Architecture
The cubic dimensions of the main design element lends to the name of the development. However, the building consists of three stages with the cube being one of them. The building is constructed of concrete, with two fire-fighting cores rising up either side of the building.
Birmingham-born Ken Shuttleworth, who designed London's Gherkin building with Norman Foster, has stated that the design evokes the city's industrial heritage.
The cladding for me tries to reflect the heavy industries of Birmingham which I remember as a kid, the metal plate works and the car plants - and the inside is very crystalline, all glass; that to me is like the jewellery side of Birmingham, the lightbulbs and delicate stuff - it tries to reflect the essence of Birmingham in the building itself.Read more about this topic: The Cube (building)
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit—if totally different in form—from all the romantic architecture of the past.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Defaced ruins of architecture and statuary, like the wrinkles of decrepitude of a once beautiful woman, only make one regret that one did not see them when they were enchanting.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)