ipernity: Westgate lantern at night

Isisbridge ^club

Apparently, the tower is there to stop the wall getting confused,
whilst the glass thingy is for following the sun around.

www.dixonjones.co.uk/projects/westgate-oxford

At the New Road end of the Bonn Street Wall there is a plain brick tower. This serves to hold the end of the wall visually as the streetscape gets confused around the County Headquarters building. Seen down Queen Street, the wall continues the general plane of the façades of the shop fronts. From the other direction there is no such controlling sense of enclosure, this is remedied by the way the tower gives stability to the end of the wall.

At the top of the tower is a lantern. This is a joint project involving the artist Daniela Schoen-baechler and the architects. The idea is to have a sculptural object that responds to the way sunlight travels around the location. The Bonn Street wall faces north and a glass structure on the tower will automatically have light shining through it as the sun moves through the day. The lantern has thirteen sides and is glazed with a variety of glass types including degrees of translucence and colour. The lantern will be lit at night but only in as much as it can be made to glow, brighter at the bottom than the top.

22 months ago.

Howard Somerville ^club has replied to Isisbridge ^club

Ridiculous gimmick.

Was it impossible to build something aesthetically pleasing and in character?

5 weeks ago.

Isisbridge ^club has replied to Howard Somerville ^club

An aesthetically pleasing building would have looked out of context in this context.

5 weeks ago.

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Oxford 2019-23 Oxford 2019-23

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Westgate Centre Westgate Centre

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