St Mary Axe 2013

St Mary Axe

City architecture

Eldon Street

Reflections on Bishopsgate

Bishopsgate

New Year

Earlsfield

The New Year brings...a new you? Or more of the same?

Flying buttress

Broadgate Tower

Broadgate tower is built over underground railway lines from Liverpool Street Station so instead of deep foundations it sits on a concrete and steel raft  The flying buttresses are structural, not decorative.

Rainbow or Pride

Broadgate

Number Five has had a rainbow added to it's usual plain exterior. Summer fun or Pride?

Bank in the abstract

Threadneedle Street

This is what most people see every day of the Bank, walking past or on the bus.  You need to be on the other side of the junction to see the imitation Greek temple facade.

Cannon Street blues

Cannon Street from Southwark Bridge

Trains and boats, but no planes, although someone did put forward building a helipad on the roof.  The towers are Grade Two listed and the glass city rises up behind

Cannon Street

Walbrook

Morning sunlight turns restaurant glass into mirrors

Light reflections

Snowden Street

The alleys at the bottom of the City's tall buildings aren't always dark.  If the alley is wide enough then reflected light from the windows reflects light and making patterns on the opposing wall.  But if it is shade from the heat you're looking for, you might not appreciate them.

Mixmatch

Errol Street

The silver birch I get.  Planting trees in London, especially in East London can only be a 'Good Thing'.  But why couldn't someone colour match the overpaint on the wall? The original is mauve/light purple, a blue bias, and the other distinctly pink! Or is this 'Art' but not as I understand it?

New year, new you

Amphitheater at Guildhall

This is what is left of a Roman amphitheater discover underneath the Guildhall, complete with 20th century visuals. Good luck with the new fitness regime and however brutal - hopefully you won't end up dead, unlike these competitors.

Merry Christmas

The church in the background is St Lawrence Jewry, near Guildhall.  Re-built by Wren after the Great Fire.  Except you are probably sick of Christmas by now.  But not the time off.  Enjoy!

To the city

Hoxton High Street

The City stops suddenly, the architecture changes from one side of the street to the other.

Sculptured river

Queen Victoria Strret

Cristina Iglesias specialises in sculptures that look like running water.  This one is outside the Bloomberg HQ, where the Walbrook used to flow

100 Bishopsgate

Camomile Street

Another glass box, but this one has an angle part way up.  I'm sure the architects have many more impressive words to describe how they came to this design, but that's what it is.

South to St Mary Axe

Norton Folgate

The City stops abruptly at it's border with Norton Folgate.  The developers are doing their best to expand the money northwards, but it's in luxury flats not businesses.

Deceptively quiet

Cheapside

A snapshot, a split second, the road looks empty, busy commute are you kidding?  Lots of people hidden in the shadows and the vans and buses arrive a moment later

Old, new and unfinished

Bishopsgate

Tower 42 (in the background)is still the most elegant of the skyscrapers in the city, the new builds, reflected here, don't come anywhere near it.

The Prancing Pony

I was wandering down Petticoat Lane way, back towards the city, but I have no idea which street I was on.  It's one of the pleasures of the lunchtime walk, going down the road you didn't go down last time.