That 2012 will be ahigh profile year for London architecture, as the city gets dolled up toreceive the world's media and sportspeople for the Olympics, is something of anunderstatement.
The most obviouschange will be seen from the images beamed around the globe of the buildingswhere the sporting dramas are to play out, putting east London on the worldstage. And it will not be the trendy, expensive inner east London that theGovernment hopes will one day be Britain's Silicon Valley; foreign journalistswill be reading up about Hackney Wick, Leytonstone, Stratford and Pudding MillLane to add local colour to their coverage of the 2012 Games.
I often spend timewalking around the fringes of the Olympic site and struggle to imagine thedeserted streets and towpaths of Hackney Wick thronged with tourists and sportsfans. But across London in the coming months there will be a perceptibleremoval of hoardings and cessation of inconvenient and noisy work on pavements,roads, parks and buildings.
It will also be theyear when we are bombarded with PR about the value of all these projects. Thiswe will need to be attentive to. The public will begin to ask tough questionsabout where its money has been spent as we continue to see libraries and otherpublic facilities close and high streets suffer with the economy. It will be ayear to celebrate east London but also a year that throws into relief thepoverty and underinvestment suffered by that part of the city for generationsbefore this one.
The Olympicbuildings have been finished for some months and it looks as though theremainder of the site, now titled Queen Elizabeth Park - the paths, the bridgesand the rest of the stuff that will tie the space together - will also becompleted on time. The process of watching the site develop has been likewatching a picnic being laid out before the rug.
I suspect duringGames time, after July 27, it will feel as ordered as a theme park, anidealised landscape with the sports venues scattered around, with the tightestof security and the complete control of branding. This may not be a bad thingbut for this summer, at least, the Park is likely to feel more like a"visitor experience" than a new piece of London.
However, it may bethat this is a temporary sensation, a preview of the real thing. When theParalympic Games finish on September 9, the builders will once again move in toturn the Park into a publicly accessible space, and it is not entirely clearhow long that will take and what effect it will have on the area. Securityinfrastructure will have to be removed along with temporary bridges and otherenabling works (such as the many kiosks, railings and entry gates) designed todeal with an event the size of the Olympics. A network of cycle paths will beadded in the north of the landscaped Park, as well as football pitches andallotments. These are presumably fairly straightforward projects; what couldtake years is the conversion of the Olympic venues and other buildings to beturned over for public or business use. So, for Londoners, 2012 will see manymore months of building work than weeks of sport.
Some parts of thePark will change quickly, particularly in the north eastern area, towardsLeyton, where the first new housing will be built in tidy modern terracesbetween the Athletes' Village and the Velodrome. Other locations, such as themedia centre in the north-west of the Park and the areas towards Bromley-by-Bowin the south, will be slower, and the Olympic Park Legacy Company faces achallenge to maintain momentum in what is a 25-year project. There willinevitably be some for whom change does not come quickly enough.
If this willundoubtedly be the year of east London, it will also be a year of contrasts.Many places will continue to feel the pain of disinvestment, and at the sametime politicians will use a collection of high-profile projects to prove thatthere are still those ready to invest in the city.
Take the RoyalDocks cable car, the Emirates Air Line. This will be completed in the summerand link the O2 with the Royal Docks and the ExCeL Exhibition Centre (locatedby the waterside, in front of the Royal Docks), or the new cable car stationsof Emirates Greenwich Peninsula and Emirates Royal Docks, if you prefer to usethe full, corporately sponsored names. The Emirates Air Line has alreadyappeared on the Tube map, the first piece of corporate branding to do so, andthe northernmost of the three huge steel pylons that will hold up the cableshas already been completed. The usefulness of this project will depend onwhether you are one of the very few who need to commute between North Greenwichand the Royal Docks. Transport for London says it will move 2,500 people perhour. But in truth, this bizarre piece of infrastructure is intended forbusiness people using the facilities of ExCeL and the O2 as a conference centrethat spans the river.
The residents ofNorth Woolwich and Beckton might feel justified in asking where they stand inthe hierarchy of priorities in the vaunted Royal Docks regeneration effort. Thecable car feels more like a tourist attraction than a serious attempt toimprove the north/south connections of the area.
The Royal Dockswill be one place in London that should look significantly different this timenext year. Along with the cable car, the so-called Siemens Crystal building, byWilkinson Eyre Architects, will be completed at the western end of the dock, avisitor centre and temple to that company's view on how best to make citiesenvironmentally sustainable. Also, temporary projects such as the Royal DocksBaths by Studio Egret West will jolly up long-vacant sites such as SilvertownQuays in an attempt to entice Olympic visitors to add the area to their touristitineraries.
Beyond east London,because there seems to be the political will to force through much-neededhousing development across London despite the economy, by this time next yearwe will see more progress on large housing masterplans such as GreenwichPeninsula (2,000 homes by 2015), Brent Cross, the Olympic Park, and the ratherchaotic development of Vauxhall/Nine Elms. The latter is one of the hotspots ofLondon property development, with opportunistic planning applications forsometimes very tall residential buildings being made by various developers.
