The City as Sculpture: From Skyline to Plinth, 2002

Should architects invite the sculptor to the skyline?
Architects are not sculptors. Architects might occasionally think they are, but sculptors perceive form, surface and light quite differently.
Film appears to do this very successfully in exploring the outer limits of the architectural/urban image – Metropolis and Bladerunner immediately come to mind.
This raises another question – how important is the skyline?
Before computer simulation, it was not so easy to imagine all the perspective views, but now with computer manipulation of images, this exercise is so much easier. A couple of years ago, Hays Davidson produced an image of new towers in London – towers that could be constructed in and around the City of London by site assembly and without contravening the protected view corridors of St. Paul’s dome.

Recently I was surprised to find that English Heritage did not have a standard issue of the ‘protected views’ of St Paul’s Cathedral. Each time, the architect has to obtain his own photographs from the specific point – waiting for the clear view – and construct his own cones of view from the co-ordinates. The city’s skyline does not change that fast. I am sure English Heritage could produce and sell an ‘official view’ digital information pack to architects (with a five yearly update).

Planners, ostensibly the guardians of our cities for the past century, are under strain. There are fewer of them and attracting those few to work in local authorities is becoming almost impossible. Compared to other careers, planning is slipping away into oblivion. Thatcherism triggered this demise. Serving society on low pay and with increasingly limited budgets was no longer attractive.

During this period, most of us silently stood by as the ‘non-plan’ policy exploited the Isle of Dogs and created a separated city skyline for London. We know that it is borrowed from Battery Park, NY – the developer and principal architect are the same, as too was their thinking. The classical pyramid composition of tall buildings at Canary Wharf – even the top of its centre building being a pyramid -combines with its axial planning and grid. This manifest hierarchy is a traditional form that feels isolated in its surroundings and somewhat artificial within.
The key players operate in a global market, so why change your thinking or your architecture? Why shouldn’t it mark a new (York) skyline for London?
It makes evident the fine line between democracy and autocracy.

From the skyline, we may be able to read the economic geography of the city if not its geology, its demographic migration if not its history. This is perhaps why we take to the water, or the hill, or the skies to orientate ourselves – to get out before getting involved, or to remind ourselves who and where we are. This is why the skyline matters.
The skyline is man-made so why should we not make it beautiful?

There is little tension induced from a distance, but inside all hell can break loose. Within this interior,
Richard Cork suggested that sculpture has to compete with the metal dynamic.