Item — HN Reader

The ones where the old and new windows don't line up always seem a bit dumb. Must be a horrible experience for the people inside the new buildings, looking out of their windows onto a brick wall a few centimeters away. Both cited examples of this (Artillery Lane and Caledonian Road) are student accommodation, so I wonder if building at ultra-low cost has something to do with it.

Many of the others I don't have a particular problem with to be honest. There's actually one (not cited in the article) on the adjacent street to where I live, but they're building the new house to match up with the old facade so the nice Victorian era terrace isn't really disturbed. I'd much rather that than what they've done on another adjacent street - some overseas developer has bought one in the middle of a row of identical terraces, torn it down, built an iceberg basement, and a big new "modern" building that looms threateningly over the other buildings in the street like a largely windowless slaughterhouse with odd disproportionately large misshapen windows in improbable locations. I don't want to sound like Prince Charles with his "monstrous carbuncles", and I accept that perhaps there may be some people that somehow find that sort of "modern" building somehow aesthetically appealing, but I can't see how anyone would possibly think it was in keeping with the rest of the terrace either side, and have absolutely no idea how they got planning permission in such a strict conservation area.

4 comments

I think the Cally Road one won worst building of the year.

ah yes - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/aug/29/carbunc...

These should only be legal if that facade is integrated into the new building, not just a mask in front it. Yes, it's more work for the architects but otherwise it defeats the whole point of the exercise.

As a Londoner, I agree. Generally, I don't have any problem with historic facades being integrated into modern buildings so long as it's done well.

Some of these examples, where the building was built behind the historic facade with no attempt to integrate it at all, are apppaling and should never have been allowed. The developers of these projects took advantage of loopholes in planning laws.

In other examples from the article, like the College East, Wentworth Street (Spitalfields E1) example, the historic facade has now been perfectly integrated into the new development. In fact, it is a huge improvement on what it looked like before:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5170618,-0.0722792,3a,75y,13...

(I cycle along this street every day!)

Funny. They did this with a building on Broadway in Seattle, but set it back far enough that the section from the facade to the building is a patio. Ended up making it really cool and they get light (when it isn't raining) that makes some interesting shadows. Feel like if they use the facade as more than just "we have to keep it so put the new behind it" look then it's fine.

Those patios are next door and above Dick’s hamburgers. The patios are beautiful but the smell must be incredible.

Better resourced example of nothing matching up: the Bank of America Meryll Lynch London HQ on Kind Edward Street. The building itself is largely fine, but the King Edward Street facade is unconvincing and a little depressing.

The King Edward St side of the building is more than just a facade. Some of the original stairs and rooms are preserved, and are connected to the early 2000s Merrill Lynch Financial Centre building. I've worked in a lot of offices in the Square Mile and the Wharf, and MLFC is one of the best.

Building regulations for student accommodation are less stringent than for regular housing, so possibly these designs wouldn't be allowed otherwise.

I can see how that would be true for building regs (though not sure why - in general the standards for commercial buildings are higher, not lower, than those for residential buildings if anything in my limited experience).

But isn't 'look' more a matter for planning permission/listing/conservation area rules? Why would those be any different? Speculating, perhaps this is more a case of large developers having the resources to get their schemes in front of higher level decision makers who are more able and willing to make exceptions?

From The Guardian:

Student housing doesn’t officially classify as housing. It falls into the murky category of “sui generis” (Latin for “of its own kind”). As it falls outside a specific use class, it doesn’t have to adhere to the usual standards associated with dwellings (class C3). Local authorities differ in the their approaches, but student accommodation is usually either treated as a hotel (C1) or residential institution (C2), the same category as care homes, hospitals and boarding schools. Due to their limited occupation, these building types are immune from many of the codes that govern residential dwellings – from space standards to daylight and acoustics.

Daylight is the relevant thing here. This building would be too dark inside to meet housing standards, but it's okay for student accommodation.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/aug/29/carbunc...

You got it. Plus the developers have access to more and more expensive lawyers than council planning departments so with enough pressure they can get it called in and do pretty much whatever they like. As in this case.

Who maintains these dumb things now you've got two buildings to pressure wash and they're in such close proximity that it's going to be difficult

I'm not sure that brick buildings in London get pressure washed very often - if ever.

Pressure washing a house is very American, and any building inspector, residential or commercial, will suggest that it is something that shouldn’t be done.

I would like to put $73 on "never" please

This article from last years agrees that the frequency of cleaning UK city buildings is quite low.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17883481

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/gallery/bla...

I also stumbled upon this discussion on cleaning London buildings in a Lords sitting in 1964 which was quite fun to read.

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1964/nov/12...

I saw that gallery of Manchester the other day, that's pretty amazing. But yeah, brick / stone walls shouldn't be pressure washed too often; if they're historical, they should be restored and / or carefully cleaned instead.

London buildings are washed about once a century when the grime gets unbearable. Otherwise we rely on it raining often enough.

Worth noting that we took 60 years after the great smogs of the 1950s before cleaning St Paul's Cathedral

There's plenty of facades on busy roads that could use a deep clean in a few decades when all the diesel soot is finally gone from the air.