1.
Big 4 (sculpture)
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The Big 4 is a sculpture made of steel bars located outside the headquarters of the Channel Four Television Corporation in London. It is designed to represent the logo of Channel 4 while providing a basis for a number of art installations. The design and construction of the Big 4 was a collaboration between Mike Smith Studio, Freestate and Atelier One, and was designed to show Channel 4s logo when the statue is correctly aligned. The statue itself is out of steel bars, and the structure was Fabricated by Mike Smith Studio. The intention was to other artists to use the framework of the statue for art installations. The statue is located outside the headquarters of Channel Four Television Corporation on Horseferry Road and it was unveiled on 16 October 2007 by Culture Minister Margaret Hodge, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Channel 4 and to coincide with the television series The Big Art Project. During the course of the first year, four artists created installations for the Big 4 and these were photographer Nick Knight, Turner Prize shortlisted artist Mark Titchner, sculptor El Anatsui and a fourth artist chosen from an open competition for young arts graduates. The first installation, covered the statue in photographs of the inside of the human chest around the heart, feedback on the installation was mixed, with praise coming from Mark Hooper of The Guardian, while commenters at Creative Review were mostly negative. Stephanie Imbeau won the competition for young art graduates, the work Shelter saw the Big 4 covered in hundreds of umbrellas for the concept of showing the value of an everyday object which is taken for granted. A further competition was run for a designer for the Big 4 and her design covered the framework with a material which inflated and deflated in a manner to simulate breathing. The material itself came from Dartex Coatings, and is commonly used to cover NHS bed mattresses. Electric fans drew air into the Big 4 and were turned off. Prior to the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, the Big 4 was given a Paralympic theme to coincide with Channel 4s coverage of the Games. It was first unveiled at an event attended by Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Games, and hosted by the Chief Executive of Channel 4, David Abraham. Claire Watson created the design for 2012, based on the theme of The Snowman and the Snowdog. Video of the construction of the Big 4
2.
High-tech architecture
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High-tech architecture appeared as revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas helped by even more technological advances. This category serves as a bridge between modernism and post-modernism, however, there remain gray areas as to one category ends. In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more difficult to distinguish from post-modern architecture, some of its themes and ideas were later absorbed into the style of Neo-Futurism art and architectural movement. In buildings such as the Pompidou Centre, this idea of revealed structure is taken to the extreme, in this case, the use of structural steel is a stylistic or aesthetic matter. Early high-tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as serviced sheds due to their exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure, most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice. As hollow structural sections had become widely available in the early 1970s. Buildings in this style were constructed mainly in North America. It is deeply connected with what is called the Second School of Chicago which emerged after World War II, the main content is that the technological kind of construction, mostly with steel and glass, is expressed in a formal independent way to gain aesthetic qualities from it. The first proper example are the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, potter, New York. —found in industrial catalogues and putting these to use in residential settings. The foreword to the book by architect Emilio Ambasz, former curator of design at the Museum of Modern Art, put the trend in historical context. As a result of the publicity and popularity of the book, the style became known as High-Tech. In 1979, the term high-tech appeared for the first time in a New Yorker magazine cartoon showing a woman berating her husband for not being enough, Youre middle-, middle-. But credit should go to a shop on 64th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York, Ad Hoc Housewares, which opened in 1977, for marketing these objects to a residential audience before anyone else. The book went on to be reprinted in England, France, and Japan, high-tech architecture was, in some ways, a response to growing disillusionment with modern architecture. The realization of Le Corbusiers urban development plans led to cities with monotonous, enthusiasm for economic building led to extremely low-quality finishes, with subsequent degradation countering a now-waning aesthetic novelty. High-tech architecture created a new aesthetic in contrast with modern architecture. In High Tech, The Industrial Style and Source Book for The Home, when discussing the high-tech aesthetic and this humour so aptly demonstrates the rebellious attitude. A prime example of this is the Centre Pompidou in Paris and this highlights one of the aims of high-tech architecture, to show the technical elements of the building by externalizing them
3.
