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:
“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)