Renewal

[MOCAŠ]

In common with most major cities, London is constantly undergoing a process of renewal: on any given day there’s scarcely a street you can walk down without finding at least one building undergoing extensive renovation or replacement, evidenced by an exoskeleton of scaffolding and hoardings. While such arrangements are usually quite dull and functional, they can occasionally be elegant, inspiring or even puzzling.

So, in recognition of the often overlooked work of the scaffolder, this thread will be devoted to a few hand-picked examples, along with a little info about the buildings that lie behind the poles.

First one coming up any minute now...

 

[MOCAŠ]

50 Queen Anne's Gate

I’ve no idea where this ranks in the annals of great scaffolding endeavours, but wrapping the entire bulk of 50 Queen Anne’s Gate – the former Home Office – so that it looks like some kind of gigantic wedding cake was certainly no mean feat. This daunting task was undertaken in 2005 to facilitate a three-year refurbishment programme aimed at giving the building, now known as 102 Petty France, a new lease of life.

When New Labour swept to power in 1997, the building was barely 20 years old but was already being denounced as being unfit for purpose – an eerily prescient charge that would later be aimed at the running of the Home Office itself. Few who worked there had a good work to say for the place, claiming it suffered from sick building syndrome and was actually having a demoralising effect on the workforce. Alongside this was the simple fact that its anachronistic design made it very difficult – and expensive – to maintain, with accommodating modern networking and telecommunications infrastructure being a particular challenge. Perhaps even more of a problem, given its considerable bulk and status as a prominent government headquarters, was its abysmal environmental performance.

As the new millennium approached, it seemed that the unloved building’s days were numbered. The government had decided to build a new Home Office under a PFI initiative, on the site of what was then the DEFRA headquarters in Marsham Street. Work finally started in 2003 as the wrecking balls moved in on the Marsham Street site and a new Terry Farrell-designed building started to rise from the rubble.

This left Land Securities, the owners of the soon to be vacated Queen Anne’s Gate building, with the question of what to do with it. Many were signed up to the idea that it had no future, so thoughts were initially centred on demolition. However, there was a groundswell of opinion that this prime example of the Brutalist style – perhaps the last of its kind to have been built in London – should be preserved. Besides, demilition would not have been straightforward, particularly as the building’s northern-eastern perimeter wall was all-but propping up a terrace of 300-year-old Grade 1 listed houses that had already been treated for a worrying degree of subsidence and would be unlikely to survive further major disruption. Eventually, it was decided to completely strip and refurbish the whole building to bring the accommodation up to modern standards. The bravery of this decision was reflected in the name given to the works: Project Lionheart.

And so it was in 2005, once the last of the Home Office workers had decamped to their award-winning new premises at 2 Marsham St, that work began on constructing one of the most elaborate scaffolding arrangements I've seen. One can only imagine how many poles, couplers and boards must have gone into its assembly: at times it seemed as though the project must have been consuming every spare component for miles around. Once in place, the entire structure, which incorporated fixed staircases and lifts to speed the delivery of men and materials to the 10-14 levels it served, was swathed in a gleaming white shrouding material.

When the covers came off in 2008, what emerged was a new base for the Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Justice, which had been formed the previous year to take on responsibility for prisons and criminal justice, in response to the aforementioned claims of institutional incompetence within the Home Office. The passer-by would have noticed little difference in the building, save for a thoroughly cleaned facade with new windows and the removal of a vehicular entrance from the Petty France frontage. However, hidden from view, the building’s central courtyard had undergone a remarkable refurbishment, with the addition of a glass-walled canopy extension providing a new atrium leading off the reception area; and what had previously been a utilitarian car park (hence that vehicular access) was now a pleasantly hard-landscaped amenity area for staff, with neat rows of tables for al fresco lunching. Its owners also claimed that the building’s environmental performance had undergone a similarly impressive transformation, although somewhat embarrassingly it still carries a bottom-of-the-class 'G' rating on the official DEFRA scale.

 

[rascalmaster]

Wow

 

[MOCAŠ]

Mini Park Lane showroom

If you’ve visited the flagship Mini showroom on Park Lane at any time since it opened in December 2004, you can’t have failed to notice that it is half-hidden behind extensive scaffolding that rises to engulf the whole building. At street level, the poles have been dressed in black cladding in an attempt to minimise their impact, with just a few splashes of bright orange as a nod towards Health and Safety. In fact, this scaffolding has been in place for the best part of a decade now, yet you are unlikely to have ever seen any work being undertaken. So what’s going on?

The building in question is Aldford House – a substantial block completed in 1932 that inherited its name from the large private house it replaced. The residential apartments that comprise its upper floors are accessed from an entrance in Park Street to the rear, while the ground floor frontage facing onto Park Lane (and Hyde Park beyond) provides prime commercial space that, over the years, has been home to a couple of banks and a variety of car showrooms, including those of car modifiers Rapport Group and Chameleon Cars. By 2000, the ground floor housed a large BMW showroom run by the prestigious Park Lane Group (PLG), flanked by the remaining bank (a longstanding branch of Midland/HSBC) on one side and the London Porsche Centre on the other.

The scaffolding was erected by the residential block’s maintenance company towards the end of 2001, to facilitate around £4m worth of much needed repairs that were scheduled to take up to two years to complete. However, the maintenance company went into liquidation in 2004 before any of the work had even been started, and a long-running legal battle between the new maintenance trustees and the residential tenants has ensued. Around the time the scaffolding went up, HSBC had moved out of the block and the former bank premises had become semi-derelict.

