3 UK Modern Architectural Marvels

As a building surveyor it’s easy to find yourself focusing on problems with buildings and not always taking the time to appreciate building design done really well so, to take a little time away from subsidence, leaky roofs and drafty windows, here are some of the UK’s most impressive and cleverly designed modern buildings.

The Sage, Gateshead

In a concert venue, acoustics are everything and this building was designed with this in mind. Not only does it look impressive with its spacy curved metal and glass design, each of its three performances spaces were created to offer the most spectacular musical experiences. Each performance space is its own separate, but connected, building so it can be totally cut off from the others as far as sound and vibration are concerned. This means you could have a Mozart piano sonata being performed next door to Metallica playing their heavy metal music and neither would be disturbed by the other. They achieved this by using a special ‘spongy’ concrete mix and extensive insulation. The main auditorium, Sage One, is also adaptable to perfectly suit any type of sound performance as the ceiling panels can be raised and lowered and curtains drawn across the walls to change the acoustics as required.

The Shard, London

As the tallest building in the UK, whether you love or hate The Shard, it is definitely an impressive work of architecture. Its design was apparently inspired by the nearby railway lines leading in to London Bridge station, the church spires depicted in 18th century paintings of London and the masts of ships. Although most people know it by the name The Shard, it is officially called London Bridge Tower and only acquired the nickname after critics of the design said it would look like a shard of glass stabbing the heart of historical London. At 1,016 feet tall and comprising 11,000 panes of glass, the tower was designed to reflect the sky so it changes with the weather and seems as much part of the sky as the city.

Beetham Tower, Manchester

With a width to height ratio of 1:10, the Beetham Tower is one of the thinnest skyscrapers in the world. At 554 ft tall, it’s the second highest building in the UK outside of London and has a mixed use of being a hotel at the bottom and residential properties at the top. It can be seen from 10 counties on a clear day and has a glass blade at the top which makes a whistling sound on windy days that can be heard from miles around. A building like this with an outer surface made almost entirely of glass is bound to suffer from excess light and heat so the architects countered this issue by added louvres to the south facing windows to control the amount of light and aluminum strips to the east and west sides to provide shade. The top floor penthouse is the highest residential space in Europe.