The Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, located in Port Elizabeth is the third stadium designed by gmp Architekten for the football World Cup. The host eight matches, including the match for third and fourth place. Designed as football and rugby stadium, the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is located next to North End Lake.
The stadium is located in the suburbs and has become a landmark building, growing in the lake with a shape biomimetics. The silhouette of the stadium shows the clean design of its structure. This hall with columns contains the whole stadium. Read the rest of this entry »
The Baroque city palace in the St. Johanns-Vorstadt in Basel has proved in the recent restoration, treasure chest. Under centuries-old layers of the original substance came to light and revealed a surprise: The house is older than previously thought.
The architectural design interested visitors will quickly establish in Basel, the city known as architecture capital of Switzerland, not only promotes modern building, but also maintains a careful handling of their historic buildings. Obvious example, the facades: Where dominate in other cities long ago modern and functional window shutters – which most historic buildings is visually detrimental unfortunately – in Basel, the original glazing and shutters kept and restored. “It is indeed the case,” said Dr. Thomas Lutz, Adjunct conservator of Basel, “that we promote the protection zone in the preservation of old windows and Vorfenster. But even with the population there is a tradition of preservation and care, so many historic districts are very well preserved. ” Read the rest of this entry »
The handsome three-story commercial structure at 738 Seneca, now vacant but secured, was the longtime home of the Hydraulics branch of the Marine Trust Bank, which occupied the building in 1919. The building, constructed in 1900 to house Henry Schaefer’s grocery, was designed by architect Joseph J. W. Bradney. Architecture firm Mann & Cook headed up the building’s expansion in 1919 when Marine Trust moved to into its first story, and in 1954 the storefront was re-clad in polished stone and a bay window on the second story was removed. For years, a billboard Marine Trust installed in 1927 on top of the building was a landmark of its own accord.
The branch’s establishment at 738 Seneca in 1919 was no coincidence. John D. Larkin, president and founder of the Larkin Company, was also on the board of Marine Trust Bank and almost certainly had a hand in this choice of location to provide an amenity for factory workers and shoppers at the famed Larkin Store. The bank was a fixture in the neighborhood into the 1990s, though under different names. Marine Trust became Marine Midland in the 1960s and then became HSBC in the 1990s. Read the rest of this entry »
This just in! The January emergency demolition of the Sacred Heart School at 198 Emslie Street not only broke hearts, it also broke the bank.
The emergency demolition of the landmark building reportedly cost taxpayers a cool $125,000. Economic return on the investment? Zero. While few doubt the necessity of the demolition in light of its collapsing brick facade and the imminent threat the building posed to human safety, fewer still believe the school’s “demolition by neglect” was inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »
The smokestack…
‘Tis a poor drizzly morning, dark and sad.
The cloud has fallen, and filled with fold on fold
The chimneyed city; and the smoke is caught,
And spreads diluted in the cloud, and sinks,
A black precipitate, on miry streets.
And faces gray glide through the darkened fog.
- George MacDonald, “A Manchester Poem”
The Larkin Power House smokestack is one of the obelisks of industrial Buffalo. It is one among these quickly-disappearing landmarks that define the city’s character and place in time, in many ways more than the buildings to which they are connected. The smokestack, as symbol of the Machine Age, is fading from memory – and skylines. In December 2006, the Buffalo region lost one of its mighty stacks at Tonawanda’s Spaulding Fibre plant, which at 250 feet could be seen for miles around and was probably the single most important connector to the history of the suburban municipality. The smokestack of the Larkin Power House survives, defying its obsolescence. Read the rest of this entry »