City of Westminster
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The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough which also holds city status. It occupies much of the area of Greater London including most of the West End. It is to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and it was created with the 1965 establishment of Greater London. Upon creation, Westminster was awarded city status, which had previously held by the smaller Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. Aside from a number of parks and open spaces, the population density of the district is high. Many sites commonly associated with London are in the borough, including St. Jamess Palace, Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, much of the borough is residential, and in 2008 it was estimated to have a population of 236,000. The local authority is Westminster City Council, the current Westminster coat of arms were given to the city by an official grant on September 2,1964. Westminster had other arms before, which had an identical to the chief in the present arms. The symbols in the two thirds of the shield stand for former municipalities now merged with the city, Paddington. The original arms had a portcullis as the charge, which now forms the crest. The origins of the City of Westminster pre-date the Norman Conquest of England, in the mid-11th Century king Edward the Confessor began the construction of an abbey at Westminster, only the foundations of which survive today. For centuries Westminster and the City of London were geographically quite distinct, Westminster briefly became a city in 1540 when Henry VIII created the short-lived Diocese of Westminster. Following the dissolution of Westminster Abbey, a court of burgesses was formed in 1585 to govern the Westminster area, Jamess, Strand, Westminster, Pimlico, Belgravia, and Hyde Park. The Westminster Metropolitan Borough was itself the result of an amalgamation which took place in 1900. Sir John Hunt O. B. E was the First Town Clerk of the City of Westminster, the boundaries of the City of Westminster today, as well as those of the other London boroughs, have remained more or less unchanged since the Act of 1963. On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place on Westminster Bridge, Bridge Street and Old Palace Yard, five people - three pedestrians, one police officer, and the attacker - died as a result of the incident. More than 50 people were injured, an investigation is ongoing by the Metropolitan Police. The city is divided into 20 wards, each electing three councillors, Westminster City Council is currently composed of 44 Conservative Party members and 16 Labour Party members
4.
Horseferry Road
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Horseferry Road is a street in the City of Westminster in central London running between Millbank and Greycoat Place. It is perhaps best known as the site of City of Westminster Magistrates Court, the ubiquity of the Magistrates Court in newspaper crime reports means that the road name has wide recognition in the UK. The Marsham Street Home Office building backs on to this road, the road is designated part of the B323 road, along with Greycoat Place, Artillery Row and Buckingham Gate. The road takes its name from the ferry which existed on the site of what is now Lambeth Bridge, owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the ferry was an important crossing over the Thames, from Westminster Palace to Lambeth Palace. The earliest known reference to the dates to 1513. The ferry pier was the point for the flight of King James II from England in 1689. In 1736, Princess Augusta, who became the mother of George III, in 1734, plans were drawn up for a bridge to replace the ferry. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1736, and the money was raised by lottery, Parliament changed the plans for the position of the bridge, and Westminster Bridge was finished first, resulting in the gradual decline of the ferry. It was eventually replaced on 10 November 1862, when the first Lambeth Bridge was opened and it quickly deteriorated, and was replaced in 1932. The building was most recently used by the Home Office to house Prison and Probation head office staff, the regimental headquarters and museum of the London Scottish Regiment is at no. 95, this was where the inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic took place in 1912, during World War I the Australian Imperial Forces Administrative Headquarters was located on Horseferry Road. Phyllis Pearsall conceived and created the London A to Z map while living in a bedsit in Horseferry Road, there is another Horseferry Road in Limehouse, London E14 parallel to Narrow Street, and another off Creek Road in Greenwich
5.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
6.
Channel Four Television Corporation
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Channel Four Television Corporation is a publicly owned media company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its original and principal activity is the British national television network Channel 4, the company was founded in 1982 as Channel Four Television Company Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the IBA, and became an independent statutory corporation in 1993. November 1998 saw Channel Four expand beyond its remit of providing the service in a significant way. Since then the corporation has been involved in a range of activities, all in some way associated with the main channel. Significantly, this meant the abolition of the IBA, and hence the Channel Four Television Company, the result led to the creation of a corporation to own and operate the channel, which would have greater autonomy and would eventually go on to establish its other operations. It remained publicly owned and was regulated by the new Independent Television Commission, in 2014, the Government drew up proposals to privatise the Channel Four Television Corporation. However, the proposal was rejected by the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable, Channel 4 is a national public-service television channel in the United Kingdom which began working on 2 November 1982. Channel 4 is largely commercially self-funded, with the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became an entirely UK-wide TV channel for the first time. Channel Four launched 4seven on 4 July 2012, the new service was under working title Shuffle Project, though it was announced on 8 March 2012, that the name would be 4seven. The channel offers audiences the chance to catch-up on the top rated programming from Channel Fours boutique of channels over a week, the channel is available on Freesat, Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media. Channel Four launched a film channel, FilmFour, in November 1998. It was available on satellite television and digital cable. Companion services, such as FilmFour+1, FilmFour World and FilmFour Extreme were also available on digital services. In 2003 Extreme and World were discontinued, and replaced with FilmFour Weekly, FilmFour Weekly closed in July 2006, when the main, newly named Film4 channel went free-to-view and became available on Digital Terrestrial. The switchover to digital terrestrial was heavily advertised and it remains the only film channel available free on digital terrestrial television. At these times FilmFour was available unencrypted and free-to-air, E4, a digital entertainment channel previously available on the Internet, with a target age-range of 16-34, was launched in January 2001. It features premières of US imports and supplementary footage for programmes on its main channel, in 2005 it launched on Digital Terrestrial. E4 now has as much coverage as other services available on Cable, Satellite and Digital Terrestrial like ITV2, also they have Second Chance Sunday which allows you to see programmes you have missed during the week on a Sunday
7.
