Just because I’ll be right in a window position this Thursday eve – having drinkies with friends. Half way up the new, looking down on the old. Should be a goody.
Cheers y’all.
Weekly Photo Challenge (Juxtaposition)
Tag Archives: the Shard
Travel Theme (Through)
Feeling rather pleased with my latest header pic I am continuing the photo topic for Ailsa’s weekly photo challenge – through.
Right at the top of the Shard, on the viewing platform (only open if the weather isn’t too inclement) one experiences a sort of inside/outside in-the-sky experience. The shards are right above my head, as are the gaps in the shards, as is the sky (this day the same colour as the shards) and through the shards, gaps and grey sky came a plane.
Other throughs right here at Where’s my backpack?
Weekly Photo Challenge (From Lines to Patterns)
This topic has come at a perfect time for Mrs Carmichael because she has been bursting to pen a post about her recent sky high meeting with two fellow bloggers, JB who writes about his lederhosen attired adventures in The Adventures of Justin Beaver and his minder, The Eternal Traveller who is, as I type, probably dieting on waffles and Belgian chocolate.
But back to the challenge. On a rainy Monday we scaled the tallest building in London to look at the view and snap a few pics if the cloud cover allowed. It just about did and I found lines and patterns aplenty.
A selection follows:
Shard nuts and bolts of building (mrscarmichael)
training lines (mrscarmichael)
Shard patterns in the sky (mrscarmichael)
Shard quizzed whilst waiting in line (mrscarmichael)
moving line (mrscarmichael)
And of course the gallery would not be complete without a photo of Justin hunting for my car in the wasteland car park 72 floors below.
Now I know I have been rude about the Shard in a previous post (see below) and it is still not my favourite modern building by a long, long margin but something rather magical happened as I got back to the extortionately priced parking puddle and my Fiat Bambina.
The sun came out and Mrs Shard put on her best patterned dress for me.
I’m rather pleased with that one.
Related post follows:
Weekly Photo Challenge (The World Through My Eyes) A Rant About the Shard
Weekly Photo Challenge (The World Through My Eyes) A Rant About the Shard
If Mrs Carmichael could draw, design and manage the simplest mathematical problem she might, just might have been an architect.
I love good design and disagree vehemently with Prince Charles who views all things modern as ‘carbuncles’. Thank goodness he has a couple of hundred old houses/palaces/castles to live in then.
Any hoo, back to me and my love of new architecture.
London now boasts some amazing modern structures: lloyds; the Gherkin; City Hall to name but three.
But there is one that forces me to agree with Chaz. The Shard is the carbuncle of all carbuncles and punctures the London skyline with vicious and unkindly intent.
Here it is again.
Through my eyes this is one ugly mother of an edifice and does nothing to make England’s capital city better, bigger, grander. To me it says;
“Here I am. Hark at me. I am rich and you are less so. ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye mighty and despair.'”
The business men from Qatar who own this white elephant are struggling to fill both the office space (apparently the wrong shape for offices) and the floors allocated to £50,000,000 apartments too. At night it stands dark and unloved, save the extortionately priced viewing gallery and restaurant at the summit.
But to my mind it’s worse than this. I understand the Shard is the only structure to break St Paul’s wonderful sight lines which have been preserved for many a long year.
From Richmond, Primrose Hill, Greenwich, Blackheath and more Londoners should be able to see St Paul’s Cathedral in all its majestic (yes, Prince C, I agree with you on this landmark) glory.
And we have allowed a line to be broken. Shame on us.
I’ll let the prescient Percy Bysshe have the final word. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
being mrscarmichael 