Examples includethe 36-storey Vauxhall Sky Gardens Tower designed by Amin Taha Architects forFrasers Properties and the two towers, the taller of which reaches 41 storeys,proposed for the Vauxhall Island Site by developer Kylun. But the BatterseaPower Station site will once again see no progress, thanks to its owner, Irishdeveloper Real Estate Opportunities, going bust.
The City of Londonwill continue its relentless rise higher: the helter skelter-shaped PinnacleTower on Bishopsgate is coming out of the ground already and will change theskyline once again as it rises to its full 288m height. Rogers Stirk Harbour's122 Leadenhall Street is also under construction and will eventually rise to225 metres and Rafael Vinoly's 20 Fenchurch Street should also start to showitself in 2012. Other very visible central London buildings to keep an eye oninclude the Shard at London Bridge, which will be almost complete by this timenext year, and Blackfriars station. This has been taking shape for the past twoyears behind hoardings, but will see the station extending across the river togive passengers direct access to the south side of the river from the station.
While politiciansdream of airports in the Thames Estuary and line up to take credit for theOlympics, it is more modest projects that I await most keenly. I'm lookingforward to two small cultural buildings by Pringle Richards SharrattArchitects: the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton and the William MorrisGallery in Walthamstow.
They are bothrefurbishments that promise to bring two fascinating institutions to life andare of indisputable value to London. Around the fringes of the Olympics,younger, ambitious architects will try to spin gold from straw, using limitedbudgets to bring some improvement to areas neighbouring the Olympics. Look outfor the White Building in Hackney Wick by David Kohn Architects and ExplorationArchitecture, a new community arts venue, as well as the ongoing streetscapeworks by Muf nearby.
London will feellike a significantly different place this time next year, because of theunavoidable impact of the Olympic Park. But, architecturally, it will be atwo-speed city for the foreseeable future. Politicians have a lot of work to doto convince everyone that the Games and associated architectural hooplaoutweighs the pain of dwindling budgets for public services and publicprojects.
Reference: Evening Standard on January 2012
First-time home costs 'blighting lives'
Young Londonerskeen to get on the housing ladder need to earn a minimum of £31,714 to affordan average starter home in the cheapest postcode in the capital.
In more expensiveparts of the city they would need an income of up to £80,000 to be able to geta modest toehold on the property ladder, according to the National HousingFederation.
Its report, HomeTruths, found that to secure a first-time home priced at £148,000 in Barkingand Dagenham, the cheapest borough in the capital, would require a salary ofalmost £32,000.
This figure isbased on taking on a 75 per cent mortgage, so they would therefore also need toscrape together a deposit of almost £8,000.
In Westminster, astarter home costs £380,000 - meaning would-be buyers need both an £81,429salary and savings of around £95,000, assuming they borrowed at the recommendedrate of 3.5 times annual salary.
A first-time buyerwith an ambition to live in Greenwich, where starter homes cost around£190,000, would need a salary of just over £40,000 and a deposit of more than£47,000.
To live in Hackney,where average starter homes cost £225,000, they would need to earn £48,124 anda deposit of more than £56,000.
And, in more badnews for beleaguered would-be homeowners, a report by financial advice firmInvestorbee.com has found that an average London worker, saving 10 per cent oftheir salary, would need to wait 19.6 years to buy an average-priced home."High housing costs are blighting lives in London," said KateDodsworth, assistant director at the federation.
"The averagehouse price in London is now double that for the country as a whole and pricesin London continue to rise, despite falls elsewhere.
"Moreover,since 2008 private sector rents have risen 30 per cent. Far too many workerscannot afford to buy or rent a decent home on the open market, and the socialrented sector is struggling to cope with the severe demands placed on it.
"Overcrowding,homelessness and social housing waiting lists are all increasing - sure signsof the strain on people's finances and lives."
'Even in the recession prices have stayed the same in london'
Sam Brookes is an aspirant first-time buyer who would love to buy a propertybut his salary will not allow it.
Mr Brookes, 24,works in business development and is sharing a flat in Aldgate. His£600-a-month rent makes serious saving for a deposit "almost impossible".Although his parents are supportive, he is reluctant to ask them for tens ofthousands of pounds for a deposit. "I want to be able to stand on my owntwo feet," he said.
He earns slightlybelow the London average salary of £27,128, putting starter homes in even themost far-flung boroughs beyond his reach. "Why do I want to buy a home? Ithink that the British have a massive affiliation for buying rather thanrenting, and I would also look to do it from an investment point of view,"he said. "Even in the recession prices have stayed about the same inLondon."
Although Mr Brookeswould prefer to stay in central London - with Angel, Shoreditch and Aldgateamong his top choices - he would "definitely" be willing tocompromise and move further away. "But even if I did that I am still notgoing to be in a position to buy," he said.
Reference: Evening Standard on 20th December 2011