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
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Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners is a British architectural firm, founded in 1977 and originally known as the Richard Rogers Partnership. Its main offices are located in the Leadenhall Building, London, previously they were at the Thames Wharf Studios. In its various incarnations it is known for important buildings including Lloyds building and the Millennium Dome in London. The firms principal offices are located at Leadenhall Building in London and it also maintains offices in Shanghai and Sydney. As of March 2016 the firm has thirteen partners, including Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk, the practice is run with a profit-share scheme and a limit on the directors salaries in comparison with those of the lowest paid in the office. The practice is focused on sustainability, urban regeneration and social awareness. Celebration of public space and the encouragement of public activities is also a recurring theme and it is owned by a charitable trust, ensuring that no individual owns any share in its value and preventing private trading and inheritance of shares. The practice divides its profits between all of the staff and their charities, according to publicly declared principles. Soon after the Pompidou Centre in Paris was opened in 1977, Richard Rogers formed the Richard Rogers Partnership, if I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change – but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years. In November 2015 Rogers Stirk Harbour created five new partners including Tracy Meller who became their first woman partner, founding partner Mike Davies stepped down. In 2006 the practice was awarded the Stirling Prize for their Madrid-Barajas Airport, in 2008, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners was awarded the Manser Medal for Houses and Housing, given for the best one-off house designed by an architect in the UK. In 2009 it was awarded the Stirling Prize for Maggies Centre in London and it won the RIBA National Award 2015 for NEO Bankside luxury apartments in London and was subsequently shortlisted for the Stirling Prize for the second time. This list contains projects from the beginning of the partnership in 1977 through to the present day, for earlier work by Richard Rogers, Team 4, Richard and Su Rogers and Piano + Rogers, see the Richard Rogers page. Rogers first work came when he co-founded Team 4 in 1963 with Su Brumwell, Team 4’s first project was Creek Vean, a residential property in Cornwall. He then established a partnership with Su Rogers, John Young, by July 1971 Rogers had won a design competition to build the Pompidou Centre in Paris with co-partner with Italian architect Renzo Piano. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize, Ivan Harbour Ivan Harbour joined Richard Rogers Partnership in 1985, in 1993 he was made a senior director. In 2007 the practice changed from Richard Rogers Partnership to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Harbour led the design team for the Senedd, Terminal 4 Barajas Airport, Madrid, the Law Courts in Antwerp and Bordeaux and the European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg. Graham Stirk Graham Stirk joined Richard Rogers Partnership in 1983 and was made a director in 1995
8.
