| Mark Saunders inquest: How evening of celebration turned to tragedy It was an evening when Mark Saunders should have been savouring success, dining with one of the biggest names in television. telegraph.co.uk |
Police in 24-hour Twitter project Greater Manchester Police started using Twitter to highlight the amount of work they deal with bbc.co.uk |
Spending Review 2010: Live State pension age will reach 66 by 2020, new universal credit will replace benefits and BBC licence fee will be frozen for six years. telegraph.co.uk |
In the shadow of the Shard | David Shariatmadari Skyscrapers with silly names are sprouting in London again, but is this 'boom' really a positive economic sign?There's a mini-boom in construction. You may not have realised this. But I'm surrounded by it, and have a good idea of what kind of boom it'll turn out to be. I live halfway between a building named for its resemblance to an electric razor, and one known as the Shard. Twice a week, I cycle over London Bridge, and risk life and limb craning my neck to look at a megastructure taking shape in front of the 1866 train sheds. Its bottom half is now sheathed in glass, a concrete core sprouting from the centre. On this, stencilled in blue, are the floor numbers – if I squint, I can see we're up to about 56, out of 72. Guys hospital, the Shard's next-door neighbour, for a long time the tallest building in the area, now looks a bit stumpy.This is London's most Bladerunner-esque building, looming over a neighbourhood of narrow streets and ancient relics. It is as incongruous as anything I've seen, the steeples of local churches offering up their own attempts at awe-inspiring height and seeming feeble in comparison. But this is increasingly how the capital is going to look. A predicted shortage of commercial office space in the coming years has seen property developers asking architects to dust off their plans. Those buildings that skyscraper geeks (a rare but dedicated sub-category of internet obsessive) swooned over have been resuscitated. Their silly names, meant to give the impression that they're held in some affection by the public, but probably dreamt up by PRs, are in the papers again: the Cheesegrater, the Walkie Talkie, the Pinnacle.The aesthetics range from the intimidatingly impressive to the grotesque: together, they look dizzying, hard angles jarring with biomorphous curves. What happens when you put a load of "icons" together? Do they cease to be iconic? Do they look ridiculous? Londoners are about to find out.The way buildings look, which is always what monopolises the debate, isn't everything. Of course aesthetics are important – they play a huge part in how we experience the places we live. And in one sense, these buildings are seductive. They have the ability to make you stare up at them in wonder, gigantic public sculptures that dazzle for existing so far beyond the scale of everyday life. But what are they really? Strip away the shiny skin and you have humdrum offices piled on top of one another – in Owen Hatherley's memorable phrase, "the aesthetic tuning of stacked trading floors". People, in this context, are reduced to the level of worker ants, expensive but necessary components in the enterprise of making money. If you remember the scene at the end of Working Girl, where the camera pulls back to reveal that Melanie Griffith's hard-won office is one of hundreds, all exactly the same, you'll know what I mean.So from my bicycle, this "boom" doesn't look like its fruits are going to be evenly spread. And construction analysts seem to agree: the most visible signs of the upturn so far are in and around the City of London, and in that it reflects the imbalances in our economy as a whole. Will growth be driven again by a frothy financial services sector, with all the risks that entails? Skyscrapers may sprout like mushrooms (smaller versions might even spread to cities such as Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester, as they did at the height of the last bubble). But will there be anything in it for us, apart from the thrill of looking up at some new glass spike, and feeling small?Construction industryReal estateCommercial propertyLondonArchitectureDavid Shariatmadariguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Killer Howell gassed wife on sofa The wife of killer Colin Howell called out to her eldest son as her husband gassed her to death, a court has heard. bbc.co.uk |