Development of John Jones Site / Sketch House

jward

I managed to get a good load of the cut down trees to build a natural play feature in Wray Crescent playground, and believe that the rest of them have gone to another park and a school.<div>Some kind of a silver lining.</div><div>It seemed like we needed extra money to arrange this and Kate Jones kindly offered to support the initiative.</div><div>In the end Islington arranged the delivery free of charge, but Kate has still made a donation.</div><div><br></div><div>If you'd like to contribute, please check out Dan's fundraising effort for the playground improvement, on another discussion.  many thanks</div>

Mirandola

Good work.

ChangN4N6

Yes this is an excellent result. Chang

ADGS

Thanks to the Tube strike, today was the first chance I had to see the John Jones building from the train platforms, which I'd concluded must be where it looked best. Sadly, it instead looked like it would be right at home on the outskirts of Croydon, so there's not even that to recommend it. 

NorthNineteen

The picture of the JJ building in the banner at the top of the home page is stunning, I hope it gets nominated for some architecture awards.

miss annie

It probably would have in 1996.

Arkady

@MissAnnie:<div><br></div><div>In 1996 the awards were mostly going to deconstructivist masterpieces like the wonderful Case Danzanti in Prague:<div><br></div><div><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Case_danzanti.jpg"></div><div><br></div><div>The JJ Arts Building is more a revival of the Victorian Style, a per the superlative Granary Building in King's Cross: </div></div><div><br></div><div><img src="http://media.kingscross.co.uk/cache/image_2877_1200_800.jpg"></div><div><br></div><div>But then you were probably just making a slur, right?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

miss annie

Partly, but mostly it does look like loft buildings I saw in New York in the late 90s. I love that Prague building!

Arkady

<font face="Arial, Verdana">'</font><span style="font-family: 'lucida grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Case Danzanti' translates as 'The Dancing House', which is delightful in itself.</span><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: 'lucida grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', tahoma, sans-serif; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></div><div><font face="lucida grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, tahoma, sans-serif"><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The people of Prague were pretty angry about it at the time though - their protests made your complaints look like the chuntering of armchair whingers.  Pretty popular now though, I hear.</span></font></div>

ADGS

Not all complaints about architecture are the same. You can use the Case Danzanti case as a rejoinder when people complain about something bold like the Gherkin or Shard. When people are complaining about another drab fucking rectangle, the analogy doesn't really hold. <div><br></div><div>(The Granary Building shows that rectangles can work. But it also has a more interesting, less tediously obvious frontage than the JJ thing. And more so even than that, the space and the lighting help it enormously. Even an interesting building can look stupid and ugly if the architect's drawing showed it in a grand plaza, when in reality it's on crowded London streets - cf Minster Court in the City)</div>

Ali

<P>Now the JJ site is raised to the ground it is surprising how big the site is that the student accomodation is going on.</P> <P>You can really see that when you view walking down Woodstock Road.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

vetski

Agreed, @Ali - I noticed it yesterday for the first time and was amazed by the size of the footprint.

miss annie

It really is huge. That is the thing that the jazzy colourful visualisations never convey.

Ali

It would make a nice grassed over space shame that will never happen.

dion

It would make a great permanent fairground with a merry go round shame that will never happen.

ChangN4N6

An international vets centre run by me, it will never happen. Chang

Arkady

<font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">For interest.  Some sort of arty razmatazz starts on the 5th.*</font><div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><br></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">http://uk.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1038075/new-arts-centre-set-to-open-in-finsbury-park</font></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">http://www.johnjones.co.uk/news/2014/05/john-jones-the-arts-building-launches-this-june/</font></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"><br></font></div><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">*I am not qualified to talk about art.</font></div>

Arkady

So I went to the official opening of the Arts Building last night, and it was bonkers fun. Lashings of free booze (English beer and wine, no less) and amazing pizza, the latter provided by Exeter Street Bakery who will be opening a branch on the ground floor of the Arts Building, on the corner of SGR and Morris Place, at the end of July.<br><br>http://www.exeterstreetbakery.co.uk/<br><br>It was great to take a tour of their workshops, especially the conservation studio. They were reframing a Banksy, but more exciting for me was the massive original 1933 King Kong poster that they were restoring (valued at $65,000).<br><br>We got to see a preview of the Teresa Gillespie exhibit in the Project Space – open to the public from Thursday. I didn’t get it, but I’m hopeless at that sort of thing.<br><br>They will be renting out the fourth and fifth floors to another business, as yet unknown. But it was up on the fifth that they held the party proper – cool lighting, warped illustrations, and crazy live music – electric harpists, some sort of dystopian brass band by the name of ‘Perhaps Contraception’, and the startling ‘Lady Vendredi, hula moves, voodoo grooves’. Bonkers.<br><br>Anyway, some pictures can be found below. As it’s me, they are mostly pictures of the view from the terraces.<br><br>https://www.flickr.com/photos/67014684@N05/sets/72157644998070772/<br>;