Richard Rogers
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Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH FRIBA FREng RA is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs in high-tech architecture. He is a winner of the RIBA Gold Medal, the Thomas Jefferson Medal, the RIBA Stirling Prize and he is a Senior Partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, previously known as the Richard Rogers Partnership. Richard Rogers was born in Florence in 1933 from Italian parents and his father, William Nino Rogers, was the cousin of Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers. His ancestors moved from Sunderland to Venice in about 1800, then settling in Trieste, Milan, during World War II William Nino Rogers decided to come back to England. Upon moving to England, Richard Rogers went to St Johns School and he was called stupid because he could not read or memorize his school work and was always at the bottom of his class, and as a consequence he became very depressed. He wasnt able to read until the age of 11, while studying at Yale, Rogers met fellow architecture student Norman Foster and planning student Su Brumwell. After leaving Yale he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in New York, on returning to England in 1963, he, Norman Foster and Brumwell set up architectural practice as Team 4 with Wendy Cheeseman. Rogers and Foster earned a reputation for what was termed by the media high-tech architecture. By 1967, Team 4 had split up, but Rogers continued to collaborate with Su Rogers, along with John Young, in early 1968 he was commissioned to design a house and studio for Humphrey Spender near Maldon, Essex, a glass cube framed with I-beams. He continued to develop his ideas of prefabrication and structural simplicity to design a Wimbledon house for his parents and this was based on ideas from his conceptual Zip-Up House, such as the use of standardized components based on refrigerator panels to make energy-efficient buildings. Rogers subsequently joined forces with Italian architect Renzo Piano, a partnership that was to prove fruitful and this building established Rogerss trademark of exposing most of the buildings services on the exterior, leaving the internal spaces uncluttered and open for visitors to the centres art exhibitions. This style, dubbed Bowellism by some critics, was not universally popular at the time the centre opened in 1977, after working with Piano, Rogers established the Richard Rogers Partnership along with Marco Goldschmied, Mike Davies and John Young in 1977. This became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007, the firm maintains offices in London, Shanghai and Sydney. Rogers has devoted much of his career to wider issues surrounding architecture, urbanism, sustainability. This exhibition made public a series of proposals for transforming an area of central London. In 1995, he became the first architect to deliver the BBCs annual Reith Lectures and this series of five talks, titled Sustainable City, were later adapted into the book Cities for a Small Planet. The BBC made these available to the public for download in July 2011. This work resulted in a paper, Towards an Urban Renaissance
9.
Mike Davies (architect)
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Mike Davies CBE, RIBA, FRSA, FRGS, FICPD is a British architect. He was a partner of the Richard Rogers Partnership and a senior partner of the firms current incarnation. He is well known for always dressing from head to toe in red, mike Davies was born in England in 1942. His father was a geographer, and he travelled extensively with him as a child, mike Davies started his career at Airstructures Design in London while studying at the Architectural Association. Following his masters degree at UCLA he co-founded Chrysalis Architects in the USA and he has worked with the firm ever since. In 2010 he was appointed a Chevalier of the Order of the Légion d’honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Rogers Stirk Harbour reorganised at the end of 2015 and Davies stepped down from his role as a partner in the company. He was to continue working for them in a part-time capacity, chapel at Cefn Mably, Cardiff Pompidou Centre, Paris IRCAM, Paris Lloyds Building, London Millennium Dome, London Heathrow Terminal 5, London Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners website
10.
Arup Group
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The firm has over 14,000 staff based in 92 offices across 42 countries, and is present in Africa, the Americas, Australasia, East Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Arup has participated in projects in over 160 countries, Arup is owned by trusts, the beneficiaries of which are Arups past and present employees, who receive a share of the firms operating profit each year. The firm was founded in London in 1946, as the Ove N. Arup Consulting Engineers by Ove Arup and he set out to build a firm where professionals of diverse disciplines could work together to produce projects of greater quality than was achievable by them working in isolation. In 1963, together with the architect Philip Dowson, Arup Associates was formed, in 1970, the firm reformed as Ove Arup & Partners. It is best known for its work for the built environment. Projects to which it has contributed include the Sydney Opera House,3, Nevada, USA Druk White Lotus School was built to survive the Ladakhi weather. Kingdom Centre, The third tallest skyscraper in Saudi Arabia, and the second tallest in Riyadh and this group continues to work under the banner of Arup Associates following a streamlining of the Arup brand. Many of Arups modern stadia are designed with a contemporary, distinctive edge, the most notable stadium projects led by Arup remain the City of Manchester Stadium, Allianz Arena, Beijing National Stadium, Donbass Arena and the Singapore Sports Hub. Arups multidisciplinary sports venue design and engineering scope on the Singapore Sports Hub won the 2013 World Architecture Festival Award in the Future Projects, the Casa da Música, Oporto, designed by Arup and Office for Metropolitan Architecture was nominated for the 2007 Stirling Prize. Arup was awarded the Worldaware Award for Innovation for its Vawtex air system in Harare International School, Arup Fire has won the Fire Safety Engineering Design award four times since its creation in 2001. The 2001 inaugural award was won for Arups contribution to the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, in 2004, the design for Londons City Hall was appointed joint winner. In 2005, the Temple Mills Eurostar Depot won, the 2006 winning entry was for Amethyst House, a nine-storey building with an atrium from the ground to the top, in Manchester, UK. Arup was also awarded Royal Town Planning Institute Consultancy of the award in 2008. Mike Glover is the recipient of the 2008 Institution of Structural Engineers Gold Medal, the Evelyn Grace Academy, London designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and Arup won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize 2011. Arup was named Tunnel Design Firm of the Year at the 2012 ITA AITES International Tunnelling Awards, Arup Fellow is a lifelong honorary title awarded to selected honorary individuals in the firm. It acknowledges the highest design and technical achievements of people, not only within the firm and they are considered role models who possess world-class expertise who put theory into effective practice. Sir Ove Nyquist Arup, structural engineer and philosopher, founder of the company, recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture 1966, peter Dunican, structural engineer, first chairman of Ove Arup Partnership, and President of the Institution of Structural Engineers in 1977 and 1978. Sir Jack Zunz, civil engineer, and principal designer of the Sydney Opera House
11.
