Thanks for burning the midnight oil to bring us such a professionally presented story.
To all defenders of developers - show me an example of a skyscraper with hanging gardens that actually looks green from the outside as in these drawings. [I understand that Liebeskind's plans for such a scheme have been dropped from the plans for the New York WTC site.]
I am deeply disappointed by the final appearance of the cladding on Foster's Swiss Re building (the erotic gherkin) despite its sky-gardens atria. On this track record, I suspect the Elephant towers will just look like the anonymous glass blocks anywhere else.
I did see an architecture programme on the new(ish) city hall in (I think it was) Fukoaka that was exactly like a hanging garden.
That said, the programme showed it in a fairly new state and it immediately raised the question in my mind: who's going to look after it and make sure it always looks so lush.
I wonder if the really brave thing to do is just to rename the E&C (I favour keeping the animal connection, so maybe Zebra Junction or The Giraffe Gyratory might work), get rid of all the negative connotations and start again. As long as we stay away from obvious blatant lies like "Metro Central".
a fantasy land where the sky is always blue, the people joining in 'performances and major celebrations', there's no litter or graffiti in the 'character areas' and certainly no dead plants. I long to see the back of the current pink elephant - may the shemes dreams all come true.....
When the IRA decomissions arms, I'm led to believe they just pour concrete on them to render them unusable. Why not just douse E&C in concrete, then chip away want you don't want in a sculpture type fashion...art meets purpose - that's what we like...
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