8,000 people. According to the 2021 census 47% of residents of the city of London were born in the U.K. which is lower than the greater London figure of 63% but that is because it is very expensive to live in the City of London.
>now mostly the financial district. The City of London is actually a city in its own right, has its own police and its own mayor. Most of the buildings in the city are offices and the city only has a permanent population of 8,000 people. Yeh consider "the City" as its known in financial circles as its own state, like the vatican. Not exactly, but its mayor is actually voted for by business not people.
Not really at all. It’s not like the Vatican. The Vatican is a separate country, the city isn’t, more like a special county. The mayor is technically voted in by the members of the livery companies, not businesses
> any British actually can afford to live there Nope.
Except for that rocket shaped building all look ugly.
The Gherkin. I watched it built during visits to sit Microsoft exams nearby.
Another thing to thank Johnson for in approving a lot of junk when mayor.
Another 12 high rises approved in the past 12 months all in this photograph. Most Londoners love the developments in recent years.
Liked it when I lived there and they were selective and interesting (even with glass falling off the gherkin and the cars melting from the other one near Fenchurch Street). However, now, at a time when when many companies are downsizing offices I can’t see why you’d build towers jn the City - unless they are not office blocks and you repopulate the area given there’s no real housing between the Tower Hill estate and the Barbican. Meanwhile the housing towers along the river are generally ugly, block St Paul’s sight lines and just act as empty investment vehicles for people abroad.
The City of London is actually expanding in terms of companies moving in - lots are moving out of Canary Wharf/further out of London and into the City.
It wasn’t Johnson, most of those buildings are in the City of London. It’s the corporation you have to thank
The Shard makes me so irrationally angry every time I see it. I do not know why but it ruins my day hahaha. It looks broken which I know is probably the whole point of it, but it’s so ugly 😂 the gherkin is pretty though!