Message to Readers

Thanks again to everyone that comes to my blog. I am flying to Australia tomorrow, first to Perth, then on to Melbourne later next week and will be back home 26th October. I cannot see myself finding a lot of time do much new work on my blog so I will be scheduling the re run of old posts throughout the month. Obviously if I get anytime, I would love to publish some new stuff, however I think with the nature of the trip, it may prove a little difficult. I promise to delve a bit deeper to get some more interesting articles onto the blog upon my return. In the meantime, please keep coming back to have a look every now and then and also just a reminder that I have a facebook and twitter page set up for people that want to follow or 'like' the blog. In the meantime, this is what I've been listening to, to get me in the mood for Australia which has nothing to do with London or New York. Cheers!

Top of the Rock, The Rockefeller Center, New York City

By 1939, The Rockefeller Center was attracting more than 125,000 visitors everyday. In it's own right it would have been the 51st largest city in the US. The "city within a city" was the defining creation of John D Rockefeller Jr, a complex of 19 commercial buildings which covers 22 acres and is now a declared National Historic Landmark. The site was originally earmarked for the development of an opera house with the formation of a syndicate which included the Metropolitan Opera. The stock market crash led to the withdrawal of the Opera and for Rockefeller to fund the new project entirely from his own pocket and not without risk. The original project comprised 14 buildings with a further 5 being added during the 1970s.

On May 17th 1930 construction began of the original 14 buildings which were designed in the art deco style which has become synonymous with many New York City buildings and when opened in May 1933, although not entirely finished, was true to the designing team's belied that art was the act of good citizenship. Included in the complex was the Radio City Music Hall which was marketed as the largest and most opulent music hall in the world. The music hall's interior is one of the world's greatest examples of art deco and after a slow start became the city's largest attraction, seating over 6,000 people in the music hall itself.

The largest building in the complex is the 872ft tall skyscraper at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (GE Building) which was the setting for the original "lunchtime atop a skyscraper" photograph showing construction workers having their lunch on a steel girder. The building's observation deck "Top of the Rock" is a major tourist attraction on the top of a building which is the headquarters of NBC and houses most of the network's New York studios and hosted many well known television shows including Late Night with David Letterman.

The Center avoided major controversy in the mid 1930's when rather ironically, Ivy Lee, who is largely credited with the founding of public relations, attempted to rent the last of the four European buildings out to German commercial interests until Jr put the brakes on the deal learning of the Nazis march towards war. The building subsequently house the US operations of British intelligence with room 3603 becoming the principle operations centre for allied intelligence.

The Center has become one of the best loved destinations in New York City never at anytime more than Christmas with the famous Christmas tree lighting ceremony always attended by well known names and the ice rink offering visitors the chance to get involved in one of the city's favourite winter pastimes.

http://www.rockefellercenter.com/

The Whispering Gallery, St.Paul's Cathedral, London

Longest Running Musicals in The West End and on Broadway

London and New York City are famed for Broadway and West End theatre production, which plays an important role in the entertainment status of both cities and draws in millions of visitors each year. The West End and Broadway are in a league of their own when it comes to box office receipts on shows and here is a list of the longest running musicals that span the Atlantic which shows how much Londoners and New Yorkers love their theatre.

The list shows in order the number of shows performed of each production in London or New York but does not correspond to the value of box office receipts.

1. Les Miserables - since 1985 in The West End (>10,400 shows), since 1987 on Broadway (approx. 6680 shows)

2. The Phantom of the Opera - since 1986 in The West End (9,500 shows), since 1988 on Broadway (9,400 shows)

3. Blood Brothers - since 1983 in The West End (8,700 shows), closed on Broadway after 840 shows

4. Cats - since 1981 in The West End (8,300 shows) and Broadway (7,485 shows)

5. Starlight Express - since 1984 in The West End (7,406 shows)

6. Black and White Minstrels - 1960 in The West End (6,477 shows)

7. A Chorus Line - since 1975 on Broadway (6,137 shows)

8. Oh, Calcutta - 1976 revival in The West End ( 5,959 shows)

9. Chicago - 1996 revival on Broadway (5,700 shows) and The West End (4,900 shows)

10. Beauty and the Beast - 1994 Broadway (5,461 shows)

In my search of a video which packages up the feel of Broadway and The West End, I wound up watching this tongue in cheek crusade by Louis Theroux to shuffle his way into theatre - a little off topic but fun and may keep some people on my blog page for a little longer! Louis Theroux - the master of the cheeky and cringeworthy interview. This is just part 1 of 5 - the rest can be found on youtube.

10 Tallest skyscrapers in London

A list of the 10 tallest skyscrapers in London compiled from skyscraperpage. This list includes only buildings that have 'topped out' and not others under construction with all heights to spire.

1. Heron Tower - 242m (794ft)*

2. One Canada Square - 235.1m (771ft)

3= 8 Canada Square (HSBC) - 199.5m (655ft)

3= 25 Canada Square (Citigroup) - 199.5m (655ft)

5. Tower 42 - 183m (600ft)

6. 30 St. Mary Axe - 179.8m (590ft)

7. Broadgate Tower - 164.3m (539ft)

8. One Churchill Place - 156.4m (513ft)

9= 25 Bank Street - 153m (502ft)

9= 40 Bank Street - 153m (502ft)

Heron Tower has topped out and is still undergoing the internal fit out.

