MURRAY's
Architectural design - Journals
James, my lecturer set us a task to pick a building we would be interested in for the whole year and find out basic facts about it.
I decided to pick the famous Wembey landmark - Wembey Stadium. These are images of the old Wembley Stadium officially known as the Empire Stadium which was a football stadium in Wembley that stood on this site and is now occupied by the New Wembley Stadium. Wembley was designed by architects Foster + Partners and HOK Sport and completed in 2007. It is one of the most expensive stadiums ever built at a cost of £798 million. The all-seater stadium is based around a bowl design with a capacity of 90,000, protected from the elements by a sliding roof that does not completely enclose it. The primary reason for the sliding roof was to avoid shading the pitch, as grass demands direct sunlight to grow effectively. The sliding roof design minimises the shadow by having the roof pulled back on the east, west and south. The English national football team is a major user of Wembley Stadium but Wembley stadium is also used to hold
concerts, private events like weddings and conferences, rugby games and American football games.I chose Wembley stadium because because it is a cultural building. Going to events at Wembley stadium is a good way to enjoy yourself and meet new people. The most eyecatching feature of the stadium is 133 metre tall arch that sits above the north stand. The steel arch is 315 metres long and is the longest single roof structure in the world is visible right across London
I decided to move onto another cultural building in England that brought many people from different cultures in the world together, the Olympic Stadium. The Olympic stadium looks very similar to Wembley, the architect that designed the olympic stadium was Populous. The stadium is made up of different tiers; during the Games the stadium was able to hold 80,000 spectators. The base tier, which allows for 25,000 seats, is a sunken elliptical bowl that is made up of low-carbon-dioxide concrete; this contains 40 percent less embodied carbon than conventional concrete. The foundation of the base level is 5,000 piles reaching up to 20 metres deep. From there, there is a mixture of driven cast in situ piles, continuous flight auger piles, and vibro concrete columns. The second tier, which holds 55,000 seats, is 315 metres long, 256 metres wide, and 60 metres high.[19] The stadium contains just under a quarter of the steel as the Olympic Stadiumin Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, approximately 10,700 tons. In addition to the minimal use of steel, which makes it 75 percent lighter, the stadium also uses high-yield large diameter pipes which were surplus on completion of North Sea Gas pipeline projects, recycled granite, and many of the building products were transported using trains and barges rather than by lorry. To allow for fast on-site assembly, compression truss and roof column connections were bolted; this will also enable easy disassembling of the roof structure after the closing ceremonies
Looking at both stadiums made me want to move onto something thats cultural like the stadiums, but not a stadium. Then I remebered the Roundhouse where I had once perfomed with the BBC proms. The Roundhouse is a performance art and concert venue which is a cultural building from decades ago up till now, unlike the stadiums as they are fairly new compared to the Roundhouse.
It was originally built in 1847 by the London and North Western Railway as a roundhouse, a circular building containing a railway turntable, but was only used for this purpose for about a decade. The architects were Robert Stephenson (1846) and John McAslan and partners (2006).
The original building, 48 metres in diameter, is constructed in yellow brick and is distinctive for its unusual circular shape and pointed roof. The conical slate roof has a central smoke louvre (now glazed) and is supported by 24 cast-iron Doric columns (arranged around the original locomotive spaces) and a framework of curved ribs. The interior has original flooring and parts of the turntable and fragments of early railway lines
Looking at the Roundhouse reminded me of the famous English theatre called the Shakespeares Globe where I had once watched A Midnights Summer Nights Dream. The Shakesphere globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre. The opentop is very similar to the stadiums and also the dome shape reminds me a the shape of the stadiums. The Globe's actual dimensions are unknown, but its shape and size can be approximated from scholarly inquiry over the last two centuries - the evidence suggests that it was a three-storey, open-air amphitheatre approximately 30m diameter that could house up to 3,000 spectators. In 1988–89, the uncovering of a small part of the Globe's foundation suggested that it was a polygon of 20 sides.At the base of the stage, there was an area called the pit where, for a poorer, people would stand on the rush-strewn earthen floor to watch the performance. Vertically around the yard were three levels of stadium-style seats, which were more expensive than standing room. A rectangular stage platform, also known as an apron stage, thrust out into the middle of the open-air yard. The stage measured approximately 43 feet in width, 27 feet in depth and was raised about 5 feet off the ground. On this stage, there was a trap door for use by performers to enter from the "cellarage" area beneath the stage.
After looking at the Globe theatre, I became really fond of theatres and then looked into the Lyceum Theatre where I watched Lion King last year. The Lyceum Theatre, which dominates the bottom of Wellington Street, London today, has a long and distinguished history. It was originally designed by Samuel Beazley and opened in 1834, and despite many alterations and rebuilds over the years, notably by the architects C. J. Phippsin 1882 and Bertie Crewe in 1904, the facade of the Theatre with its magnificent Portico is still that of the original Samuel Beazley Theatre.The Lyceum Theatre today has a capacity of 2,000 and is a Grade I Listed building.
The Palace Theatre was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and intended to be a home of English grand opera. The theatre opened as the "Royal English Opera House" in January 1891 with a lavish production of Arthur Sullivan's opera Ivanhoe.
Its capacity is 1,400 over 4 levels.
After looking at theatres I realised how similar the interior of theatres are and Catholic Churches. St Pauls Cathedral is one of the most famous and most recognisable sights of London. Its dome, framed by the spires of Wren's City churches, dominated the skyline for 300 years. At 365 feet high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1962. The dome is among the highest in the world. St Paul's is the second largest church building in area in the United Kingdom after Liverpool Cathedral. The nave is 91 feet in height and is separated from the aisles by an arcade of piers with attached Corinthian pilasters rising to an entablature. The bays, and therefore the vault compartments, are rectangular, but Wren has ingeniously roofed these spaces with saucer-shaped domes and surrounded the clerestorey windows with lunettes
The Notre-Dame de Paris was among the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress. The building was not originally designed to include the flying buttresses around the choir and nave but after the construction began, the thinner walls grew ever higher and stress fractures began to occur as the walls pushed outward. In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern. The total surface area is 5,500 m². The cathedral has a narrow climb of 387 steps at the top of several spiral staircases; along the climb it is possible to view its most famous bell and its gargoyles in close quarters, as well as having a spectacular view across Paris when reaching the top.
