Mmm, architecture
Posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 12:14pm. #
It’s been a busy few days.
Last night I was celebrating the first birthday of the rather clever recommendation and review service Qype, by taking part in a pub quiz. Our team, the ‘Sake six’, succeeded in achieving a creditable mid-table position with 32. An enjoyable evening, though there was much grumbling about “nine finger holes on a recorder”, and whether Penelope Cruz really looked like that. (She did, apparently).
Later in the evening, I was chatting to Simon Warren who is, I discover from his posh business-card-cum-portfolio, a rather splendid architectural photographer.
I don’t understand architecture much, but I do really appreciate a well-designed building when I see one. The renovated St Pancras filled me with joy when I first saw it, and I regularly spend longer looking at buildings rather than the things inside them, whether it’s a football stadium or an expansive meeting room. Simon’s photos capture the majesty of buildings well.
Which is why I enjoyed, particularly, my visit to BBC Scotland’s new building earlier in the week. The building from the outside looks like a large glass box; but inside it’s particularly splendid, with a cavernous and impressive atrium, and an ingenious way of incorporating large studios within an open environment by stacking them next to each other in a large set of stairs called The Street – full of little places to meet and chat. Walk all the way up ‘The Street’ and you end up, past the BBC News operation, in a bright and airy cafe – on the top of the building, with a large outside area overlooking the Clyde and expansive views.
Next door (but one) from BBC Scotland is my old employer STV Group (who still have an SMG logo on their building and on their website). They, too, are in a brand new building; and that, too, overlooks the Clyde. They managed to hide their cafe in the basement – half of it’s rather dark as a result. The best view, that of a rather splendid bridge that opened a few months after they moved in, is seemingly reserved for those in the boardroom.
While I’m certainly not a Belamesque BBC fanboy, visiting BBC Scotland made me proud to be part of the corporation. It’s a tremendously exciting building – vibrant and energising. And the difference between the architecture of the two buildings in Pacific Quay appear to underline a fundemental difference between the two companies, at least in the pre-Woodward era.
(I note that my predecessor in this job, Dan Hill, now appears to mainly blog about architecture – does the BBC do this to people, I wonder?)
Photo: John Ousby. Used under licence.