10 Tallest skyscrapers in London and New York City

This list is a clean sweep for New York. Not suprisingly all ten of the top ten tallest skyscrapers in London and New York are in New York City - all heights include height to the tip of the spire on buildings. Information compiled from skyscraperpage. This list does not include skyscrapers that are currently under construction. There is a separate list for the ten tallest buildings in London.

1. Empire State Building, New York City - 443.2m (1,454ft)

2. Bank of America Tower, New York City - 365.8m (1,200ft)

3. Chrysler Building, New York City - 318.9m (1,046ft)

4. New York Times Tower, New York City - 318.8m (1,046ft)

5. American International Building, New York City - 290.2m (952ft)

6. 40 Wall Street, New York City - 282.5m (927ft)

7. Citigroup Center, New York City - 278.9m (915ft)

8. Trump World Tower, New York City - 262.4m (861ft)

9. GE Building (Rockefeller Center), New York City - 259.1m (850ft)

10. CitySpire Center, New York City - 248.1m (814ft)

New Bus for London based on old routemaster

The Mayor of London unveiled the design for the new London bus in May this year.

The Shard, London

Statistics

• Completion due May 2011
• Height 1,017ft (310m)
• 87 Floors
• 1,199,000 sqft (111,400 sqm)
• Architect Renzo Piano

The Shard at London Bridge is to be the centrepiece of what will be known as the London Bridge Quarter, a large regeneration project around London Bridge station. The project was the brainchild of London developer Irvine Sellar, although nowadays, halfway through the tower's construction, the project is being backed by a Qatari consortium with Sellar Properties owning a much smaller stake in the project. The birth of The Shard as a project was a result of Irvine Sellars trip to Berlin to meet the architect Renzo Piano and discuss what would be built on the site of the old Southwark Towers site, which had previously been occupied by a non descript 24 storey 1970s office building. The design was initially and notoriously scribbled on to the back of a napkin at lunch and considering Piano's dislike for tall buildings, it is a miracle that The Shard is to become the tallest building in the European Union once it is finished.

The Shard is a multi purpose skyscraper which will feature office space, restaurants, residential apartments, viewing galleries as well as an open air observation deck and a Shangri-La hotel on floors 31-50. The sophisticated use of glazing in the building with expressive facades of angled panels will created the illusion of the building changing with the seasons and the weather. Piano likened the design as being like a Shard of Glass. One thing is for certain, as modern skyscrapers go, The Shard is elegant in design and delicate in it's appearance on the London skyline as the city's first supertall building. This film shows the impact the building will have on London once completed.

2 WTC, 200 Greenwich Street, New York City

Statistics

• Estimated completion 2014
• Height 1,350ft (411m)
• 79 floors
• 2,530,000 sqft (235,000 sqm)
• Architect Foster & Partners

It's easy to overlook how immense this building will be as it is the second tallest building being built at the new World Trade Center but will be the third tallest in New York City once complete. Foster & Partners have designed the building to take forward many of the features implemented in the Hearst Tower (see seperate article) and similarly aims to achieve the gold standard under the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Programme (LEED).

Built at the North East corner of memorial park, the building incorporates a slanted roof designed to address the memorial and which will cast no shadow on the memorial park on September 11th due to it's slant. The design is arranged around a central cruciform core, currently in the early stages of construction. The building is designed as four interconnecting shafts which are column free allowing for flexible office space allowing tenats to adapt floors to suit their specific needs.

Here is a reminder of how this magnificent building will look in it's new surroundings.

The 6 Best Universities in London and New York City

Each year QS publishes a list of the world's best universities which this year saw the University of Cambridge take the crown which has been held by Harvard for the last four years. This list shows the top featuring universities from London and New York City and in brackets where they came in on the QS list along with the score in comparison to Cambridge which defaults as 100. The QS rankings assess university research quality, graduate employability, teaching commitment and international commitment.

1 (4) University College London (UCL), London - 98.54

2 (7) Imperial College, London - 97.78

3 (16) Cornell University, New York City - 90.44

4 (21) King's College, London - 88.45

5 (41) New York University (NYU), New York City - 78.41

6 (80) London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London - 68.86

The Brooklyn Bridge, New York City

5 Largest Accountancy Firms in London and New York

These are the five largest accountancy and business services firms headquartered in London and New York by revenue (2009 figures)

1. PricewaterhouseCoopers, London

$26.2bn (£16.98bn)

2. Deloitte, New York City*

$26.1bn (£16.91bn)

3. Ernst & Young, London

$21.4bn (£13.86bn)

4. RSM International, London

$3.87bn (£2.5bn)

5. Grant Thornton, London

$3.6bn (£2.33bn)

*Although Deloitte has it's global headquarters in New York, it is a UK private company founded in London.