Meanwhile, Park Lane Group had its eye on expansion. Ever since the new Mini’s launch in 2001, BMW (GB) Ltd had been following a policy of selling its new baby within existing BMW dealerships but by 2003 the revitalised Mini brand was firmly established and, with ambitious plans to extend the range, BMW had decided to set up a dedicated network of Mini showrooms. At the time, PLG was already running its BMW Motorrad (motorcycle) and tax-free sales operations from showrooms in the adjacent Fountain House (which incidentally has a claim to fame, in that its extensive underground garaging was the filming location for the scene in The Italian Job where Charlie Croker collects his Aston Martin from storage).

In 2003, PLG took out a lease on the entire ground floor and basement of Aldford House, and set about converting their existing showroom and the former bank in the block into a dedicated Mini showroom with a separate, smaller unit alongside to which BMW Motorrad would relocate, leaving Fountain House to serve as its main BMW car showroom. This involved substantial alterations to the ground floor and basement areas of Aldford House, including constructing a unifying new frontage and extracting the old HSBC vault from the basement - all of which had to be done around the ever-present scaffolding.

After the work on the new showrooms was completed in 2004, Porsche remained at the southern corner of Aldford House as tenants of PLG for a while, before relocating to a larger showroom in Davies Street, overlooking Berkeley Square; BMW’s export and military sales division filled the space they had vacated.

The scaffolding, on the other hand, looks like it’s going nowhere...

 

[MOCAŠ]

6-9 Buckingham Gate

In 2009 there was a sad news item about a well-established living (or green) wall in New York that had been killed off following the erection of scaffolding. This story struck a chord with me, as an extensive and much loved passion vine had met a similar fate during some maintenance work at the rear of my house a few years earlier. I had begun to regard scaffolding as the enemy of all living things.

As if to prove me wrong, though, the company refurbishing these houses in Buckingham Gate, SW1, turned the tables by actually encasing their scaffolding in a well-stocked green wall, showing that building frames and flora can co-exist in harmony.


The wall was provided by Sussex-based specialists BioTecture, and contains a deft blend of four exotic plants in varying shades of green:

• Soleirolia soleirolii (a type of nettle)
• Euonymus fortunei ‘minimus’ (Dwarf wintercreeper)
• Liriope muscari ‘Big Blue’ (Monkey grass)
• Pachysandra terminalis (a type of boxwood).

The walls are constructed in sections and planted off-site, and come complete with a built-in hydroponic watering and feeding system.

It certainly makes an arresting sight, and its aesthetic appeal was no doubt a major consideration due to the site’s location being just across the road from Buckingham Palace. However, the green approach apparently has several other valuable benefits, including sound attenuation, air filtration, reduced thermal load on the building and the instant (if temporary) provision of a habitat for wildlife.

Behind this ecological wonder lies a group of four Georgian-style houses (actually built in Victorian times) that are being converted by architects Paul Davis + Partners into nine self-contained residential properties, ranging from a studio apartment to a seven-bedroom house, with a major sub-basement excavation to provide underground parking for the eventual residents.

 

[Lady]

Interesting. Thank you.

 

[NOMONEYBUTAMERC]

I was about to suggest that you get out more . In retrospect to these posts , maybe you should stay in more !

 

[oldcro]

Great post, scaffolding is a great skill much underestimated.

 

[crockers]

I gather Warsaw is famous for it's scaffolding.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Shard London Bridge

Thanks to forum member Noodle-Pulp, who has kindly provided the above photos, we have the opportunity to venture south of the river to take a look at the construction of what will, on completion next year, be the EU's tallest building. The view on the left was taken just before Christmas, while that on the right was taken last Wednesday.

As can be seen in the photos, the tower - designed by architect Renzo Piano - is being built around a central concrete core, with a new floor appearing every few days throughout 2010. The tower's tip will be eventually be seperated from its base by over 1000ft of twisting, glass-walled pyramid, its 72 floors housing a mixture of office space, restaurants and, on the upper floors, apartments offering matchless views of London and its environs. It will be topped-off with a 200-ft spire (effectively adding another 15 storeys), which will contain the plant required to service the rest of the building.

The Shard replaces Southwark Towers, a 1970s office block, and forms the centrepiece of the redevelopment of the area around London Bridge station known as London Bridge Quarter, which will see it joined by another smaller tower and will also encomapss the refurbishment of LondonBridge station.

Further information and photographs can be found on the Shard's Wikipedia page.

 

[Stratman]

The Red Fort (Lal Qila) Delhi.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Bamboo scaffolding is amazingly effective when done properly.

Hong Kong's Four Seasons Hotel under construction in 2003, swathed in bamboo:

 

[MrML]

Anyone got board yet ?
Will will be in a coupler posts...

 

[MrML]

This theads going down the tubes...

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

This theads going down the tubes...

I'm afraid I cannot support your view, it would never hold up on closer inspection

 

[proser]

Regarding the Shard building, how do you get the crane off the top of the building ?

 

[219]

This is an interesting topic with some impressive photos .

For my part , my only experience of scaffolding has been the erection and use of a 5 metre tower for maintenance of theatrical lighting etc. I suspect my PASMA certificate may have expired - note to myself - must check .

The other side of the coin , though , is that when things go wrong with scaffolding , they tend to go very wrong indeed .

I remember being told by colleagues in a company I used to work for of a portable tower being moved within a building when one wheel gave way , and the whole thing crashed through the glass frontage of the building into the street outside !

I remember hearing about , and subsequently seeing the wreckage of , a major collapse in Edinburgh's financial quarter where a number of workers lost their lives .

I have also once had to attend and photograph a smaller collapse in which one worker lost his life and another was rescued with only minor injuries .

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

Regarding the Shard building, how do you get the crane off the top of the building ?

They dismantle the crane on the roof, and swing the parts down on a winch to a truck below, but also sometimes they seal them off in the building in case they need to use them again.

In the same way that they get the crane up there (using one crane lower down to lift the other one up - the reverse is done on the way down).
Similar thing here.