Robert Kwolek (@RobertKwolek) — posts, photos & videos | PeekX

Robert Kwolek

@RobertKwolek

Architecture. Urbanism. Beauty. Photography. Architectural and urban designer at @createstreets. Most photos my own.

London instagram.com/robertkwolek Joined January 2012

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@RobertKwolek reposted

@createstreets

Martin Lewis has asked the public for simple, inexpensive and broadly uncontroversial changes that could make Britain work a little better.

What better place to start than with putting an end to street scars?

We can hold utility companies to account for scarring our streets with just a few changes to legislation that will:

🚧Make them put pavements back exactly as they found them and increase the fines for failing to do so.

🚧Require them to pay the full cost of restoring damaged pavements to the original standard.

Find out more...

Martin Lewis@MartinSLewis · Oct 8

Please submit your small ideas for fixing Britain to the Small-Ideas.org website. It’s a new charitable initiative I’ve set up to try and make sure life’s potholes don’t get ignored. Working with two charities and a cross party panel to turn your ideas into policy then try and make it happen. Please share.

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@RobertKwolek

Excellent news for London and a win for common sense, intensifying well and making London better. A win too against degrowth voices.

createstreets@createstreets · Oct 7

Approved!

The Mayor of London has greenlit Shoreditch Works, delivering an important symbolic win for urban regeneration, jobs, beauty and new homes.

Huge credit to Linea Properties Ltd for pushing this forward and we dare to hope that we at Create Streets helped with our groundbreaking Visual Preference Survey. This proved that the public overwhelmingly backs beautiful, dense design. Our research with @DeltapollUK showed an undeniable 76% to 78% public approval rating—demonstrating that the public support architecture that is public-friendly.

From features in City A.M. to deep-dives in the Wall Street Journal, the press has highlighted this scheme as the blueprint for how British capital can grow while keeping the public firmly on its side. This is how we build a better London! 🚀🏙️

You can …

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@RobertKwolek reposted

@CamilleRoux

Combien de temps pour aller de chez toi à n'importe quel endroit de ta ville en tram ou en métro ?

Cette carte te le montre d'un coup : pose ton départ, tout se colore selon le temps de trajet.

20 villes (Lyon, Marseille, ...) 👇

👉 tram.camilleroux.com

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@RobertKwolek

Edward’s alternative is obviously superior to the eyes of 80%+ of the public though would be scorned by most architects and planners. That’s something that needs to change.

Edward Teather@TeatherEdward · Oct 6

An extension to Oxford designed with "cues from the [existing] skyline" in mind might look something like this. One day we will build spires again.

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Alpharetta City Hall (2014), Georgia, by David M. Schwarz Architects, sits as an anchor in a new city centre development. It’s a source of civic pride and creates a new heart for a community which before was random suburbia.

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Last week was the first annual Time for Trams conference, organised by @createstreets, @CBTransport and @landor_links. It was a hopeful, cautiously optimistic day but there's work to be done. My overview of the conference here:
transportxtra.com/publications/l…

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This joyous and masterful tower at Harris Manchester College in Oxford is new, completed by @YiangouArch in 2014. We are still more than capable of designing and building beautiful buildings which fit in.

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A Georgian terrace in East London, the standard urban house form of the early 19th century. Still standing and still beloved over 200 years later. They also sell for more £/per sq ft than a new house. Why? Because new houses are much uglier.

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Checking in on my favourite building across from Tottenham Hale Station. With the layers of grime now adorning it, I think it’s fair to say it’s now fallen below the level even of a Russian commie block.

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Useless for those actually struggling financially: renters.

UK Prime Minister@10DowningStreet · Sep 26

If you don't have help from the bank of Mum and Dad, this is for you:

This government is introducing the Your First Home scheme to help more young people buy their first home with a deposit of just 2.5%.

That means less to save upfront, and lower monthly costs once you’ve got the keys.

And this help is coming soon, with pre-registration set to open by the end of the year.

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This is a new £240m building at the University of Bristol. It’s not for lack of money we don’t create beautiful buildings. Utilitarianism is a choice of cultural and architectural elites who don’t care what people like.

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Victorian exuberance, confidence and optimism at golden hour… and its current entrapings

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£237 million and they couldn't even get matching railings. Another example of how, even in the most gold-plated expensive projects, beauty is not part of the equation, despite the massive impact it has on our wellbeing.

Matthew Evans@MJCEvans1995 · Sep 20

Cars and buses go from Oxford Station down Botley Road for the first time in three years!

The project took longer than the construction of The Titanic and saw costs balloon to £237m.

Looks good though.

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A small selection of the many beautiful homes seen on a walk in the East Sussex countryside. England’s network of public footpaths criss-crossing the land is perhaps the nation’s greatest amenity.

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Stanley Road in Bootle, c1905 and the same approximate view today. When our forebears have f*cked up as badly as they have here, there’s really only one solution: build it back exactly as it was before (assuming we want it to be a functioning town centre again).

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A pleasant stretch of Roehampton High Street. Brick pavers add texture to the street and small street trees add greenery while screening the less-than-perfect newish buildings. I bet it significantly increases property values too.

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Decline in three pictures. Here we have three different window treatments on a prestigious listed 1918 building on The Strand. Can you guess which is the original and which the modern?

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These are so hateful. It’s a major black mark on London’s leadership that these weren’t replaced by bespoke solutions befitting of London’s civic beauty many, many years ago. With every passing day they shame themselves more.

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Two different approaches. One from an era where people cared about creating pleasant streets, and the other from an era of not giving a damn and a system which squeezes beauty entirely out of the equation.

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It’s disappointing that any company would consider the design of such utilitarian bins as good enough, and that any council would buy them, but it shouldn’t be acceptable. It’s easy to imagine a better way.

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