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:
“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)
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“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)