A new landmark for Aldgate
2010
Competition for the Architectural Foundation relating to the 2012 Olympics entry by Gillian Wise with architect James Dunnett
Aldgate is indeed a historic node – the point within the City of London from which many roads radiate and, externally, the starting point of the route to the first capital of Roman Britain, Colchester, from its second capital - the route travelled inwards by Boudica in AD61. It is also – more contemporarily – the starting point of ‘High Street 2012’, stretching from the City boundary to the Olympic Park.
So a symbol, a celebration, is in order.
The brief calls for a ‘temporary monument’, capable of being disassembled and re-erected elsewhere after the Olympic Year. So there is an implicit call for ‘dry’ construction, perhaps metallic, that could also carry the bright colouring of festivity.
Such bright colouring seems also to be called for by the character of a peripheral area of the City where, only yards from the most valuable real estate of Leadenhall Street, the feeling of prosperity has broken down and the integrity of the streetscape has fallen to the demands of traffic engineering - of which the residual space alongside Sir John Cass’s Primary School is a classic example.
Something is needed to pull the area together, and it needs to be of a large enough scale and strong enough character to impose itself on the BUSY, heterogeneous, and untidy environment – but something that also has the lightness of the festival and of the temporary.
The heights of adjoining buildings such as Portsoken House on the corner of Aldgate and the Minories and the tower of St Botolph’s Church to the base of the spire, which would form the backdrop to the Monument, are just above 30 metres. 30 metres or near it seems a good height to aim for in the proposed Monument, so it holds it own.
The base of the Monument can hold a hexagon of 6 metres each side. At ground level the base is open, defined by a column at each corner 6 metres in height. These support the tower above and allow pedestrians to cross the traffic island ‘three way’ between them, without obstacle. Each opening is therefore a square – the definitive form.
Above the lowest storey rises the first hexagonal storey of the tower. Above this again, reducing in the manner of the tower of a Baroque church such as St Botolph’s, but assymetrically, rises a pentagon, and above this a square, and then finally an isosceles triangle. Each is capped by a lid of its own dimensions, but may be open into the storey above.
So there are five stages in the progression from the base, to the isosceles triangle at the top, of 6 metres each side.
Each stage is 6 metres in height, so the final height attained is 30 metres to the summit, the height set by neigbouring buildings, and each side of each stage is a square of 6 metres.
Some of these squares are brightly coloured in a sequence echoing and reflecting the succession of forms, and some are silvered – or clear: because it is proposed that the entire Monument is constructed of structural, sandblasted, toughened, laminated, glass. This will be fixed with adhesive or joined with metal brackets where required. Colours can be applied to the inner face of these glass panels, and where features such as the Olympic rings are required, they can be acid etched into it.
If cost does not permit the use of glass in the way described, the structure can be of tubular steel or aluminium, with panels of aluminium sheet – and remain in essence the same.