Channel 4
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Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010, before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services, BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth, after some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982. Indeed, television sets throughout the 1970s and early 1980s had a spare channel called ITV/IBA2. It was most likely politics which had the biggest impact in leading to a delay of almost three decades before the commercial channel became a reality. The campaign was taken so seriously by Gwynfor Evans, former president of Plaid Cymru, the result was that Channel 4 as seen by the rest of the United Kingdom would be replaced in Wales by Sianel Pedwar Cymru. Operated by a specially created authority, S4C would air programmes in Welsh made by HTV, since then, carriage on digital cable, satellite and digital terrestrial has introduced Channel 4 to Welsh homes where it is now universally available. The first programme to air on the channel was the game show Countdown. The first person to be seen on Channel 4 was Richard Whiteley with Ted Moult being the second, the first woman on the channel, contrary to popular belief, was not Carol Vorderman and was a lexicographer only ever identified as Mary. Whiteley opened the show with the words, On its first day, Channel 4 also broadcast controversial soap opera Brookside, which ran until 2003. On its launch, Channel 4 committed itself to providing an alternative to the existing channels, Channel 4 co-commissioned Robert Ashleys ground-breaking television opera Perfect Lives, which it premiered over several episodes in 1984. The channel often did not receive mass audiences for much of period, however. Channel 4 for many years had a poorer quality signal compared to other channels, Channel 4 also began the funding of independent films, such as the Merchant-Ivory docudrama The Courtesans of Bombay, during this time. In 1992, Channel 4 also faced its first libel case by Jani Allan, a South African journalist, who objected to her representation in the documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Drivers Wife. After control of the station passed from the Channel Four Television Company to the Channel Four Television Corporation in 1993, instead of aiming for the fringes of society, it began to focus on the edges of the mainstream, and the centre of the mass market itself. It began to show many US programmes in peak viewing time and it gave such shows as Friends and ER their UK premières. In the early 2000s, Channel 4 began broadcasting reality formats such as Big Brother and obtained the rights to broadcast mass appeal sporting events like cricket and this new direction increased ratings and revenues. In addition, the corporation launched a number of new channels through its new 4Ventures offshoot, including Film4, At the Races, E4
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London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
13.
Post Office Ltd
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The company is owned by the British Governments Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, through Postal Services Holding Company Limited. Post Office branches, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were part of the General Post Office. Post Office Counters Ltd was created as an owned subsidiary of the Post Office corporation in 1986. After the Post Office corporation was renamed Royal Mail Group in 2001, Post Office Ltd has in recent years announced losses, a reported £102 million in 2006. This has raised concerns in the media regarding Post Office Ltds ability as a company to operate efficiently. Plans to cut the subsidy for rural post offices led to the announcement that 2,500 local post offices were to be closed. This announcement resulted in a backlash from local communities that relied on the service, in 2007, the government gave a £1.7 billion subsidy to Royal Mail Group so that it could turn a profit by 2011. This was to be used to invest across the network of Royal Mail, Post Office Ltd. 85 Crown post offices were closed,70 of which were sold to WHSmith and this followed a trial of six Post Office outlets in WHSmith stores. WHSmith was expected to make up to £2.5 million extra in annual profit,2,500 sub-post offices closed between 2008 and 2009. Redundancy packages were provided from public funding, in November 2010, the government committed £1.34 billion of funding up to 2015 to Post Office Ltd to enable it to modernise the Post Office network. As part of the Postal Services Act 2011, Post Office Ltd became independent of Royal Mail Group on 1 April 2012, a ten-year inter-business agreement was signed between the two companies to allow post offices to continue issuing stamps and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail. The Act also contained the option for Post Office Ltd to become an organisation in the future. On 8 February 2013, Post Office Ltd announced it was planning to move around seventy of its Crown post offices into shops and this would reduce the Crown network, which it stated was losing £40 million a year, to around 300. On 27 November 2013, the government committed an additional £640 million of funding for 2015 to 2018 to allow Post Office Ltd to complete its network modernisation. There are currently around 11,500 post office branches across the UK, the majority of other branches are either run by various franchise partners or local subpostmaster or operators, as sub-postoffices. The Post Office has a variety of services throughout the network of branches. Products and services available vary throughout the network, main post offices generally provide the range of services
14.
