airships

BT tower, at sunset, as the R101's of the C21 cruise in to dock.

I am on holiday on the Greek island of Hydra, so the second post in the Shifting Shorelines series will have to wait until I get back to London.

While reading a BLDG BLOG post about the Sydney-based Urban Islands studio (I did the same studio 2 years ago with Morphogenesis) I was struck by Mitchell Bonus' project, who I know as one of the UNSW archicats. The thing that really got to me was the idea of producing trading cards for architectural proposals, and then slipping them into cereal boxes, cigarette packets and bags of crisps. This type of subversive dissemination of architecture is really at the base of Millennium People, and I'm sure Ballard would approve.

Why is it architects are so crazy for airships? I am sure they will return to the skies - if only as a result of the collective desires of the design community. Although it sets you thinking about the collective psychology of a profession, I imagine our obsession stems from the fact that airships represent the pinnacle of Modernist thinking about the effects of lightness and transparency- pure, white, floating buildings.

As a homage to Mitch, I have knocked up two images of the London destination for his departing zeppelins. So a link is drawn between Centrepoint and the London Sky Harbour- based in the old BT Tower.