Papa

Exeter Street Bakery is round the corner from where I work in Kensington High St, it is very nice but rather expensive. It's so Kensington that it doesn't display any prices.<br><br>As I recall £3.60 for a small square of pizza eat in - realistically you need two to have enough for lunch and that's well short of a full pizza. <br><br>They may need to adjust their prices for Stroud Green.<br><br>But just to reiterate it is very nice.<br><br>I'm glad some stuff is going on at John Jones now. I like the new building although the back of it is still drab and could be better. <br><br>ADGS is right that the Granary Building is far more interesting and bigging itself up with fancy lighting and a pond. Could we get a pond?<br><br>Nice pics Arkady, thanks for those.<br>

Arkady

We could do with some fountains. Maybe in the new Stroud Green piazza.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Kate Jones

<div>Yes Exeter Street Bakery is opening in July. Two of the three partners live in Finsbury Park and we have known them for some time. They'll be doing breakfasts, lunches, evenings, plus are hoping to get a license to serve italian beers and prosecco.</div><div><br></div>Also some of you might like to know that there is a family workshop on Saturday 14 June at John Jones. Its for kids aged 7-11 but there will also be an activity table for younger children. Its free but we only have 30 places so you need to book! Full details on the separate post I just started or via our website.<div><br></div>

miss annie

Going back to the tall buildings thing (sorry). There are meetings going on in New York now to limit the height of buildings along 57th Ave (and others). There is a big campaign to stop shadows from being cast into Central Park. I wonder if there will be a general movement away from tall buildings.

Arkady

Interestring. But having tall buildings limited to certain places isn't new - we have had it in London for decades. Very sensible too.  It took the horrors of the 1960-70s for urban planners to figure that out.

JoeV

There have always been arguments about zoning and building height in New York. The issue now is that several, very tall, ultra-luxury residential towers either have gone up or are currently being built or in the planning stages along West 57th Street AND that they will cast shadows over Central Park -- that's the controversy.<br><br>How it relates to London is that these very tall towers will most likely not have many people living in them like that hideous creature, One Hyde Park, which just adds insult to injury. Billionaires will pay 10 of millions of dollars for a 'million dollar view' and may never step foot in them.<br><br>Before Mayor Gloomberg left office he pushed through a re-zoning of the Eastside, which would have allowed even taller buildings in the most densely built area of Manhattan. These new planning laws were thankfully rescinded when the new Mayor, Bill Diblasio took office in January.<br><br>There are other areas of Manhattan, like the far Westside where tall buildings are going up but these haven't generated much controversy, so I don't think it's a protest against tall buildings in general, though in some areas that are low-rise in Brooklyn and Queens especially, there is discomfort with the changes.<br><br>Also like London, New Yorkers are increasingly worried about who the all these new buildings are being built for because the average worker can't afford to live in them, while at the same time the real estate industry and the government have essentially gutted many of the rent regulations. I read an article recently that said about 25-30% of apartments in Manhattan are now not covered by rent stabilization laws<br><br><br>http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/02/20/hundreds_fret_about_superscrapers_shadows_as_extell_rebuts.php<br><br>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/arts/design/seeing-a-need-for-oversight-of-new-yorks-lordly-towers.html?_r=0<br><br>http://observer.com/2013/10/no-sky-zone-residents-of-57th-street-rage-against-extells-high-rise-row-gluttonous-buildings/<br>;

miss annie

Welcome back @Arkady!

kreuzkav

<div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2">It raises a few good points:</font></div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"><div><font face="Arial, Verdana" size="2"><br></font></div>http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/simon-jenkins-towers-blight-london--just-let-us-live-lowrise-9477764.html</font>;

NorthNineteen

JJ would very much be classed low-rise in the above.<div><br></div><div>Exeter St Bakery - so another place to add to the best pizza on SGR? Prosecco sounds good though!</div>

Kate Jones

Exeter St bakery are doing much more than just pizza

ADGS

I notice that, as a result of the John Jones work sprawling over the road and pavement, the kerb on the corner opposite has now been wrecked. Is this going to be fixed any time soon, or will it just be replaced with a kerb of equivalent value elsewhere in the borough?