Bennetts Associates
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Bennetts Associates is a British firm of architects. In 2005 Brighton Central Library was nominated for the Stirling Prize, the firm has offices in London and Edinburgh
15.
James Stirling (architect)
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Sir James Frazer Stirling RA was a British architect. Stirling worked in partnership with James Gowan from 1956 to 1963 and his year of birth is widely quoted as 1926 but his longstanding friend Colin St John Wilson later stated it was 1924. Stirling went to school at Quarry Bank High School, Liverpool, during World War II, he joined the Black Watch before transferring to the Parachute Regiment. He was parachuted behind German enemy lines before D-Day and wounded twice, Stirling studied architecture from 1945 until 1950 at the University of Liverpool, where Colin Rowe was a tutor. In 1956 he and James Gowan left their positions as assistants with the firm of Lyons, Israel and their first built project – the Langham House Close – was regarded as a landmark in the development of brutalist residential architecture, although this was a description both architects rejected. The project brought Stirling to a global audience, in 1963, Stirling and Gowan separated, Stirling then set up on his own, taking with him the office assistant Michael Wilford. Stirling then oversaw two prestigious projects, the History Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge and the Florey Building accommodation block for The Queens College, during the 1970s, Stirlings architectural language began to change as the scale of his projects moved from small to very large. His architecture became more overtly neoclassical, though it remained deeply imbued with modernism and this produced a wave of large-scale urban projects, most notably three museum projects for Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Stuttgart. Winning the design competition for the Neue Staatsgalerie, it came to be seen as an example of postmodernism, among unrealized projects in the US are designs for Columbia University and a competition proposal for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In 1981, Stirling was awarded the Pritzker Prize, Stirling received a series of important commissions in England – the Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection at the Tate Britain, London, the Tate Liverpool, and No 1 Poultry in London. In June 1992, Stirling was awarded a knighthood, after consulting with Michael Wilford, he accepted the award on the grounds that it might help their practice. Three days after the announcement of his knighthood, Stirling was hospitalised in London with a painful hernia and he died on 25 June 1992 on the operating table due to bungled anaesthesis. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were buried near to his memorial at Christ Church Spitalfields, after Stirlings death, Michael Wilford continued the practice. The Stirling Prize, a British annual prize for architecture since 1996, was named after him, many architects admire Stirlings work, but opinion has been divided. After Stirlings death Italian architect and critic Vittorio Gregotti wrote that from now on, rather more cuttingly, Jonathan Meades says that His buildings, like their bombastic maker, looked tough but were perpetual invalids, basket cases
16.
Lloyd's building
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The Lloyds building is the home of the insurance institution Lloyds of London. It is located on the site of East India House in Lime Street, in Londons main financial district. The building is an example of radical Bowellism architecture in which the services for the building. Twenty-five years after completion in 1986, the building received Grade I listing in 2011 and it is said by Historic England to be universally recognised as one of the key buildings of the modern epoch. The first Lloyds building had been built on site in 1928. In 1958, due to expansion of the market, a new building was constructed across the road at 51 Lime Street, Lloyds now occupied the Heysham Building and the Cooper Building. By the 1970s Lloyds had again outgrown these two buildings and proposed to extend the Cooper Building, in 1978, the corporation ran an architectural competition which attracted designs from practices such as Foster Associates, Arup and I. M. Pei. The 1928 buildings entrance at 12 Leadenhall Street was preserved and forms a rather incongruous attachment to the 1986 structure, demolition of the 1958 building commenced in 2004 to make way for the 26-storey Willis Building. The current Lloyds building was designed by the architect company Richard Rogers and Partners, the 12 glass lifts were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Like the Pompidou Centre, the building was influenced by the work of Archigram in the 1950s and 1960s. The building consists of three towers and three service towers around a central, rectangular space. Its core is the large Underwriting Room on the ground floor, also on the first floor is loss book which for 300 years has had entries of significant losses entered by quill. The Underwriting Room is overlooked by galleries, forming a 60 metres high atrium lit naturally through a huge barrel-vaulted glass roof, the first four galleries open onto the atrium space, and are connected by escalators through the middle of the structure. The higher floors are glassed in and can only be reached via the exterior lifts, the Lloyds building is 88 metres to the roof, with 14 floors. On top of each service core stand the cleaning cranes, increasing the height to 95.10 metres. Modular in plan, each floor can be altered by addition or removal of partitions, in 2008 the Twentieth Century Society called for the building to be Grade I listed and in 2011 it was granted this status. The building was owned by Dublin-based real estate firm Shelbourne Development Group. In July 2013 it was sold to the Chinese company Ping An Insurance in a £260 million deal, use as a location in films Guardians of the Galaxy The Anomaly Climbing Great Buildings The Ghost Writer Burn Up, TV series Ashes to Ashes, pilot episode Mamma Mia
17.
