rust never sleeps

Sunday, 14 July 2013

London bridges across the river Thames: 3 Cannon street railway bridge

Cannon street railway bridge

Cannon street railway bridge carries trains over the river to Cannon street station on the north bank

it was originally named Alexandra bridge after Alexandra of Denmark who was the wife of the future King Edward VII

the bridge was designed by John Hawkshaw and John Wolfe-Barry for the South Eastern Railway, it was opened in 1866 after three years of construction - in its original form, it carried the railway over the Thames on five spans standing on cast-iron Doric pillars but was subsequently widened between 1886–93 by Francis Brady and extensively renovated between 1979–82, which resulted in many of its ornamental features being removed and the structure taking on an even more utilitarian appearance than before

Saturday, 13 July 2013

London bridges across the river Thames: 2 London bridge

London bridge

historically, several London Bridges have spanned the river Thames between the City of London and Southwark, the current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel, this replaced a 19th-century stone-arched bridge, which in turn superseded a 600-year-old medieval structure which was preceded by a succession of timber bridges, the first built by the Roman founders of London

the current bridge stands at the western end of the Pool of London but is positioned 30 metres upstream from previous alignments - the traditional ends of the medieval bridge were marked by St Magnus-the-Martyr on the northern bank and Southwark Cathedral on the southern shore

Friday, 12 July 2013

London bridges across the river Thames: 1 Tower bridge

Tower bridge reflected in the glass of city hall

Tower Bridge (built 1886–1894) is a combined bascule and suspension bridge

it is close to the Tower of London, from which it takes its name and has become an iconic symbol of London

although the bridge is an undoubted landmark, professional commentators in the early 20th century were critical of its aesthetics ‘it represents the vice of tawdriness and pretentiousness, and of falsification of the actual facts of the structure’, wrote H. H. Statham while Frank Brangwyn stated that ‘a more absurd structure than the Tower Bridge was never thrown across a strategic river’ in 1909 the Times was particularly scathing, saying that ‘it looks like a monstrous Gothic toy that ought to be one of the side-shows of an exhibition', and George Bernard Shaw commented in 1924 that 'engineering bridges are offensive only when they are artistically pretentious, like the Tower Bridge' as late as 1952 Nikolaus Pevsner, the architectural historian, referred to the ‘barren Gothic towers’ and says of the bridge that ‘the massive structure does much damage to the skyline’

architectural historian Dan Cruickshank selected the bridge as one of his four choices for the 2002 BBC television documentary series Britain's Best Buildings – the idiot prince who is so keen on pastiche probably thinks it’s beautiful

the bridge's present colour scheme dates from 1977, when it was painted red, white and blue for the queen Elizabeth 2’s silver jubilee, originally it was painted a mid greenish-blue colour

Thursday, 11 July 2013

sculpture: part of 'gismo' (1960) By Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) in the Stedelijk museum, Amsterdam

not actually a rusty bicycle but it looks as though Jean Tinguely may have used numerous parts from them

Jean Tinguely was a Swiss artist who began experimenting with mechanical sculptures in the late 1930s, hanging objects from the ceiling and using a motor to make them rotate. after world war 2 he began painting in a Surrealist manner, but he soon abandoned painting to concentrate on sculpture. he is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics. in 1970, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of Nouveau Réalisme, he built a gigantic phallus (ht 8 m), which he exploded outside Milan cathedral. he also built a self-destroying sculpture titled Homage to New York (1960), which only partially self-destructed at the museum of modern art in New York City, although his later work, Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), detonated successfully in front of an audience gathered in the desert outside Las Vegas
Tinguely married fellow Swiss artist Eva Aeppli in 1951. in 1971, Tinguely married his second wife Niki de Saint Phalle

the whole 'gismo' sculpture