Conde Nast Building, 4 Times Square, New York City

Statistics

• Constructed 1995-2000
• Height 247m (809ft)
• Height to spire 348m (1,143ft)
• 48 floors
• 149,000 sqm (1,600,000 sqft)
• Architects Fox & Fowle

With it's industrial features and it's intricately busy location, New York City could almost have been built around the Conde Nast building, being a common feature in popular culture such as the film Battlestar Galactica and computer game Grand Theft Auto IV. However, behind the industrial machismo of the skyscraper lies a fully integrated green design to a building which initially raised concerns over the impact it's size would have on Times Square. The building does not need to be heated or cooled for most of the year due to the operation of environmentally friendly gas fired absorption chillers along with a high performing insulating and shading curtain wall.

Interestingly, and in the shadow of 11th September, the mast of the building was replaced between 2002 and 2003 to support television and radio broadcasters as a back up transmission site so that work could be completed to relocate those displaced by the destruction of the World Trade Centre to the Empire State Building without disruption to existing FM tenants at the ESB. The new mast which is 91m (300ft) makes the Conde Nast building the third tallest structure in NYC.

Another instantly recognisable feature of the Conde Nast building and what makes it one of the most documented buildings at street level is the 10-story video wall on the NASDAQ Marketsite which provides market data, financial information and advertising. Saco Technologies Inc. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) provided NASDAQ with it's 1,000 sqm, $37m Smartvision screen. Saco CEO Gary Nalven says, "The NASDAQ building's LED screen has become a fantastic symbol of the financial community in some ways replacing the Wall Street image of it's Roman column building. A day doesn't go by in Times Square where NASDAQ isn't being photographed or videoed by the international media as a backdrop for their reporters."

HSBC Tower, 8 Canada Square, London

Statistics

• Constructed 1999-2002
• Height 200m (656ft)
• 45 floors
• 102,190sqm (1,100,000sqft)
• Architect Foster & Partners

Sir Norman Foster designed HSBC's previous global headquarters at 1 Queen's Street, Hong Kong, therefore it was only right that he was chosen to design a building that would pull together all of HSBC's scattered sites around the City of London to create an iconic global headquarters in London's Docklands. HSBC's environmental principles fitted in with Foster & Partners experience and passion for designing buildings that champion energy efficient systems; the building features recyclable furniture and equipment.

HSBC became carbon neutral in 2005 and in 2008 the skyscraper became the tallest building in Europe to feature solar panels and the largest installation of photovoltaic panels on a corporate office in London, which are fixed to withstand wind speeds of up to 140mph. The panels will generate about 1,550,000 kilowatt hours of green energy over the buildings lease which is enough to power 20 average size UK homes every year. Simon Martin, Head of Group Corporate Sustainability, said about the installation,"This installation shows innovation and demonstrates that renewable technologies of this scale can be delivered successfully. If every headquarter building around the world invested in solar panels, it would significantly increase the transition towards a low carbon economy and we hope to become a catalyst for this."

The tower has also been good to the balance sheet for HSBC. In April 2007 it became the first building in the UK to be sold for more than £1bn when it was sold to Metrovacesa before taking ownership in December 2008 and posting a £250m gain from the agreement. In December 2009 it was then sold to South Korea's National Pension Service for £772m. The bank will be paying rent of £46m a year for the next 17 years having freed up capital.

Transforming Tate Modern

The huge success of the Tate Modern Gallery on London's Thames river bank triggered the development of an extension to the museum which is considered one of the finest contemporary art museums in the world. Architects Herzog & De Meuron this week said that the museum could still be completed by the time The Olympics kick off in London, which will test it's popularity to more people than ever. This video which features Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate and Jacques Herzog, Architect, talking about the transformation of the building, also shows the building as it would look in it's surroundings and includes a visualization of the Shard.

Message to Readers

Just a quick message to thank everyone that has taken the time to read my blogposts. I think people have enjoyed the content and a number of people seem to have voted on the building poll to the right. Don't forget also there is a facebook page which is in it's infancy but some people have already 'liked'. I am aiming to keep the content varied but based on architecture, the built and business environments of both cities whilst keeping a competitive edge to it and also keeping it simple so each post is a bite size piece of information which is quick to read or watch. Please keep reading and I would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions for content which will keep readers engaged.

The Best Tourist Attractions in London

Details will appear here

"The single most important object in the Guggenheim.. clearly the building"

This short and interesting video celebrates the architecture of the Guggenheim museum in New York City. The Guggenheim was opened in 1959 and houses an important collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and contemporary art.

The Pinnacle, London

Following on from 17/08/10, the core of the Pinnacle has just started to rise - this short video documents how the London skyline is about to change -

Empire State Building: Leadership in American Progress in Sustainability

This interesting short video on the Empire State Building by the Rocky Mountain Institute outlines the plans for sustainability for the Empire State Building coming into the 21st century. The Empire State Building is looking at a retro fit which will tackle the problem of higher energy consumption in older buildings which is something that could save older buildings and energy in cities around the world.

Biggest Employers in London and New York City

Statistics will appear here.