Ochre
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Ochre (/ˈoʊkər/ OH-kər, from Greek, ὠχρός, ōkhrós, or ocher, is a natural earth pigment containing hydrated iron oxide, which ranges in color from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the produced by this pigment. A variant of ochre containing an amount of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide, has a reddish tint known as red ochre. Ochre is a family of pigments, which includes yellow ochre, red ochre, purple ochre, sienna. The major ingredient of all the ochres is iron oxide-hydroxide, known as limonite, which gives them a yellow color. Yellow ochre, FeO·nH 2O, is a hydrated iron hydroxide also called gold ochre Red ochre, Fe 2O3, takes its color from the mineral hematite. Purple ochre, is identical to red ochre chemically but of a different hue caused by different light diffraction properties associated with an average particle size. Brown ochre, also FeO, is a hydrated iron oxide. Sienna contains both limonite and an amount of manganese oxide, which makes it darker than ochre. Umber pigments contain a proportion of manganese which make them a dark brown. When natural sienna and umber pigments are heated, they are dehydrated and some of the limonite is transformed into hematite, giving them more reddish colors, called burnt sienna and burnt umber. Ochres are non-toxic, and can be used to make an oil paint that dries quickly, modern ochre pigments often are made using synthetic iron oxide. Pigments which use natural ochre pigments indicate it with the name PY-43 on the label, pieces of ochre engraved with abstract designs have been found at the site of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, dated to around 75,000 years ago. In Wales, the paleolithic burial called the Red Lady of Paviland from its coating of red ochre has been dated to around 33,000 years before present. Paintings of animals made with red and yellow ochre pigments have been found in sites at Pech Merle in France. The cave of Lascaux has an image of a horse colored with yellow estimated to be 17,300 years old. In Ancient Egypt, yellow was associated with gold, which was considered to be eternal, the skin and bones of the gods were believed to be made of gold. The Egyptians used yellow extensively in tomb painting, though occasionally they used orpiment
18.
Golden Gate Bridge
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The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the one-mile-wide, one-point-seven-mile-long channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and it has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Frommers travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed and it opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet. Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. A ferry service began as early as 1820, with a scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San Francisco. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacifics automobile ferries became very profitable, the trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes. Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County, San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation. San Franciscos City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, which would have been $2.12 billion in 2009 and he asked bridge engineers whether it could be built for less. One who responded, Joseph Strauss, was an engineer and poet who had, for his graduate thesis. At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges—most of which were inland—and nothing on the scale of the new project. Strausss initial drawings were for a massive cantilever on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, Local authorities agreed to proceed only on the assurance that Strauss would alter the design and accept input from several consulting project experts. A suspension-bridge design was considered the most practical, because of recent advances in metallurgy, Strauss spent more than a decade drumming up support in Northern California. The bridge faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources, the Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic. The navy feared that a collision or sabotage to the bridge could block the entrance to one of its main harbors. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs, in May 1924, Colonel Herbert Deakyne held the second hearing on the Bridge on behalf of the Secretary of War in a request to use federal land for construction. Another ally was the automobile industry, which supported the development of roads. The bridges name was first used when the project was discussed in 1917 by M. M
19.
