London’s Proposed Skyscraper Tulip Tower Worries Air Traffic Control
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London City airport warns officials of potential problems with Norman Foster skyscraper, reports the Guardian. It has been compared to a cocktail cornichon and derided as an architectural Freudian slip, but Norman Foster’s proposed viewing platform and visiLondon’s Proposed Skyscraper Tulip Tower Worries Air Traffic Control
London City airport warns officials of potential problems with Norman Foster skyscraper, reports the Guardian. It has been compared to a cocktail cornichon and derided as an architectural Freudian slip, but Norman Foster’s proposed viewing platform and visitor attraction in the City of London is facing a potentially more serious objection.The Guardian reports that Gondalas designed to move up and down the top of the Tulip tower are at risk of confusing air traffic control systems, according to technical experts at London City airport.Construction on the 305-meter (1,000ft) tower must not go ahead until an assessment has been carried out into its potential impact on radar systems at the airport six miles to the east, officials told the authority considering whether to grant planning permission.Foster, the architect of the neighboring Gherkin tower as well as a £1.3bn European headquarters for Bloomberg, has proposed a rotating gondola ride in three-meter wide glass spheres that will take visitors on an eight-minute journey in an elliptical loop around the tower’s tip.The Safra Group, a company controlled by the Brazilian billionaire banker Joseph Safra, which bought the neighboring Gherkin for £726m in 2014, is developing the building.The 12-story glass bubble erected on top of a concrete stem will be filled with bars, restaurants, a viewing gallery, and “a classroom in the sky.” It is more than twice the height of the London Eye, the next-tallest moving visitor attraction in the capital.The planning application has already attracted some opposition from local residents.The Guardian’s architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, said: “The architects may have been aiming for a tulip, but the structure is more reminiscent of a coconut shy, or an egg perched at the top of an etiolated egg cup. The structural spoons, meanwhile, have the inescapable look of obstetrical forceps, brandishing the freshly extracted Gherkin baby toward the clouds.”https://www.blouinartinfo.com/ Founder: Louise Blouin Read more