Keep the Old, In With the New

As we walked through London, there was so much going on around us. Advertisements, people, and cars all filled the space. The closest thing that I could relate it to in the states is New York, but the culture and history is like nothing what we have at home in America. The history alone is what set apart London for me. Almost everywhere we walked, we saw a historical marker that would point out how a famous poet lived in this apartment or how a world-renowned musician worked from this building. In the United States, everything is relatively new and expanding. If you wanted to build a house in Amarillo, Texas there would be plenty of land to do so. But, in London if you wanted to build a house, you would have to first tear down a building with centuries of history, and who would want to do that? One thing that I noticed from looking at the skyline from the Tate Modern were the amount of cranes that were peaking over the buildings creating very modern skyscrapers next to some of the oldest working buildings I have ever seen in my life. This struck my curiosity as to how the people of London perceive them and how these new buildings fit into the skyline of London.

The first thing I would like to point out is the function of the new buildings versus the old buildings. The new buildings are created as these beautiful, tall, forming structure that have no definitive square angles. The buildings almost seem to flow from the ground all the way to the top being tall spatially so they do not have to take up much space in an already packed city. This type of building is one that we see all of the time in the states. The older buildings, like the Tower of London for instance, are lower to the ground and built with thick stone walls as a form of defense. The tower's function was to protect what was inside of it. The materials that make up the buildings also show function. The new architecture is made from steel piping and glass. This helps to show the elegance of the office building, whereas the Tower of London is made of stone so that it could not be easily penetrated.

The funny thing about the collages of buildings in London is that I think it showed so much more than just modern versus tradition. I felt like the old buildings are ones of great stories and history, but the new ones tell the same story through a different lens. It is almost like a statement of wanting to create more history.

After doing some research into this debate, I can easily see where the people of London would get upset about the new buildings taking away from the looks and architecture of the old London. But, I think that the new buildings just add more flavor to the culture that is already thriving.