Royal Institute of British Architects
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After the grant of the royal charter it had become known as the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, eventually dropping the reference to London in 1892. In 1934, it moved to its current headquarters on Portland Place, with the building being opened by King George V and it was granted its Royal Charter in 1837 under King William IV. Supplemental Charters of 1887,1909 and 1925 were replaced by a single Charter in 1971, any revisions to the Charter or Byelaws require the Privy Councils approval. The design of the Institutes Mycenean lions medal and the motto ‘Usui civium, decori urbium has been attributed to Thomas Leverton Donaldson and it was again redesigned in 1931 by Eric Gill and in 1960 by Joan Hassall. His School, Liverpool, was one of the twenty schools named for the purpose of constituting the statutory Board of Architectural Education when the 1931 Act was passed. The RIBA Guide to its Archive and History has a section on the Statutory registration of architects with an extending from a draft bill of 1887 to one of 1969. This led to proposals for reconstituting ARCUK, eventually, in the 1990s, before proceeding, the government issued a consultation paper Reform of Architects Registration. RIBA Visiting Boards continue to assess courses for exemption from the RIBAs examinations in architecture, under arrangements made in 2011 the validation criteria are jointly held by the RIBA and the Architects Registration Board, but unlike the ARB, the RIBA also validates courses outside the UK. The RIBA is an organisation, with 44,000 members. Chartered Members are entitled to call themselves chartered architects and to append the post-nominals RIBA after their name, formerly, fellowships of the institute were granted, although no longer, those who continue to hold this title instead add FRIBA. Members gain access to all the services and receive its monthly magazine. The RIBA has been recognised as a business Superbrand since 2008, RIBA is based at 66 Portland Place, London—a 1930s Grade II* listed building designed by architect George Grey Wornum with sculptures by Edward Bainbridge Copnall and James Woodford. Parts of the London building are open to the public, including the Library and it has a large architectural bookshop, a café, restaurant and lecture theatres. Rooms are hired out for events, the Institute also maintains a dozen regional offices around the United Kingdom, it opened its first regional office for the East of England at Cambridge in 1966. It employs over 250 staff, approximately 180 of whom are based in Newcastle and its services include RIBA Insight, RIBA Appointments, and RIBA Publishing. It publishes the RIBA Product Selector and RIBA Journal, in Newcastle is the NBS, the National Building Specification, which has 130 staff and deals with the building regulations and the Construction Information Service. RIBA Bookshops, which operates online and at 66 Portland Place, is part of RIBA Enterprises. The British Architectural Library, sometimes referred to as the RIBA Library, was established in 1834 upon the founding of the institute with donations from members
20.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
21.
The Independent
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The Independent is a British online newspaper. The printed edition of the paper ceased in March 2016, nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet newspaper, but changed to tabloid format in 2003. Until September 2011, the paper described itself on the banner at the top of every newspaper as free from party political bias and it tends to take a pro-market stance on economic issues. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. In June 2015, it had a daily circulation of just below 58,000,85 per cent down from its 1990 peak. On 12 February 2016, it was announced that The Independent, the last print edition of The Independent on Sunday was published on 20 March 2016, with the main paper ceasing print publication the following Saturday. Launched in 1986, the first issue of The Independent was published on 7 October in broadsheet format and it was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at The Daily Telegraph who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwells ownership, marcus Sieff was the first chairman of Newspaper Publishing, and Whittam Smith took control of the paper. The paper was created at a time of a change in British newspaper publishing. Rupert Murdoch was challenging long-accepted practices of the print unions and ultimately defeated them in the Wapping dispute, consequently, production costs could be reduced which, it was said at the time, created openings for more competition. As a result of controversy around Murdochs move to Wapping, the plant was effectively having to function under siege from sacked print workers picketing outside, the Independent attracted some of the staff from the two Murdoch broadsheets who had chosen not to move to his companys new headquarters. Launched with the advertising slogan It is, and challenging both The Guardian for centre-left readers and The Times as the newspaper of record, The Independent reached a circulation of over 400,000 by 1989. Competing in a market, The Independent sparked a general freshening of newspaper design as well as, within a few years. Some aspects of production merged with the paper, although the Sunday paper retained a largely distinct editorial staff. It featured spoofs of the other papers mastheads with the words The Rupert Murdoch or The Conrad Black, a number of other media companies were interested in the paper. Tony OReillys media group and Mirror Group Newspapers had bought a stake of about a third each by mid-1994, in March 1995, Newspaper Publishing was restructured with a rights issue, splitting the shareholding into OReillys Independent News & Media, MGN, and Prisa. In April 1996, there was another refinancing, and in March 1998, OReilly bought the other 54% of the company for £30 million, brendan Hopkins headed Independent News, Andrew Marr was appointed editor of The Independent, and Rosie Boycott became editor of The Independent on Sunday. Marr introduced a dramatic if short-lived redesign which won critical favour but was a commercial failure, Marr admitted his changes had been a mistake in his book, My Trade
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